Cysteinyl leukotrienes (LTC4, LTD4 and LTE4) are potent pro-inflammatory lipids derived from arachidonic acid and mediate their effect through CysLT1R and CysLT2R. There is a strong correlation between long-standing inflammatory bowel disease where these pro-inflammatory mediators are abundant and colorectal cancer. We have shown that LTD4 via its receptor CysLT1 induces expression of proteins associated with colorectal cancer and promotes proliferation, survival and migration in intestinal epithelial cells. In addition, we have demonstrated that that high expression of CysLT1R in colorectal adenocarcinomas predicts poor prognosis in patients. In the presented papers in this thesis we investigated the role of CysLT1R in different mouse models of colorectal cancer. In the mouse xenograft model of colon cancer, we were able to observe a reduced tumor growth in response to CysLT1R antagonist treatment. The inhibition of the tumor growth was accompanied with changes in proliferation and apoptosis as determined by reduced Ki-67 expression, increased expression of p21WAF/Cip1, cleaved caspase 3 and caspase-cleaved keratin 18. An impaired tumor angiogenesis was also demonstrated by detection of increased levels of VEGF and reduced vessel size. We also investigated the role of CysLT1R in 1) FAP/sporadic colorectal cancer by crossing ApcMin/+ mice with mice lacking CysLT1R expression and in 2) colitis-associated colorectal cancer by employing the AOM/DSS-model on mice lacking CysLT1R expression. Interestingly, a reduced polyp formation in a gender-specific manner could be observed in both models. CysLT1R knockout female mice, but not male mice exhibited a reduced polyp formation in the small intestine and colon, respectively. Also, a decreased nuclear expression of β-catenin within the epithelial tumor compartment was determined for CysLT1R mutant female mice in both models. However, the mechanism of tumor progression in FAP/sporadic colorectal cancer and in colitis-associated colorectal cancer might differ as indicated by reduced tumor expression of COX-2 and reduced serum levels of PGE2 in the female double mutant (CysLT1R ApcMin/+) mice, whereas AOM/DSStreated female single mutant (CysLT1R) mice demonstrated increased serum levels of PGE2. In conclusion, the presented mouse models of colorectal cancer further strengthen our previous in vitro findings and highlight the prospect of CysLT1R as an alternative therapeutic approach.


The Total Monte Carlo (TMC) method was used in this study to assess the impact of Pb-206, 207 and 208 nucleardata uncertainties on k-eff , beta-eff, coolant temperature coefficient, the coolant void worth for the ELECTRA reactor. Relatively large uncertainties were observed in the k-eff and the coolant void worth for all the isotopes with significant contribution coming from Pb-208 nuclear data. The large Pb-208 nuclear data uncertainty observed was further investigated by studying the impact of partial channels on the k-eff and beta-eff. Various sections of ENDF file: elasticscattering (n,el), inelastic scattering (n,inl), neutron capture (n,gamma), (n,2n), resonance parameters and the angular distribution were varied randomly and distributions in k-eff and beta-eff obtained. The dominant contributions to the uncertainty in the k-eff from Pb-208 came from uncertainties in the resonance parameters; however, elastic scattering cross section and the angular distribution also had significant impact. The impact of nuclear data uncertainties on the beta-eff was observed to be small.


In 2004, many newspapers in the U.S. allowed public commenting on news articles posted to their websites, however since then, many U.S. news websites have removed public comment boards, ceased archiving public comments, or turned to moderators to edit or delete hateful or overly aggressive comments (Hughey and Daniels, 2013). Yahoo!, however, continues to utilize comment boards on Yahoo! News reports, in which incivility continues to run rampant. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, this study addresses incivility and "othering" in Yahoo! News article comment sections from news reporting on LGBTQ-related stories. From a sample of 1000 Yahoo! News comments using open coding, several themes are clear in five news reports from this year. Human rights, perversion, and gender are each themes in comments, many of which perpetuate homophobia and heteronormativity, and promote incivility. I conclude Yahoo! News comments are ultimately ineffective and do not support civil, thoughtful discussion.


This article studies determinants of political actors' visibility in the news, and their stability over time, observing the press coverage received by Chilean politicians in the elite press since the beginning of the democratic transition in 1991 and until 2019. In dialogue with theories of news values, we test how political positions in a markedly presidential system, the belonging to a government coalition, gender, and the association to conflict frames behave as determinants of the presence and prominence of politicians in the news in the three decades following the recovery of democracy in Chile. We have three key findings. Firstly, the visibility of political actors in the news follows a clear institutional hierarchy led by the president and cabinet members. Secondly, female politicians are less likely to be mentioned or have speaking space in newspapers than male politicians. Lastly, although an association with conflict-framed news boosts politicians' visibility, such association is unable to disturb structural power hierarchies, and the value of conflict does not increase over time.


Patterns of object naming often differ between languages, but bilingual speakers develop convergent naming patterns in their two languages that are distinct from those of monolingual speakers of each language. This convergence appears to reflect dynamic interactions between lexical representations for the two languages. In this study, we present a self-organizing neural network model to simulate semantic convergence in the bilingual lexicon and investigate mechanisms underlying semantic convergence. Our results demonstrate that connections between two languages can be established through the simultaneous activations of related words in both languages, and these connections between two languages pull the two lexicons toward each other. These results suggest that connections between words in the bilingual lexicon play a major role in bilinguals' semantic convergence. The model provides a foundation for exploring how various input variables will affect bilingual patterns of output.


Nanogels (NGs) synthesized by pulsed electron-beam irradiation of semi-dilute poly (N-vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) aqueous solutions, at relatively low energy per pulse and doses within the sterilization dose range, represent a very interesting family of polymeric nanocarriers. Ionizing irradiation-induced crosslinking of PVP allows to control particle size, and surface chemistry of the polymer nanoparticles without making use of catalysts, organic solvents or surfactants, and with beneficial effects onto the purity and hence biocompatibility of the final products obtained. Furthermore, the availability of reactive functional groups, either generated by the radiation or purposely grafted via copolymerisation with suitable functional monomers enables the conjugation of therapeutics drug, that make them suitable nanocarriers for biomedical applications. In particular, we have developed a carboxyl-functionalized nanogel variant for glutathione-mediated delivery of a chemotherapeutic agent, Doxorubicin. The drug is linked to the nanoparticles through a linker containing a cleavable disulphide bridge, aminoethyldithiopropionic acid (AEDP). In vitro drug release experiments have shown that glutathione can induce the release of Doxorubicin, through the reduction of the disulfide bridge. These results suggest that such redox-responsive nanoparticles can deliver doxorubicin into the nuclei of tumor cells, thus inducing inhibition of cell proliferation, and provide a favourable platform to construct nanoscalar drug delivery systems for cancer therapy.


We develop a theory of viscous dissipation in one-dimensional single-component quantum liquids at low temperatures. Such liquids are characterized by a single viscosity coefficient, the bulk viscosity. We show that for a generic interaction between the constituent particles this viscosity diverges in the zero-temperature limit. In the special case of integrable models, the viscosity is infinite at any temperature, which can be interpreted as a breakdown of the hydrodynamic description. Our consideration is applicable to all single-component Galilean-invariant one-dimensional quantum liquids, regardless of the statistics of the constituent particles and the interaction strength.


Author(s): Boehm, Alexandra Elizabeth | Advisor(s): Roorda, Austin | Abstract: AbstractSpatial and Color Vision in the Absence of Retinal MotionbyAlexandra Elizabeth BoehmDoctor of Philosophy in Vision ScienceUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Austin Roorda, ChairIn the mid-19th century, Johannes Peter Muller first proposed what has become known as the law of specific nerve energies, where sensory perception is understood in the context of underlying physiological mechanisms which create an internal representation of an external stimulus. In the Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen fur Vorlesungen he wrote, "Sensation is not the conduction of a quality of state of external bodies to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality or state of our nerves to consciousness, excited by an external cause," (translated by Clarke a O'Malley, 1996). While it has long been appreciated that visual perception and the underlying physiology are inextricably linked, scientific research has been limited in its ability to provide direct comparisons between the two. Perception is the culmination of multiple levels of neural processing involving millions of cells, but physiological models are often limited to data from a single or few cells in nonhuman primates. In contrast, what we know about perception has largely been gathered from psychophysical experiments performed in humans, where behavior is quantified and related to controlled differences in external stimuli, but the underlying physiological mechanisms can only be inferred. For vision, this is further complicated by the fact that the eye is constantly in motion. Even when fixated, the eye makes microscopic eye movements which cause light from a stationary stimulus to be moved across many light-sensitive cells on the retina, and consequently across many receptive fields of downstream neurons. Recent advances in optics and eye tracking technology have made it possible to perform psychophysical experiments in human observers with cellular resolution where stimuli are fixed on the retina even in the presence of eye motion. This has brought about a new generation of experiments attempting to unify physiology and behavior. The work described here utilizes and expands upon these methodologies toward a better understanding of color and spatial vision in the absence of retinal motion. Chapter 1 provides a background on the origins of color and spatial vision in the retina, in addition to a review of the methodology. Chapter 2 explores the spatial extent of desensitization to stabilized stimuli and compares this to the known constraints to spatial vision imposed by anatomy and physiology. Chapter 3 expands upon previous work, looking at the contribution of individual cone photoreceptors to color vision, toward the construction of physiologically relevant color space from multiple cone-targeted stimulation. Finally, Chapter 4 demonstrates novel methodology to compensate for stimulus motion on the retina that is due to dynamic changes in transverse chromatic aberration.


Sprague-Dawley (S-D) and Osborne-Mendel (O-M) rats were fed either a low-fat diet (5 percent corn oil) or high-fat diet (20 percent corn oil) for a six-week-period. Brainstem and duodenal levels of tryptophan, serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) and 5-hydroxyindole-3-acetic acid (5-HIAA) were not altered by dietary treatment in the O-M rats. On the other hand, the high-fat diet significantly decreased brainstem 5-HT levels in S-D rats. Brainstem and duodenal 5-HT levels were decreased in O-M rats as compared to S-D rats and this phenomenon is not altered by dietary treatment. It is suggested that the O-M rat may have a alteration in the 5-HT metabolic system and that such a defect may contribute to the development of obesity.


