In November 2000 the European Commission published its communication "On a Community Immigration Policy". The Commission's Document identifies clearly the changing pressures which have affected the need for a reappraisal of immigration policy. First, the advent of the single market with free movement of labour within the EU requires a common approach to immigration over the EU's external borders. Secondly, the gradual transition from an era of high unemployment into one of tighter labour markets, coupled with demographic change, has been revealing increasing problems of labour market bottlenecks, especially in respect of certain specific skills, requiring more than a national-based competitive bidding for selected immigrants. Thirdly, there has been an increase in asylum-seeking and illegal migration. The particular pressure for a review of EU policy on immigration has come from the situation in Central and Eastern Europe over the past decade, in particular how to accommodate the accession of the first waves of candidate countries into a unified single labour market and how to regulate the anticipated continuing pressure for migration from those countries in the region remaining outside the EU. The enormous increase in migration activity in the early 1990s, following a long period of stable or falling migration pressure since the 1950s and early 1960s, demonstrated both types of migration, genuine pressures for workers to migrate from poor regions to rich regions as part of an increasing integration of the European economy and large flows of population resulting from war and ethnic conflict. Although it is easy to demonstrate that the overall pressure of immigration to the EU is not likely to be great, there is the problem that such immigration is highly regionally concentrated and this has implications both for the policy as a whole and for regional development within the EU. This paper assess the regional impacts of migration in the context of a model of migration which stresses the limited duration of much migrant activity. It highlights the importance of short-term migration in terms of remittances and productivity gain, but identifies the importance of improving information to reduce the asymmetry which lead to mismatch and hence to reduced welfare in both sending and receiving regions. Particular evidence is drawn from data on migration from Poland, Albania and Bulgaria. The paper concludes that Immigration Policy needs to address mechanisms for identifying migrant flows and preparing for their easy absorption. Rather than trying to set aggregate quotas or optimal transition periods to free movement; this may be most efficiently achieved through use of voucher or auction systems.


This paper develops a tractable two-country DSGE model with sticky prices a la Calvo (1983) and local-currency pricing. We analyze the capital investment decision in the presence of adjustment costs of two types, the capital adjustment cost (CAC) specification and the investment adjustment cost (IAC) specification. We compare the investment and trade patterns with adjustment costs against those of a model without adjustment costs and with (quasi-) flexible prices. We show that having adjustment costs results into more volatile consumption and net exports, and less volatile investment. We document three important facts on U.S. trade: a) the S-shaped cross-correlation function between real GDP and the real net exports share, b) the J-curve between terms of trade and net exports, and c) the weak and S-shaped cross-correlation between real GDP and terms of trade. We find that adding adjustment costs tends to reduce the model's ability to match these stylized facts. Nominal rigidities cannot account for these features either.


This study conducts the energy and exergy analysis of a light-vent pipe which is integrated into attic space. The roof is a shed roof with 30 degrees of inclination angle. The LVP is manufactured from an aluminum sheet with a translucent flat cover and is 0.15 m in diameter. The results show that the test house integrated with the LVP could well transfer heat accumulated in attic space by natural ventilation through the LVP. The natural daylight has an influent to the air mass flow rate corresponding to energy and exergy efficiency. The total energy and exergy efficiencies were 37-67% and 12.3-33%, respectively. In addition, the ceiling heat gain and exergy heat gain performed that, the requirement of space cooling of the house with LVP lower than that the reference house.


CD8+ cells inhibiting the response of CD4+ cells exist in rodents, recognizing epitopes unique to a CD4+ clone (Ids) or expressed by all activated CD4+ cell (ergotypes). Stimulation of CD8+ cells recognizing ergotypes shared by all Ag-activated CD4+ cells would be useful for treatment of diseases involving undesirable CD4+ responses to ill defined Ags, such as many autoimmune diseases and allergies. As a first step toward demonstrating the existence of anti-ergotype CD8+ immunoregulatory cells in humans, we investigated here whether CD8+ cells recognizing Ag-activated CD4+ cells exist in autoimmune and healthy humans. CD4+ cells specific for human muscle acetylcholine receptor, tetanus, or diphtheria toxoids were propagated from patients with myasthenia gravis patients and healthy controls. Ag-activated CD4+ cells were irradiated and used as Ag to test the response of CD(4+)-depleted CD(8+)-enriched PBMC (CD8+ PBMC) from myasthenic patients and controls and to propagate short-term CD8+ cell lines from CD8+ PBMC. In both patients and controls CD8+ PBMC and CD8+ lines responded vigorously to autologous Ag-activated CD4+ cells. The CD8+ lines responded equally well to the Ag-activated CD4+ cells of different Ag specificity, suggesting that they recognized CD4+ ergotypes. They did not seem to respond to CD4+ cells activated by PHA. The CD8+ cells recognized class I-restricted epitopes, as their response to activated CD4+ cells was suppressed by anti-class I Ab. CD8+ cells recognizing Ag-activated CD4+ were present cells in the controls for 5 to 12 wk after immunization. In myasthenic patients, CD8+ cells recognizing activated anti-acetylcholine receptor CD4+ cells seemed to be always present.


The genome of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida strain KT2440 has been erased of various determinants of resistance to antibiotics encoded in its extant chromosome. To this end, we employed a coherent genetic platform that allowed the precise deletion of multiple genomic segments in a large variety of Gram-negative bacteria including (but not limited to) P. putida. The method is based on the obligatory recombination between free-ended homologous DNA sequences that are released as linear fragments generated upon the cleavage of the chromosome with unique I-SceI sites, added to the segment of interest by the vector system