Mesoporous ZSM-5 was synthesized using a 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane based multi-cationic surfactant as a structure directing agent. Cu2+ exchanged mesoporous ZSM-5 was prepared by the ion-exchange process. Cu nanoparticles decorated mesoporous ZSM-5 was prepared using NaBH4 as a reducing agent. Materials were characterized by the complementary combination of X-ray diffraction, N2-adsorption, UV-visible, and scanning/transmission electron microscopic techniques. For comparative purposes, Cu2+ exchanged ZSM-5, HY, and NaY; and Cu nanoparticles decorated conventional ZSM-5, SBA-15, and Al2O3 samples were also prepared. A sustainable catalytic process was developed for the selective synthesis of indolizine, chalcone, and triazole derivatives using a mesoporous ZSM-5 based heterogeneous catalyst. A multi-component synthetic strategy is reported here for the selective synthesis of the above mentioned chemicals that involves phenylacetylene as one of the building blocks. Control experiments were performed to ascertain the proposed reaction pathways. Recycling and leaching experiments were performed to demonstrate the sustainability and robustness of the catalytic process. Among these catalysts, Cu nanoparticles decorated mesoporous ZSM-5 exhibited the highest activity in all these reactions. The catalyst was found to be highly stable and it was possible to recycle the catalyst five times with no appreciable loss in the activity. A wide range of indolizine, chalcone, and 1,2,3-triazole derivatives were prepared in high yields using this catalyst.


Abstract In this paper, we determine the habitability of Sun-like stars in the Galaxy using Monte Carlo simulations, which are guided by the factors of the Drake Equation for the considerations on the astrophysical and biological parameters needed to generate and maintain life on a planet's surface. We used a simple star distribution, initial mass function and star formation history to reproduce the properties and distribution of stars within the Galaxy. Using updated exoplanet data from the Kepler mission, we assign planets to some of the stars, and then follow the evolution of life on the planets that met the habitability criteria using two different civilization hypotheses. We predict that around 51% of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (HZ) are inhabited by primitive life and 4% by technological life. We apply the results to the Kepler field of view, and predicted that there should be at least six Earth-like planets in the HZ, three of them inhabited by primitive life. According to our model, non-technological life is very common if there are the right conditions, but communicative civilizations are less likely to exist and detect. Nonetheless, we predict a considerable number of detectable civilizations within our Galaxy, making it worthwhile to keep searching.


Polymer composites is a typical material consisting of a matrix reinforced with fiber/filler and the general nature of construction of the material itself provides innumerable sites for the initiation of a defect or for the growth of delamination. The life expectancy of composite structure requires a clear understanding of the material's response to the growth of interlaminar delamination under Mode I, Mode II, Mode III and Mixed Modes. Fracture testing of fiber reinforced polymer-matrix composites is an active area of research. Even though substantial progress in the area of fracture testing has been achieved, there are still several problems awaiting solution. The new aspects in the experimental studies of interlaminar and intralaminar fracture toughness of polymer matrix composites were emphasized in this review paper. The different modes to evaluate the fracture energy were listed and their suitability was mentioned.


One-third of India's urban population resides in slums and squatters, in extreme poverty conditions. Newborn care is sub-optimal among India's urban poor, yet scarcely documented. We assessed newborn care practices in 11 urban slums of Indore in Central India. Practices such as clean cord care, thermal care, timely initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding upto neonatal period were enquired from 312 mothers of infants aged 2-4 months. Correlates of these practices were identified using multiple logistic regression. 72.1% births were home births (slum-home: 56.4%, native-village home: 15.7%). Slum-based traditional birth attendants (sTBAs) conducted 77.3% slum home births. Skilled assistance during slum-home births was low (7.4%). Clean cord care (22.2%) and thermal care (10.2%) practices were also low. Trained or skilled assistance during slum-home births was positively associated with clean cord care (OR 4.8 CI 1.7-13.6) and thermal care (OR 2.0 CI: 1.1-4.1). Timely initiation of breastfeeding was suboptimal (50.6%) even in facility births. Exclusive breastfeeding upto neonatal period was higher for mothers counselled on exclusive breastfeeding by a health volunteer during neonatal period (OR 2.3, CI 1.4-3.8). Following emerge imperative for improving newborn care in urban slums- i) antenatal and postnatal counselling by trained health volunteers, ii) enhancing competence of sTBAs and linking them to affordable facilities; and iii) sensitizing and training public health facility staff.


From Fall 2012 to Fall 2016, 127 teacher candidates at a public university in southern Louisiana and elementary school students in grades four, five, six, and eight formed a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) partnership to develop and implement science projects. The research questions of the accompanying study over the five years were: 1.Will mentoring a science project increase student understanding of best practices afforded by the scientific method? 2. What strategies improve the quality of a STEM experiential learning experience? A paired-samples t-test on teacher candidates' pre- and post-test scores showed a significant difference in mean scores, indicating an increase in understanding in students for each of the five years. Themes emerging from the qualitative data suggest that successful strategies include preparation, staying small, organization, communication, motivation, and acknowledgement. Coincidentally, these themes closely mirror the National Society for Experiential Education's (NSEE) "Eight Principles of Good Practice for All Experiential Learning Activities."


Proponents of early intervention have argued that outcomes might be improved if more therapeutic efforts were focused on the early stages of schizophrenia or on people with prodromal symptoms. Early intervention in schizophrenia has 2 elements that are distinct from standard care: early detection and phase-specific treatment (phase-specific treatment is a psychological, social, or physical treatment developed, or modified, specifically for use with people at an early stage of the illness). Early detection and phase-specific treatment may both be offered as supplements to standard care or may be provided through a specialized early intervention team. Early intervention is now well established as a therapeutic approach in America, Europe, and Australasia.


In this paper, we extend the hyperbolic function approach for constructing the exact solutions of nonlinear differential-difference equation (NDDE) in a unified way. Applying the extended approach and with the aid of Maple,we have studied the discrete complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (dCGLE). As a result, we find a set of exact solutions which include bright and dark soliton solutions.


The language of chemistry has seldom been the object of study by linguists, who tend to prioritize literary works. Nevertheless, in recent years its study has developed, at a different pace for each of the Romance languages. It is therefore important to describe the current state of research separately for French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Catalan. The work of historians of science, who have always dedicated particular attention to the language of chemistry, is particularly pertinent to this purpose.
 Toward the end of the 18th century, French chemists spearheaded a terminological revolution: traditional terms used in alchemy were replaced by a well-structured, systematic nomenclature that was quickly adopted by the scientific community, mainly through the translation of French chemical texts, many of which were pedagogical in nature. It is important to trace the dissemination process of new chemical nomenclature in each country and in each language, since it was not uniform.
 This new nomenclature is firmly based on the classical languages, particularly Greek, and it adopts a broad range of suffixes and prefixes for systematization. During the 19th century, this system steadily consolidates as the field of chemistry develops, until a standardized international nomenclature is established.
 From a lexicographical standpoint, the treatment of chemical terms in both general and specialized dictionaries deserves attention. Traditional lexicography has mistakenly classified many chemical terms as Hellenisms, while from the early 21st century onward they have been recognized as Gallicisms thanks to research carried out by historians of scientific language.
 Finally, the procedures the Romance languages follow to coin chemical terms—both to name elements and chemicals and to express chemical combinations by means of word formation processes—must be taken into account.


Portland cement Pervious Concrete (PCPC) is a special type of concrete characterized by a highly connected pore system that allows water from different sources to infiltrate through to recharge the ground water. This paper present selected results on the key mechanical and hydrological performances of pervious concrete designed with different recycled aggregates from various sources and materials types. Seven pervious concrete mixes containing different recycled materials in addition to a control mix, were optimized and tested in terms their mechanical and hydrological properties. The results obtained indicate acceptable mechanical properties of the designed PCPC with an appropriate water penetrability depending on the granular system and compaction effort employed. Among these optimized mixes, selected mixes meeting strength and permeability requirement for a PCPC could be used in some common flat applications as an efficient drainage system. Potential use of these pervious concrete optimized mixes based on recycled materials includes but not limited to sidewalk, pavement in low traffic area, parking lots in regions known by heavy rainfall, floor for car washing stations, etc.


This paper studies the item-to-item recommendation problem in recommender systems from a new perspective of metric learning via implicit feedback. We develop and investigate a personalizable deep metric model that captures both the internal contents of items and how they were interacted with by users. There are two key challenges in learning such model. First, there is no explicit similarity annotation, which deviates from the assumption of most metric learning methods. Second, these approaches ignore the fact that items are often represented by multiple sources of meta data and different users use different combinations of these sources to form their own notion of similarity. To address these challenges, we develop a new metric representation embedded as kernel parameters of a probabilistic model. This helps express the correlation between items that a user has interacted with, which can be used to predict user interaction with new items. Our approach hinges on the intuition that similar items induce similar interactions from the same user, thus fitting a metric-parameterized model to predict an implicit feedback signal could indirectly guide it towards finding the most suitable metric for each user. To this end, we also analyze how and when the proposed method is effective from a theoretical lens. Its empirical effectiveness is also demonstrated on several real-world datasets.


The expanding shark fin market has resulted in intensive global shark fishing and with 90% of teleost fish stocks over-exploited, sharks have become the most lucrative target. As predators, they have high ecological value, are sensitive to fishing pressure, and are in decline, but the secretive nature of the fin trade and difficulties obtaining relevant data, obscure their true status. In consumer countries, shark fin is a luxury item and rich consumers pay high prices with little interest in sustainability or legal trade. Thus, market demand will continue to fuel the shark hunt and those accessible to fishing fleets are increasingly endangered. Current legal protections are not working, as exemplified by the case of the shortfin mako shark, and claims that sharks can be sustainably fished under these circumstances are shown to be misguided. In the interests of averting a catastrophic collapse across the planet's aquatic ecosystems, sharks and their habitats must be given effective protection. We recommend that all sharks, chimaeras, manta rays, devil rays, and rhino rays be protected from international trade through an immediate CITES Appendix I listing. However, a binding international agreement for the protection of biodiversity in general is what is needed.


This paper describes the development and implementation of automatic paralleling of synchronous generator system using LabVIEW platform. The system comprises of the hardware and the software parts. The hardware part encapsulates the prime mover, synchronous alternator, excitation unit and other sundries that constitute a synchronous generator system. The software part comprises of the National Instruments LabVIEW software, PCI-6014 Data Acquisition card, and the NI ELVIS devices. The overall system architecture is simple and cheap to implement and is recommended for paralleling of small synchronous generators (SSG) in the mission field of military establishment.


In this paper an intelligent wheelchair obstacle avoidance system based on multi-sensor data fusion technology is instructed. It giving rises to the hardware architecture of the wheelchair and develops a sonar and camera data acquisition system on the VC++ platform by which we could complete the sonar and camera sensor information collection and data processing. Use a T-S model based fuzzy neural network multi-sensor data fusion method for intelligent wheelchair obstacle avoidance. Some simulations were done to test the method in different environments and the method can effectively integrated the information of sonar and camera, give appropriate control signals to avoid obstacles.


The Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee (IACUC) is responsible for the oversight of animal care and use in various programs. This guide provides resources and searching tips related to IACUC protocols.


This study evaluated morning and afternoon test day records for genetic evaluation of dairy cattle.  The data were taken form 128,087 test day yield records for the first four lactations of Holstein cows from 2007 to 2017, from Nucleus Breeding Center of dairy cattle in Indonesia. The records consisted of morning and afternoon and total milk yields from 823 cows, resulting from 133 sires and 520 dams; records were restricted to Day Interval Milk (DIM) between 5 and 305 days production. The genetic parameters were estimated with REML by using animal model with fixed regression. Ali and Schaeffer has a good fit for morning, afternoon and total test day yields with the coefficient of determination ranging from 0.980 to 0.995. Estimates of heritability were 0.177, 0.220, and 0.213 for morning, afternoon, and total test day records, respectively.  Spearman rank correlations of breeding values between total yield and morning and afternoon yields, for both animals and sires, ranged between 0.953 and 0.968.  In conclusion, morning and afternoon yields can be used for genetic evaluation of dairy cattle.

 Key words: Genetic parameters, heritability, morning and afternoon yields, fixed regression model, dairy cattle.


BACKGROUND
The articular infection represents a challenge due to its complexity and its devastating effect when not treated promptly. We have various diagnostic studies: cultures, ESR, CRP, count of leukocytes, among others but none is specific, it takes more than 30 minutes to complete and require complex infrastructure. In this study we determine the sensitivity and specificity of the leukocyte esterase for detection of an infectious process joint in Mexican population.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
From November 2015 to April 2016 was obtained synovial fluid from patients with diagnosis of knee infection with or without implant and without infection with degenerative pathology of the knee. It assessed the sample through the COMBI-SCREEN 11SYS leukocyte esterase with reading colorimetric test at two minutes determining positive for infection: two crosses, the remainder of the sample was sent to culture.

RESULTS
We perform the test in 64 samples of synovial fluid of knee joint 19 diagnosed with infection and 45 without infection. Was obtained a sensitivity 100%, specificity of 88.24%, PPV 68.42% and PNV 100%, kappa index 0.753 using the program IBM SPSS Statistics 22, Python ver. 2.7.

CONCLUSIONS
Leukocyte esterase is a fast, economical and effective to detect an infectious process against one inflammatory with high probability of success. This study showed an index of concordance 0.753 Kappa, proving to be reproducible so recommend be implemented in the emergency department at the national level.


This article explores the role authority can play in the debate over whether the sources of international law are changing. Scholars who take up the question of changing sources of international law traditionally face the dilemma that there is, as yet, no agreement on a definitive list of what sources contain the rules of international law, let alone what method or methods lead to the creation of such rules. This article argues that one way to overcome the existing stalemate is to integrate considerations of authority into sources doctrine. By going beyond traditional lines of inquiry such as what makes international law binding and where one finds it to ask who is making the law, a new perspective is presented for evaluating changes to the international legal order. To demonstrate how such an authority-based approach would operate, this article reviews non-state actor participation in treaties. Specifically, it examines whether the roles sub-state, supranational and extra-national actors play in the formation, application and interpretation of treaties has truly altered who international law authorizes to create treaty obligations. It finds that, although non-state actor treaty participation demonstrates a potential for a systemic shift, state consent still remains the operating principle of the treaty paradigm. As such, the article concludes that sources scholarship should focus more, not less, on the doctrine of consent as a source of international law, looking at who is consenting, on whose behalf, and to whom such consent is being given.


Electronic textiles (e-textile) have emerged as a new generation of wearable electronics. Although carbon nanotube (CNT) based e-textiles have drawn tremendous attention, a big concern is the washability of these e-textiles. Here, we describe a novel and facile method to fabricate e-textiles by ultrasonic soldering of CNTs on low cost and eco-friendly non-woven fabric (NWF). When a piece of NWF is subjected to ultrasonication in a CNT dispersion, the NWF can be locally softened so that CNTs can be soldered on the fiber surface and lead to conductive textiles. The ultrasonic nanosoldering of CNTs onto the polymer surface is attributed to the huge pressure and high temperature produced by the collapsing of bubbles during ultrasonication. The CNT e-textiles fabricated by this method have good washability. The CNTs remain on the fiber surface even after vigorous mechanical washing in water for 40 hours, and the conductance of the textile decreases slightly, and the change arises from the damage of NWF fibers rather than the rinsing away of the CNTs. The e-textiles can be used as wearable strain and pressure sensors. They can be used for healthcare applications such as monitoring the blood pulse and respiration rate of the human body.


Three hundred and twenty (320) day old male broilers were used to investigate the amelioration of anti-nutritive effects of castor oil seed (Ricinus communis) meal in broilers' ration using natural fermentation and DL-Methionine supplementation. The experimental designed was a 4 × 2 factorial arrangement of dietary treatments consisting of 4 inclusion levels of fermented castor seed meal (FCASM; 0, 50, 100, and 150 g/kg) supplemented with or without 5 g/kg DL-Methionine. Growth performance, coefficient of total tract apparent digestibility, serum metabolites, dressing percentage, and retail cuts were determined at the end of the study, which lasted for 42 days. There existed a linear reduction in weight gain and poorer feed to gain ratio with increasing dietary inclusion levels of FCASM. However, broilers fed control diet (without 5g/kg DL-methionine supplement) showed similar daily weight gain, feed to gain ratio and protein efficiency ratio with birds fed diet containing 50 g/kg FCASM supplemented with 5g/kg DL-Methionine. In a similar manner, low dressing percentages recorded with broilers fed diets containing 100 and 150 g/kg FCASM without supplemental DL-Methionine were slightly improved following dietary supplementation of the diets each with 5 g/kg DL-Methionine. Relative weight of gastro-intestinal tract increased linearly (P < 0.05) while total tract apparent digestibility of crude fibre reduced quadratically (P < 0.05) with increasing dietary inclusion levels of FCASM. Total serum protein and serum uric acid concentration reduced (P < 0.05) with increasing dietary inclusion of FCASM with or without 5 g/kg DL-Met supplementation. In conclusion, supplementation of diets containing 50g/kg fermented castor seed meal with 5g/kg DL-Methionine resulted in improved growth response with no symptoms of castor toxicity. Dietary supplementation of DL-methionine thus showed prospects in masking the anti-nutritive effect of fermented castor seed meal thus improving its utilization as potential oil seed meal in broilers ration. Keywords : Castor oil seed meal; DL-methionine; Broiler chickens; Serum metabolites


This paper proposes a new formulation for the corrective security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem with DC power flow constraints. The goal is to produce a generation schedule which has a minimal number of post-contingency corrections as well as a minimal amount of total MW rescheduled. In other words, the new SCOPF model effectively clears contingencies with corrective actions that have a minimal impact on system operations. The proposed SCOPF model utilizes sparse optimization techniques to achieve computational tractability for large-scale power systems. We also propose two efficient decomposition algorithms. Extensive computational experiments show the advantage of the proposed model and algorithms on several standard IEEE test systems and large-scale real-world power systems.


ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 9 Number 5 (2020) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com Improving and maintaining soil quality for enhancing and sustaining agricultural production is of utmost importance for India's food and nutritional security. Permanent Manurial Experiments (PMW) are ideal sites for studying management induced variability in crop production and soil health. The biological activity of a soil is the function of number of organisms present in soil and their physiological efficiency. Soil microbial diversity is one of the most important microbial parameters in soil. Cassava is grown throughout the tropics, where it is the fourth most important staple food crop in terms of Kcal consumed per day. Cassava grows reasonably well with little or no fertilizer inputs, the crop does respond well to fertilizer applications in highly infertile soils. In some areas cassava has been cultivated continuously with improper fertilizer management. These factors have caused the soil's productivity to steadily decline, resulting in a decrease in cassava growth and yield. Another reason for stagnating yields may be the decline in soil productivity as a result of continuous cassava production without adequate fertilization. Hence, Permanent Manurial Experiment (PME) on cassava variety YTP 1 has been conducted for three years during 2014-2017at Tapioca and Castor Research Station, Yethapur, Salem district, Tamil Nadu with four treatments viz., control, organic manuring, inorganic fertilization and integrated nutrient management to study the effects on the yield and quality of cassava and the consequent changes in the biological properties of the soil under continuous cropping with and manuring. Among the treatments, Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) recorded higher plant height (237 cm), stem girth (13 cm), number of tubers (13), tuber length (41.6 cm) and tuber girth (32.2 cm) followed by inorganics and organics. Control recorded lesser plant height (191 cm), stem girth (7.6 cm), number of tubers (8.0), tuber length (19.4 cm) and tuber girth (11.0 cm). The maximum tuber yield (41.50 t ha -1 ) and starch content (26.50%) was recorded by the application of INM. Higher microbial population of bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes was recorded under organics (65.87, 26.54 and 9.98 respectively) followed by Integrated Nutrient Management (64.38, 25.87 and 9.47 respectively). Therefore, adoption of integrated plant nutrient supply and management strategies for enhancing soil quality, input use efficiency and crop productivity is extremely important for food and nutritional security in Indian agriculture. K e y w o r d s Permanent Manurial Experiment (PME), Tuber yield, Starch content, Cassava, Soil microbial properties Accepted: 15 April 2020 Available Online: 10 May 2020 Article Info Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2020) 9(5): 2154-2162


Objective African Americans, East Asians, and Hispanics with systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) are more likely to develop lupus nephritis (LN) than are SLE patients of European descent. The etiology of this difference is not clear, and this study was undertaken to investigate how genetic variants might explain this effect. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 1244 SLE patients from multiethnic case collections were genotyped for 817,810 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome. Continental genetic ancestry was estimated utilizing the program ADMIXTURE. Gene-based testing and pathway analysis was performed within each ethnic group and meta-analyzed across ethnicities. We also performed candidate SNP association tests with SNPs previously established as risk alleles for SLE, LN, and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Association testing and logistic regression models were performed with LN as the outcome, adjusted for continental ancestries, sex, disease duration, and age. Results We studied 255 North European, 263 South European, 238 Hispanic, 224 African American and 264 East Asian SLE patients, of whom 606 had LN (48.7%). In genome-wide gene-based and candidate SNP analyses, we found distinct genes, pathways and established risk SNPs associated with LN for each ethnic group. Gene-based analyses showed significant associations between variation in ZNF546 (p = 1.0E-06), TRIM15 (p = 1.0E-06), and TRIMI0 (p = 1.0E-06) and LN among South Europeans, and TTC34 (p = 8.0E-06) was significantly associated with LN among Hispanics. The SNP rs8091180 in NFATC1 was associated with LN (OR 1.43, p = 3.3E-04) in the candidate SNP meta-analysis with the highest OR among African-Americans (OR 2.17, p = 0.0035). Conclusion Distinct genetic factors are associated with the risk of LN in SLE patients of different ethnicities. CKD risk alleles may play a role in the development of LN in addition to SLE-associated risk variants. These findings may further explain the clinical heterogeneity of LN risk and response to therapy observed between different ethnic groups.


In this study, a new p-type π-conjugated ladder-like polymer, poly(3,3′-(((2-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl)-6-methylbenzol[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophen-2-yl)-5-methyl-1,4-phenylene)bis(oxy))bis(hexane-6,1-diyl))bis(1,1,1,3,5,5,5-heptamethyltrisiloxane)) (P-Si), has been designed for SnO2-based perovskite solar cells. Our investigation reveals that this π-conjugated ladder-like polymer system decorated with hydrophobic alkyl chains and siloxane chains is likely the reason for the improvement in the surface morphology and crystallinity of the perovskite films, leading to reduced defect states and enhanced device stability. In addition, P-Si with a suitable highest occupied molecular orbital energy level (−5.41 eV) can act as a hole transport medium between the perovskite and spiro-OMeTAD to enhance the excellent hole transportation. As a result, power conversion efficiency (PCE) as high as 21.5% with 21.3% steady-state PCE was achieved. Typically, the device with P-Si can retain 98% of the original average PCE after being stored in an ambient environment with 20% relative humidity for 120 days, indicating its good long-term stability. Furthermore, after aging for 100 h under illumination at the maximum power point in a nitrogen atmosphere, the P-Si modified device retains over 98% of its initial performance.


Oxalic acid is a widely occurring natural product of animals, plants and other organisms. It sometimes occurs as a free acid, but more commonly as a calcium salt. Organisms exhibit various levels of oxalate content which even show fluctuations among the organs of the same individual. Although oxalate seems to engage in the metabolism and adaptation of animals, plants and fungi, its mechanism is far from being completely understood. There is now an appreciable body of information regarding the occurrence and significance of oxalic acid in living tissues but the data are widely scattered in various scientific areas due to the broad distribution of oxalate among organisms. It is my goal in the present review to gather this information together to make it available for forthcoming research in the area of oxalate.


BACKGROUND
Patients infected with HIV who experience increases in CD4(+) cell counts are at reduced risk for opportunistic infections. However, the safety of discontinuing prophylaxis against Mycobacterium avium complex has been uncertain.

OBJECTIVE
To compare the rate of M. avium complex infection in patients with increased CD4(+) cell counts who receive azithromycin and those receiving placebo.

DESIGN
Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

SETTING
29 university-based clinical centers in the United States.

PARTICIPANTS
643 HIV-1-infected patients with a previous CD4(+) cell count less than 0.05 x 10(9) cells/L and a sustained increase to greater than 0.10 x 10(9) cells/L during antiretroviral therapy.

INTERVENTION
Azithromycin, 1200 mg once weekly (n = 321), or matching placebo (n = 322).

MEASUREMENTS
Mycobacterium avium complex cultures, CD4(+) cell counts, and clinical evaluations for AIDS-defining illnesses and bacterial infections were done every 8 weeks. Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels were measured at 16-week intervals.

RESULTS
During follow-up (median, 16 months), 2 cases of M. avium complex infection were reported among the 321 patients assigned to placebo (incidence rate, 0.5 event per 100 person-years [95% CI, 0.06 to 1.83 events per 100 person-years]) compared with no cases among the 322 patients assigned to azithromycin (CI, 0 to 0.92 events per 100 person-years), resulting in a treatment difference of 0.5 event per 100 person-years (CI, -0.20 to 1.21 events per 100 person-years) for placebo versus azithromycin. Both cases were atypical in that M. avium complex was localized to the vertebral spine. Patients receiving azithromycin were more likely than those receiving placebo to discontinue treatment with the study drug permanently because of adverse events (8% vs. 2%; hazard ratio, 0.24 [CI, 0.10 to 0.57]).

CONCLUSIONS
Prophylaxis against Mycobacterium avium complex can safely be withdrawn or withheld in adults with HIV infection who experience increases in CD4(+) cell count while receiving antiretroviral therapy.


In 1935, T.S. Eliot wrote that Marianne Moore's poems ""form part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time"". In this comprehensive critical study of the American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) and her work, Erickson sets out to justify Eliot's praise, demonstrating the poet's ability to combine close observation with a worldview presentation that is at once intuitive, kaleidoscopic and optimistic. Unfortunately, over the years the excellence and originality of Moore's work has been overshadowed by its apparent inscrutability. Erickson examines the work of Marianne Moore in order to provide some consistently successful strategies for understanding her poetry. The thesis is centered in a line from Moore's poem, ""Armor's Undermining Modesty"": ""What is more precise that precision? Illusion"". Erickson argues that Moore came to see herself humorously as ""Imagnifico, a Wizard in Words"", a magician who used her conjuries to express a truth beyond reason, a truth described by the philosopher Henri Bergson as intuition, the highest stage of the evolution of human understanding. It is Erickson's contention that Moore's sense of magic is inextricably bound up in her own uniquely feminine epistomology, the tendency to place great value on intuition and to find one's own voice among collections of many voices. ""lllusion is More Precise Than Precision"" demonstrates that Moore's voice is arguably the strongest female voice in 20th-century American literature and that Moore's poetic voice could hold its own in the company of the best of the other modernists. Unlike many current scholars, Erickson examines closely the texts of Moore's poems themselves, allowing the poet's own voice to speak clearly. The study explores Moore's obsession with time, her preoccupation with the visual, her interest in the forms of Hebrew verse and her ""susceptibility to happiness"", an outlook at some odds with the 20th-century's fascination with the ""romance of failure"".


Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the cytotoxicity of triple antibiotic paste (TAP) with an anti-inflammatory drug (TAP+Catafast-TAPC) in nano and regular formulations versus calcium hydroxide as intracanal medicaments. Methods: The TAPC drugs extraction were made in cell culture media MEM-E (Eagle's minimal essential medium) using concentration of 10 mg/mL of each sample for seven days. Inhibitory concentrations (IC50 values) were determined for each extract. A human fibroblasts cell line was used to evaluate the cytotoxicity of different concentrations (10, 0.625 and 0.07 mg/mL) using MTT essay. The cell viability was measured after 24 h, 48 h and 7 days for all concentrations of the drugs. Flow cytometry analysis was carried out to identify the effect of materials on apoptosis/necrosis. Statistical analysis for the obtained results was done by one-way ANOVA. Results: The results revealed that cell viability was inversely proportional to the duration of treatment in all of the groups. Calcium hydroxide (Control group) demonstrated a significantly greater cytotoxic effect, followed by Nano Triple Antibiotic Paste with Catafast as an anti-inflamatory drug (Nano TAPC), while Triple Antibiotic Paste with Catafast (TAPC) had the least cytotoxic effect. Nano TAPC has the greatest apoptotic value, while TAPC had the least when compared with the reference group, with no significant difference between groups (P<0.05). Conclusion: The cytotoxic effect of Nano TAPC was lower than that of calcium hydroxide and higher than that of TAPC. Although Nano TAPC has the highest apoptotic value when compared to TAPC and calcium hydroxide but still there is no statistically significant difference between them.


Nocardiae are gram-positive, partially acid-fast, filamentous bacteria that grow by apical extension, forming elongated cells with lateral branching. Most species of Nocardia have been recovered from soil, plant material, and water in most regions of the world. Diseases in humans caused by nocardiae may be divided into at least six general categories based on the route of infection, site of disease, and subsequent pathological responses. They are pulmonary nocardiosis, extrapulmonary nocardiosis, systemic nocardiosis, central nervous system (CNS) nocardiosis, cutaneous, subcutaneous, and lymphocutaneous nocardiosis. A mycetoma is a chronic, progressive, pyogranulomatous disease that usually develops at the site of a localized injury such as a thorn prick. Nocardia asteroides, Nocardia farcinica, and Nocardia otitidiscaviarum have caused significant outbreaks worldwide in dairy cattle, usually in the form of mastitis. Nocardiae are facultatively intracellular pathogens that resist the microbicidal activities of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs). Concentrated culture filtrates from GUH-2 grown in a chemically defined medium also induced apoptosis, as well as dopamine depletion. Cells of N. asteroides GUH-2 in the log phase of growth adhered by way of the filament tip to the surface of both pulmonary epithelial cells (Clara cells) and brain capillary endothelial cells in mice. The differential and selective adherence displayed by nocardiae both in vitro and in vivo suggested distinct multiple ligands for host cells on the nocardial surface.


ABSTRACT Despite staggering rates of sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, reproductive health education is not yet standardized across secondary or postsecondary curricula. The Women's Health Research Institute and Northwestern University Information Technology created Introduction to Reproduction, a massive open online course to encourage global students to learn the biological foundations of reproductive health. This digital education experience appeals to the Millennial learner and offers unique opportunities to explore topics in reproductive biology via lectures, animations, and three-dimensional anatomical illustrations. Data were collected anonymously from de-identified learners who elected to self-report on their experiences while completing the course as well as through Coursera datasets. Northwestern University's Institutional Review Board classified this research project as an exempt status due to the de-identified nature of the collected data. Participants from 47 countries report on reproductive health content knowledge, past reproductive health education, and level of engagement with the topic. These data indicate that the Introduction to Reproduction course has a meaningful impact on its participants and presents the information in a concise and accessible format. Distribution of this course to a wider audience is the goal for the program and important to the field of reproductive health.


In semiarid regions, thousands of small reservoirs provide the rural population with water, but their storage volumes and hydrological impact are largely unknown. This paper analyzes the suitability of weather-independent radar satellite images for monitoring small reservoir surfaces. The surface areas of three reservoirs were extracted from 21 of 22 ENVISAT Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar scenes, acquired bimonthly from June 2005 to August 2006. The reservoir surface areas were determined with a quasi-manual classification approach, as stringent classification rules often failed due to the spatial and temporal variability of the backscatter from the water. The land-water contrast is critical for the detection of water bodies. Additionally, wind has a significant impact on the classification results and affects the water surface and the backscattered radar signal (Bragg scattering) above a wind speed threshold of 2.6 mmiddots-1. The analysis of 15 months of wind speed data shows that, on 96% of the days, wind speeds were below the Bragg scattering criterion at the time of night time acquisitions, as opposed to 50% during the morning acquisition time. Night time acquisitions are strongly advisable over day time acquisitions due to lower wind interference. Over the year, radar images are most affected by wind during the onset of the rainy season (May and June). We conclude that radar and optical systems are complimentary. Radar is suitable during the rainy season but is affected by wind and lack of vegetation context during the dry season.


The manufacturing industry has invested vast amounts of resources in the deployment and use of solid modeling technology. Although expensive to generate and potentially very valuable in many product related activities, 3D models have rarely been exploited to support product management, documentation, collaborative review, and promotion, because they were only accessible to trained designers equipped with expensive graphics workstations. Intranet access, popular 3D exchange formats, and affordable 3D graphics chips permit to download and view 3D models using a personal computer. Although these basic capabilities are revolutionizing the entertainment and marketing industry and have reduced the cost of a design station, they are of little help to non-designers in the manufacturing industry. The author articulates a vision where 3D data is available and exploited at all phases of a product life cycle. The paper investigates the shortcomings of the current technology, identifies the fundamental research issues, and reviews recent advances in 3D data compression, in the automatic generation of levels-of-detail for interactive rendering, and in the innovative exploitation of 3D input devices for an intuitive and effective navigation.


Deferral of U.S. taxes on foreign source income is commonly characterized as a subsidy to foreign investment, as reflected in its inclusion among "tax expenditures "and occasional calls for its repeal. This paper analyzes the extent to which tax deferral and other policies inefficiently subsidize U.S. direct investment abroad. Investments are dynamically inefficient if they consistently generate less in returns to investors than they absorb in new investment funds. From 1982-2010, repatriated earnings from foreign affiliates exceeded net capital investments by $1.1 trillion in 2010 dollars, and from 1950-2010, repatriated earnings and net interest from foreign affiliates exceeded net equity investments and loans by $2.1 trillion in 2010 dollars. By either measure, cash flows received from abroad exceeded 160 percent of net investments, implying that foreign investment over these periods was dynamically efficient.


The clusters of young stars in massive star-forming regions show a wide range of sizes, morphologies, and numbers of stars. Their highly subclustered structures are revealed by the MYStIX project's sample of 31,754 young stars in nearby sites of star formation (regions at distances <3.6 kpc that contain at least one O-type star.) In 17 of the regions surveyed by MYStIX, we identify subclusters of young stars using finite mixture models—collections of isothermal ellipsoids that model individual subclusters. Maximum likelihood estimation is used to estimate the model parameters, and the Akaike Information Criterion is used to determine the number of subclusters. This procedure often successfully finds famous subclusters, such as the BN/KL complex behind the Orion Nebula Cluster and the KW-object complex in M 17. A catalog of 142 subclusters is presented, with 1–20 subclusters per region. The subcluster core radius distribution for this sample is peaked at 0.17 pc with a standard deviation of 0.43 dex, and subcluster core radius is negatively correlated with gas/dust absorption of the stars—a possible age effect. Based on the morphological arrangements of subclusters, we identify four classes of spatial structure: long chains of subclusters, clumpy structures, isolated clusters with a core–halo structure, and isolated clusters well fit by a single isothermal ellipsoid.


An experiment entitled, "Standardization of irrigation requirement and irrigation frequency for Jasmine (Jasminum sambac Ait. cv. Ramanathapuram Gundumalli) using Theta Probe moisture meter" was carried out at Farmer's holding, Neithalur Colony in Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil Nadu, India from November, 2015 to May, 2016 to standardize the irrigation requirement and irrigation frequency for better growth and yield of Jasmine. Factorial randomized block design was employed with three factors each two levels and replicated thrice. The investigation consisted of two levels each on soil depth, moisture depletion percentage and quantity of irrigation water viz., soil depth @ 15 cm and 30 cm, moisture percentage 40 % and 60 % and quantity of irrigation water 15 l and 20 l per plant and flood irrigation (control). The jasmine plants receiving 20 l of irrigation water per plant when moisture depletion percentage reaches 60 % at 30 cm soil depth were performing well in all the growth, yield and agronomic attributes. Hence, it is recommended that, irrigation @ 20 l per plant at 4 day intervals can be adopted for high growth, physiological, yield and agronomic parameters in Jasmine plants.


Two typical classes of proton conductors, zirconates and solid acids (such as CsHSO4) or related sulfates, are intensively investigated recently. Based on the different proton-conducting mechanisms of zirconates and sulfates, we designed and fabricated Y2O3-doped barium zirconate/sulfates composites, aiming to make full use of the benefits, and eliminate the drawbacks of the two individual materials. The electrical conduction of the composite was studied by electrical and electrochemical methods. Microstructure of the composites was examined by SEM. Electromotive force (EMF) measurements were conducted under fuel cell conditions. The results indicated that small amount of sulfates was introduced at the grain boundaries of BaZr0.9Y0.1O2.95. The electrical conductivity of the composites was greatly improved and the total ionic transport numbers of the composites are more than 0.9 at 750 °C.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
The distribution of lesions detected using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of hind feet has not been reported.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate type and distribution of lesions detected using MRI in hind feet of lame horses and to compare the findings with those reported in front feet; to document follow-up information.

METHODS
Horses were selected if hindlimb lameness was abolished by plantar nerve blocks performed at the base of the proximal sesamoid bones. Magnetic resonance images were acquired using either a low-field or a high-field magnet, and all images were evaluated retrospectively by both authors. A primary diagnosis was defined as the most likely cause of lameness, based also on clinical findings and results of other imaging techniques. If ≥3 structures were equally affected, the horse was classified as having multiple injuries. Follow-up information was collected by telephone questionnaire; outcome was classified as return to former level of athletic function, working at a lower level or retired.

RESULTS
Thirty-eight horses were included. Primary collateral sesamoidean ligament (CSL) injury was identified in 9 horses. Nine horses had multiple injuries, 8 had primary bone pathology, 5 had collateral desmopathy of the distal interphalangeal joint, one had primary deep digital flexor tendonitis, 2 had navicular bone pathology and 4 had lesions involving other structures within the foot. Seven horses were subjected to euthanasia shortly after diagnosis; 6 as a result of poor prognosis and one as a result of post anaesthetic complications, 4 of which had primary bone lesions, 2 multiple lesions and one distal interphalangeal joint pathology. Follow-up information was available for 24 horses. Eleven horses returned to previous performance and 2 to a lower level of performance; 9 horses were retired because of recurrent lameness. Five of 8 horses with CSL injury returned to previous performance and 2 to a lower level.

CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE
Collateral sesamoidean ligament injury and primary bone pathology are commonly observed on MRI examination of hind feet, and the prognosis is reasonable.


Nodal reentrant supraventricular paroxysmal tachycardia corresponds to a reentry circuit established between fibers with different conduction velocities and refractory periods in the atrioventricular node. These are the slow and fast nodal pathways. That ventricular tissue does not form part of the circuit of this arrhythmia is accepted nowadays, and the involvement of atrial tissue is discussed. We report a 57 years old male with a nodal reentrant tachycardia. In the electrophysiological study he presented an atrial and ventricular dissociation during the tachycardia. These findings allow a better understanding of the electrophysiological substrate of this arrhythmia.


There is a recognized association between obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and metabolic syndrome, designated syndrome Z. The criteria for metabolic syndrome include at least three of the following factors: central obesity (waist circumference ≥ 102 cm for males and ≥ 88 cm for females); triglycerides ≥ 150 mg/dL; HDL cholesterol < 40 mg/dL for males and < 50 mg/dL for females; arterial blood pressure ≥ 130/85 mmHg; and fasting glucose ≥ 100 mg/dL. Central obesity is associated with OSAS and metabolic syndrome, and there is evidence that obstructive sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for obesity, glucose intolerance and insulin resistance. The implied mechanisms result from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-adrenal axis; activation of pro-inflammatory markers, such as IL-6 and TNF-α; and the reduction in adiponectin levels, principally triggered by intermittent hypoxemia related to apnea. Despite such evidence, the results are controversial regarding the benefits of treating sleep apnea with CPAP in the presence of these metabolic alterations. In addition, the few studies that have addressed sleep apnea as a risk factor for dyslipidemia have presented conflicting results. Population-based, longitudinal controlled studies are necessary in order to elucidate the interaction between sleep apnea and metabolic consequences so that these individuals are properly treated.


Abstract One of the fundamental elements that determines the precision of coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) is the probe, which locates measuring points within measurement volume. In this paper genetically generated fuzzy knowledge based models of three-dimensional (3-D) probing accuracy for one- and two-stage touch trigger probes are proposed. The fuzzy models are automatically generated using a dedicated genetic algorithm developed by the authors. The algorithm uses hybrid coding, binary for the rule base and real for the database. This hybrid coding, used with a set of specialized operators of reproduction, proved to be an effective learning environment in this case. Data collection of the measured objects' coordinates was carried out using a special setup for probe testing. The authors used a novel method that applies a low-force high-resolution displacement transducer for probe error examination in 3-D space outside the CMM measurement. The genetically generated fuzzy models are constructed for both one stage (TP6) and two stage (TP200) types of probes. First, the optimal number of settings is defined using an analysis of the influence of fuzzy rules on TP6 accuracy. Then, once the number of settings is obtained, near optimal fuzzy knowledge bases are generated for both TP6 and TP200 triggering probes, followed by analysis of the finalized fuzzy rules bases for knowledge extraction about the relationships between physical setup values and error levels of the probes. The number of fuzzy sets on each premise leads to the number of physical setups needed to get satisfactory error profiles, whereas the fuzzy rules base adds to the knowledge linking the design experiment parameters to the pretravel error of CMM machines. Satisfactory fuzzy logic equivalents of the 3-D error profiles were obtained for both TP6 and TP200 with root mean squsre errors ranging from 0.00 mm to a maximum of 0.58 mm.


In this work, three cast iron coatings were produced by atmospheric plasma spraying. During spraying, the surface temperature of three coatings (substrate temperature) was controlled to be averagely 50oC, 180oC and 240oC by changing the processing parameters. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was employed to analyze the phase structure of the starting powder and the coatings. The results showed that the powder was mainly composed of (Fe,Cr)7C3 and martensite and both the spraying processing and the substrate temperature exerted no influence on coating phase structure. An optical microscope (OM) was used to characterize the microstructure of the cross-section and surface of the coatings. It was found that the cross sectional hardness increased with the increase of the substrate temperature due to the improvement in interlamellar bonding.


Background
Lateral condyle fractures are associated with high morbidity due to their risk of nonunion and avascular necrosis (AVN). This study aims to assess the outcomes between closed reduction and the more traditional open techniques for operative fractures.

Methods
All lateral condyle fractures that required operative fixation (pins or screws) over a ten-year period were included. We compared open versus closed reduction for OR time, infection rate, AVN, nonunion, premature physeal closure, ulnohumeral angle, and interepicondylar width (IEW).

Results
28 patients were identified in the closed reduction group while 41 were identified in the open reduction group. Average displacement at surgery for these two groups was significantly different at 3.95mm for the closed group and 9.47mm for the open group (p<0.0001). Operating room time was significantly greater for the open reduction group by an average of 45 minutes (p <0.0001). Additionally, the closed reduction group was significantly less likely to require postoperative admission compared to the open reduction group (p=0.0004). There were no significant differences between the two groups with regard to abnormal ulnohumeral angles, infection rates, avascular necrosis, nonunion, lateral spur formation, premature physeal closure, or reoperation rate.

Conclusions
The significant differences in OR time and post-operative admission make closed reduction the preferred approach from a hospital system quality improvement standpoint.Level of Evidence: IV.


Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is the most well-known wide band gap two-dimensional (2D) material (> 6 eV). To achieve its applications in optoelectronic devices, the conductance of h-BN must be implemented to the extent that it can be fabricated into a p–n junction. Here, we demonstrate a method to improve the surface current of p-type h-BN monolayer by introducing additional nitrogen gas flow during growth. First-principles calculations were conducted to show that nitrogen atmosphere can promote the formation of boron vacancy, making a low barrier site for Mg doping incorporation. Magnesium-doped h-BN monolayer was achieved using a low pressure chemical vapor deposition method under N2 flux. The surface current has been enhanced by three times up to 16 μA under 4 V external voltage. This approach provides potential applications of controllable conductive h-BN film for two-dimensional optoelectronic devices.


We explore the feasibility of contextual healthiness classification of food items. We present a detailed analysis of the linguistic phenomena that need to be taken into consideration for this task based on a specially annotated corpus extracted from web forum entries. For automatic classification, we compare a supervised classifier and rule-based classification. Beyond linguistically motivated features that include sentiment information we also consider the prior healthiness of food items.


INTRODUCTION
Previous studies have highlighted a strong bidirectional relationship between cigarette and alcohol consumption. To advance our understanding of this relationship the present study uses a behavioral economic approach in a community sample (N = 383) of nontreatment seeking heavy drinking smokers.

AIMS AND METHODS
The aims were to examine same-substance and cross-substance relationships between alcohol and cigarette use, and latent factors of demand. A community sample of nontreatment seeking heavy drinking smokers completed an in-person assessment battery including measures of alcohol and tobacco use as well as the Cigarette Purchase Task and the Alcohol Purchase Task. Latent factors of demand were derived from these hypothetical purchase tasks.

RESULTS
Results revealed a positive correlation between paired alcohol and cigarette demand indices (eg, correlation between alcohol intensity and cigarette intensity) (rs = 0.18-0.46, p ≤ .003). Over and above alcohol factors, cigarette use variables (eg, Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence and cigarettes per smoking day) significantly predicted an additional 4.5% (p < .01) of the variance in Persistence values but not Amplitude values for alcohol. Over and above cigarette factors, alcohol use variables predicted cigarette Persistence values (ΔR2 = .013, p = .05), however, did not predict Amplitude values.

CONCLUSIONS
These results advance our understanding of the overlap between cigarette and alcohol by demonstrating that involvement with one substance was associated with demand for the other substance. This asymmetric profile-from smoking to alcohol demand, but not vice versa-suggests that it is not simply tapping into a generally higher reward sensitivity and warrants further investigation.

IMPLICATIONS
To our knowledge, no study to date has examined alcohol and cigarette demand, via hypothetical purchase tasks, in a clinical sample of heavy drinking smokers. This study demonstrates that behavioral economic indices may be sensitive to cross-substance relationships and specifically that such relationships are asymmetrically stronger for smoking variables affecting alcohol demand, not the other way around.


Post-operative biliary tract injuries have traditionally been treated by surgery; since the 1990s, however, this was replaced by endoscopic methods. These complications occur most frequently after laparoscopic surgery. Whenever biliary leakage is suspected, a close cooperation between endoscopists and surgeons is essential. Immediate visualisation of the biliary tract by endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography (ERCP) is mandatory to confi rm the diagnosis and locate the exact site of the lesion. Various endoscopic techniques have proven to be effective in the treatment of post-cholecystectomy biliary leaks. The crucial point is to equalise duodenal and biliary tract pressures so that bile fl ow into the duodenum is ensured and healing of the lesion is facilitated. This can be achieved by endoscopic sphincterotomy either alone or in combination with subsequent implantation of a plastic stent. These methods seem to be equally suitable; for greater lesions, however, insertion of a stent is advisable. For biliary tract strictures, multiple stenting is recommended, the results of which are promising in the long run as well.


Emerging Ubiquity of Green Chemistry in Engineering and Technology, Pavel Pazdera Introduction to Sonochemistry: A Historical and Conceptual Overview, Giancarlo Cravotto and Pedro Cintas Aspects of Ultrasound and Materials Science, Andrew Cobley, Timothy J. Mason, Larisa Paniwnyk, and Veronica Saez Ultrasound-Assisted Particle Engineering, Anant Paradkar and Ravindra Dhumal Applications of Sonochemistry in Pharmaceutical Sciencess, Robina Farooq Ultrasound-Assisted Synthesis of Nanomaterials, Siamak Dadras, Mohammad Javad Torkamany, and Jamshid Sabbaghzadeh Ultrasound for Fruit and Vegetable Quality Evaluation, Amos Mizrach Ultrasound in Food Technology, Taner Baysal and Aslihan Demirdoven Use of Ultrasound in Coordination and Organometallic Chemistry, Boris Ildusovich Kharisov, Oxana Vasilievna Kharissova, and Ubaldo Ortiz-Mendez Ultrasound in Synthetic Applications and Organic Chemistry, Murlidhar S. Shingare and Bapurao B. Shingate Ultrasound in Synthetic Applications and Organic Chemistry, Rodrigo Cella Ultrasound Applications in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Mohammad Majid Mojtahedi and Mohammad Saeed Abaee Ultrasound-Assisted Anaerobic Digestion of Sludge, Ackmez Mudhoo and Sanjay K. Sharma Ultrasound Application in Analyses of Organic Pollutants in Environment, Senar Ozcan, Ali Tor, and Mehmet Emin Aydin Applications of Ultrasound in Water and Wastewater Treatment, Dong Chen Ultrasound and Sonochemistry in the Treatment of Contaminated Soils by Persistent Organic Pollutants, Reena Amatya Shrestha, Ackmez Mudhoo, Thuy-Duong Pham, and Mika Sillanpaa Role of Heterogeneous Catalysis in the Sonocatalytic Degradation of Organic, Pollutants in Wastewater, Juan A. Melero, Fernando Martinez, Raul Molina, and Yolanda Segura The Degradation of Organic Pollutants Using Ultrasound, Kandasamy Thangavadivel, Mallavarapu Megharaj, Ackmez Mudhoo, and Ravi Naidu Applications of Ultrasound to Polymer Synthesis, Boon Mian Teo, Franz Grieser, and Muthupandian Ashokkumar Mechanistic Aspects of Ultrasound-Enhanced Physical and Chemical Processes, Vijayanand S. Moholkar, Thirugnanasambandam Sivasankar, and Venkata Swamy Nalajala Ultrasound-Assisted Industrial Synthesis and Processes, Cezar Augusto Bizzi, Edson Irineu Muller, Erico Marlon de Moraes Flores, Fabio Andrei Duarte, Mauro Korn, Matheus Augusto Goncalves Nunes, Paola de Azevedo Mello, and Valderi Luiz Dressler Development of Sonochemical Reactor, Keiji Yasuda and Shinobu Koda Ultrasound for Better Reactor Design: How Chemical Engineering Tools Can Help Sonoreactor Characterization and Scale-Up, Jean-Yves Hihn, Marie-Laure Doche, Audrey Mandroyan, Loic Hallez, and Bruno G. Pollet Sonoelectrochemistry: From Theory to Applications, Bruno G. Pollet and Jean-Yves Hihn Combined Ultrasound-Microwave Technologies, Pedro Cintas, Giancarlo Cravotto, and Antonio Canals Integrating Ultrasound with Other Green Technologies: Toward Sustainable Chemistry, Julien Estager Index


Abstract Iris-based biometric system is gaining its importance in several applications. Recent applications demand iris images to be processed as fast as possible with fewer number of computations to authenticate a person. Further, these applications are to be dealt with a large number of customers in security-critical domain, where it is important to ensure accuracy so that false confidences are avoided. As the source images are not guaranteed to be of good quality, it becomes a challenge to authenticate withalmost 100% accuracy in real-life applications. In this paper, we address these two problems and propose a technique to detect pupil boundary efficiently and accurately. We propose scaling and intensity transformation followed by thresholding and finding pupil boundary points. Scaling reduces the search space significantly and intensity transform is helpful for image thresholding. Experiments on Bath University, Multimedia University (MMU), UBIRIS and ICE 2005 iris image databases reveal that with the proposed approach, we able to detect pupil with accuracy rate almost 100% for Bath and MMU databases, 96% for UBIRIS database and 98% for ICE 2005 database.


Although transformers are remarkably effective for many tasks, there are some surprisingly easy-looking regular languages that they struggle with. Hahn shows that for languages where acceptance depends on a single input symbol, a transformer's classification decisions get closer and closer to random guessing (that is, a cross-entropy of 1) as input strings get longer and longer. We examine this limitation using two languages: PARITY, the language of bit strings with an odd number of 1s, and FIRST, the language of bit strings starting with a 1. We demonstrate three ways of overcoming the limitation implied by Hahn's lemma. First, we settle an open question by constructing a transformer that recognizes PARITY with perfect accuracy, and similarly for FIRST. Second, we use layer normalization to bring the cross-entropy of both models arbitrarily close to zero. Third, when transformers need to focus on a single position, as for FIRST, we find that they can fail to generalize to longer strings; we offer a simple remedy to this problem that also improves length generalization in machine translation.


Lymphoma subtype varies in different geographic areas. Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the most common lymphoma subtype in the USA, accounting for 35% of adult non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).1 The worldwide incidence of FL is 22%, with lower incidence in Europe and Asia, and in underdeveloped countries.2 3 Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) accounted for 3.9% of 205 malignant lymphomas in the author's institution, Chi-Mei Medical Centre in southern Taiwan, from January 1989 to December 1998.4 During that period, the most common B-cell lymphoma subtypes were diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL, 47.2%) and marginal zone lymphoma (MZL, 20.8%), while FL ranked as the third at a low frequency of 6.1%.4 In recent years, there seems to have been more frequent encounters of FL in the author's routine diagnostic work and consultation service. In order to clarify the impression of increased incidence of FL, the author has analysed the lymphoma cases diagnosed from January 2005 to December 2007 at Chi-Mei Medical Centre, which had a new branch hospital, 50 km north to the main institution, established in 2004. There are a total of 1864 beds in the two campuses that serve the same population in Tainan in southern Taiwan.

All lymphoma cases were diagnosed and classified according to the 2001 World Health Organization classification of lymphoid neoplasms5 with integration of histopathology, full immunophenotyping, molecular studies (including in situ hybridisation for Epstein-Barr virus, fluorescent in situ hybridisation, and clonality assay with PCR method) whenever indicated, …


Background: The effects of targeted neuromuscular training (TNMT) on movement biomechanics associated with the risk of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are currently unknown. Purpose/Hypotheses: To determine the effectiveness of TNMT specifically designed to increase trunk control and hip strength. The hypotheses were that (1) TNMT would decrease biomechanical and neuromuscular factors related to an increased ACL injury risk and (2) TNMT would decrease these biomechanical and neuromuscular factors to a greater extent in athletes identified as being at a high risk for future ACL injuries. Study Design: Controlled laboratory study. Methods: Female athletes who participated in jumping, cutting, and pivoting sports underwent 3-dimensional biomechanical testing before the season and after completing TNMT. During testing, athletes performed 3 different types of tasks: (1) drop vertical jump, (2) single-leg drop, and (3) single-leg cross drop. Analysis of covariance was used to examine the treatment effects of TNMT designed to enhance core and hip strength on biomechanical and neuromuscular characteristics. Differences were also evaluated by risk profile. Differences were considered statistically significant at P < .05. Results: TNMT significantly increased hip external rotation moments and moment impulses, increased peak trunk flexion, and decreased peak trunk extension. Athletes with a high risk before the intervention (risk profile III) had a more significant treatment effect of TNMT than low-risk groups (risk profiles I and II). Conclusion: TNMT significantly improved proximal biomechanics, including increased hip external rotation moments and moment impulses, increased peak trunk flexion, and decreased peak trunk extension. TNMT that focuses exclusively on proximal leg and trunk risk factors is not, however, adequate to induce significant changes in frontal-plane knee loading. Biomechanical changes varied across the risk profile groups, with higher risk groups exhibiting greater improvements in their biomechanics.


A genetic algorithm (GA) based feature selection method was developed for the design of high-sensitivity classifiers, which were tailored to yield high sensitivity with high specificity. The fitness function of the GA was based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) partial area index, which is defined as the average specificity above a given sensitivity threshold. The designed GA evolved towards the selection of feature combinations which yielded high specificity in the high-sensitivity region of the ROC curve, regardless of the performance at low sensitivity. This is a desirable quality of a classifier used for breast lesion characterization, since the focus in breast lesion characterization is to diagnose correctly as many benign lesions as possible without missing malignancies. The high-sensitivity classifier, formulated as the Fisher's linear discriminant using GA-selected feature variables, was employed to classify 255 biopsy-proven mammographic masses as malignant or benign. The mammograms were digitized at a pixel size of mm, and regions of interest (ROIs) containing the biopsied masses were extracted by an experienced radiologist. A recently developed image transformation technique, referred to as the rubber-band straightening transform, was applied to the ROIs. Texture features extracted from the spatial grey-level dependence and run-length statistics matrices of the transformed ROIs were used to distinguish malignant and benign masses. The classification accuracy of the high-sensitivity classifier was compared with that of linear discriminant analysis with stepwise feature selection . With proper GA training, the ROC partial area of the high-sensitivity classifier above a true-positive fraction of 0.95 was significantly larger than that of , although the latter provided a higher total area under the ROC curve. By setting an appropriate decision threshold, the high-sensitivity classifier and correctly identified 61% and 34% of the benign masses respectively without missing any malignant masses. Our results show that the choice of the feature selection technique is important in computer-aided diagnosis, and that the GA may be a useful tool for designing classifiers for lesion characterization.


Modelling of hysteresis in soft magnetic materials is necessary for accurate transient studies of transformers and electrical machines. The phenomena such as magnetization inrush currents and ferroresonance are directly resultants of the hysteresis properties. A proper model for numerical transient analyses should be easy regarding implementation and parameter estimation. A differential hysteresis model derived from the Preisach classic theory was introduced. The model has accuracy comparable with Preisach models. Furthermore, in numerical simulations it can be inverted easily. In this paper, a practical method for estimation of the model functions by analytical expressions is suggested. The required input data is decreased to only the major hysteresis loop that is usually available that is easy to measure. Also, details of the numerical implementation are described. The presented method is verified by experimental measurements on several grain oriented and non-oriented electrical steels.


This essay examines the importance of e-commerce in the global economy. It introduces the special issue on global e-commerce by providing a guide to the six papers contained in the special isse, and it offers the guest editors perspectives on the growing trends in global e-commerce as well as potential challenges and opportunities that multinationals practicing e-commerce on a gobal scale face. The essay notes the dire need for a scholastic framework within which the several facets of global e-commerce are organized and addressed. Contributions from each of the papers of this issue are also indicated


Synopsis of the following thesis: Where are the best returns: Firm shares or ADRs?: The case of Latin American corporations, The Impact of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act on Securities Class-Actions Suits in the 1996-1999 Period, Factors that promote or limit the exploitation of the garment industry in Puerto Rico, Study on the viability of the development of a housing project with tropical architecture, Comparative study on the use of statistical quality control techniques on tablet compression.


Incivility in the workplace is becoming more common and has been linked to higher job stress, depression, and anxiety. Moreover, it has been linked to decreasing productivity, job satisfaction, and organisational commitment. In spite of the financial and emotional costs that incivility imposes on companies and people, very little study has been done on the many measures that might be employed to mitigate these costs. The purpose of this research was to investigate how workplace incivility affects the relationship between emotional intelligence and commitment to a business. The quantitative methodology was used for the data collection process, which consisted of administering surveys to a certain number of participants. In order to conduct an analysis of the gathered information, the researcher made use of SPSS as well as Smart PLS SEM. According to the findings of this study, emotional intelligence has a positive and significant relationship with organizational commitment. The research revealed that incivility in the workplace serves as a mediator, and that in this capacity, emotional intelligence and organizational commitment are significantly related. It was found that emotional intelligence has a connection to job-related outcomes by virtue of the adverse consequences it has on incivility in the workplace. Emotionally intelligent academics should be recruited, promoted, and retained by universities. It seems logical to construct anti-incivility programs with the primary goal of fostering the development of abilities related to emotional intelligence. The findings of the present research indicate that emotional intelligence may be a valuable technique for proactively addressing incivility in the workplace.


In the autumn of 1941, German Army units assisted and participated in the mass killings of Jewish men, women, and children throughout modern day Belarus (and other areas of the occupied Soviet Union). Recently, this area of the Holocaust has received increasing attention from historians investigating the roles of antisemitism, organisational culture, group bonding, and the anti-partisan war in the complicity of the German army and in the behaviour of perpetrators. Building upon this more global research, this article seeks to describe the Wehrmacht's participation in one such killing. What does complicity actually look like on the ground? The Krupki killing offers us the opportunity to explore in detail the actions, decisions, and motivations of one German Army unit as it navigated its participation in the Holocaust collectively and individually. The various influences of antisemitism, decision-making, unit culture, and the anti-partisan war will be evaluated in an attempt to explain Wehrmacht complicity. Finally, this article will situate the events in the small town of Krupki in the larger context of the Nazi genocidal project in the East.


Summary In this article, a long rectangular channel is considered with two transpiring walls that are a small distance apart. The channel's head end is hermetically closed while the aft end is either open (isobaric) or acoustically closed (choked). A mean flow enters uniformly across the permeable walls, turns, and exits from the downstream end. The slightest unsteadiness in flow velocity is inevitable and occurs at random frequencies. Small pressure disturbances are thus produced. Those waves with oscillations matching the natural frequencies of the enclosure are promoted. Inception of small pressure perturbations alters the flow character and leads to a temporal field that we wish to analyse. The mean flow is of the Berman type and can be obtained from the Navier–Stokes equations over different ranges of the cross-flow Reynolds number. The unsteady component can be formulated from the linearized momentum equation. This has been carried out in numerous studies and has routinely given rise to a singular, boundary-value, double-perturbation problem in the cross-flow direction. The current study focuses on the resulting second-order differential equation that prescribes the rotational wave motion in the transverse direction. This equation exhibits unique features that define a general class of ordinary differential equations. Due to the oscillatory behaviour of the problem, two general asymptotic formulations are derived, for an arbitrary mean-flow profile, using WKB and multiple-scales expansions. The fundamental asymptotic solutions reveal the same similarity parameter that controls the rotational wave character. The multiple-scales solution unravels the problem's characteristic length scale following a unique, nonlinear variable transformation. The latter is derived rigorously from the problem's solvability condition. The advantage of using a multiple-scales procedure lies in the ease of construction, accuracy, and added physical insight stemming from its leading-order term. For verification purposes, a specific mean-flow solution is used for which an exact solution can be derived. Comparisons between asymptotic and exact predictions are gratifying, showing an excellent agreement over a wide range of physical parameters.


Dispersal and vicariance are often contrasted as competing processes primarily responsible for spatial and temporal patterns of biotic diversity. Recent methods of biogeographical reconstruction recognize the potential of both processes, and the emerging question is about discovering their relative frequencies. Relatively few empirical studies, especially those employing molecular phylogenies that allow a temporal perspective, have attempted to estimate the relative roles of dispersal and vicariance. In this study, the frequencies of vicariance and dispersal were estimated in six lineages of birds that occur mostly in the aridlands of North America. Phylogenetic trees derived from mitochondrial DNA sequence data were compared for towhees (genus Pipilo), gnatcatchers (genus Polioptila), quail (genus Callipepla), warblers (genus Vermivora) and two groups of thrashers (genus Toxostoma). Different area cladograms were obtained depending on how widespread and missing taxa were coded. Nonetheless, no cladogram was obtained for which all lineages were congruent. Although vicariance was the dominant mode of evolution in these birds, approximately 25% of speciation events could have been derived from dispersal across a pre–existing barrier. An expanded database is now needed to estimate the relative roles of each process. Applying a molecular clock calibration, nearly all speciation events are of the order of a million or more years old, much older than typically presumed.


Following the national unified criteria and methods, an epidemiological survey of blindness and low vision was carried out in Hebei Province from April to June, 1987. In 77,948 persons examined, there were 291 cases of bilateral blindness, representing a prevalence of 0.37% (male 0.29%, female 0.45%, urban areas 0.19%, plain areas 0.42%, and mountainous areas 0.36%). The prevalences of monocular blindness, bilateral and monocular low vision were 0.72%, 0.57% and 0.30% respectively. Subjects over 60 years of age had significantly higher prevalences of bilateral blindness and low vision. The chief blinding diseases were cataract, trachoma complications, corneal disease and glaucoma, in order of importance.


Lapatinib is an effective drug in HER2-positive breast cancer. We present a case with successful treatment of lapatinib in brain metastasis of HER2+ breast cancer. Forty-eight years old woman was admitted our clinic with early breast cancer. In third years after adjuvant chemotherapy and trastuzumab, isolated and multiple brain metastasis were detected. After whole brain RT, lapatinib (with capecitabine for 10 months and with letrozole for 3 months) has been used. Volumetric reduction of lesions was achieved and symptoms disappeared. When lapatinib discontinued, brain metastasis relapses. Lapatinib plus capecitabine reinduction has been started. Totally, longer survival than 45 months was achieved after first brain metastasis detection. Because both combinations of lapatinib with capecitabine and letrozole were effective and reinduction treatment was successful, presented case has strongly supported activity of lapatinib treatment in brain metastasis of HER2+ breast cancer.


The effect of population bottlenecks on the components of the genetic covariance generated by two neutral independent epistatic loci has been studied theoretically (additive, covA; dominance, covD; additive-by-additive, covAA; additive-by-dominance, covAD; and dominance-by-dominance, covDD). The additive-by-additive model and a more general model covering all possible types of marginal gene action at the single-locus level (additive/dominance epistatic model) were considered. The covariance components in an infinitely large panmictic population (ancestral components) were compared with their expected values at equilibrium over replicates randomly derived from the base population, after t consecutive bottlenecks of equal size N (derived components). Formulae were obtained in terms of the allele frequencies and effects at each locus, the corresponding epistatic effects and the inbreeding coefficient Ft. These expressions show that the contribution of nonadditive loci to the derived additive covariance (covAt) does not linearly decrease with inbreeding, as in the pure additive case, and may initially increase or even change sign in specific situations. Numerical examples were also analyzed, restricted for simplicity to the case of all covariance components being positive. For additive-by-additive epistasis, the condition covAt . covA only holds for high frequencies of the allele decreasing the metric traits at each locus (negative allele) if epistasis is weak, or for intermediate allele frequencies if it is strong. For the additive/dominance epistatic model, however, covAt . covA applies for low frequencies of the negative alleles at one or both loci and mild epistasis, but this result can be progressively extended to intermediate frequencies as epistasis becomes stronger. Without epistasis the same qualitative results were found, indicating that marginal dominance induced by epistasis can be considered as the primary cause of an increase of the additive covariance after bottlenecks. For all models, the magnitude of the ratio covAt/covA was inversely related to N and t.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if geographic proximity to an emergency department (ED) is related to ED use in a metropolitan population of patients with cardiovascular risk factors.

DESIGN
Population-based, retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
The census metropolitan area of Montreal, Que.

PARTICIPANTS
Cohort of 99 400 patients with diabetes, hypertension, or dyslipidemia in 2007 without a history of cardiovascular disease. Each patient was spatially referred to 1 of 5857 dissemination areas (DAs).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Annual number of visits to an ED with respect to the distance between the centroid of a patient's DA and the closest ED, controlling for age, sex, comorbidities, and neighbourhood immigration, social, and material characteristics. Multilevel logistic and negative binomial regressions were used to determine if the proximity to the closest ED was related to ED use, frequent ED use (≥ 4 visits in a year), and number of ED visits.

RESULTS
A total of 25 889 (26.0%) patients in the cohort visited an ED at least once during a 1-year period, among which 4563 (4.6%) were frequent users with at least 4 visits. These frequent users were responsible for 28 249 (45.5%) of all 62 021 visits to EDs. The distance between a DA and its closest ED was significantly and negatively correlated with ED use (P < .001), even after controlling for confounding variables. Patients living in a DA close to an ED were also more likely to be frequent users, but the extent of use among them (range from 4 to 82 ED visits) was not related to the distance to the closest ED.

CONCLUSION
These results suggest that patients at risk of cardiovascular disease living in a metropolitan area are more likely to seek a medical encounter at the ED if they live closer to it.


ABSTRACT Second-home tourism is a very popular form of tourism in many countries, particularly in the Nordic countries. More than half of the Swedish population have access to second homes. Previous studies have revealed that there is great variation between different second homes. Examples range from rustic Australian shacks, lonely cabins in the Norwegian mountains, spacious Swedish archipelago villas and palatial Russian dachas. Still, second homes are often seen and analysed as a unitary category – a perspective that obscures the considerable heterogeneity within the category as well as spatial differences in the impact of second-home tourism. Using a second-home typology from previous research and data on about 660,000 second homes, we analyse the heterogeneity of second homes by mapping the composition of the Swedish second-home stock. Results show the uneven geography of second-home tourism, revealing significant and sometimes steep differences between peripheral areas and urban hinterlands, tourism hot-spots, and areas in decline. Based on these results, we assert that there is good cause to move away from using second homes as a unitary category. Instead, we argue for viewing second homes as an umbrella concept with dwelling use in focus. This enables a greater sensibility to place and more accurate analyses of the uneven impacts of second-home tourism. The results also give greater insights into the impact of the 'invisible population' of second-home owners from a public planning perspective.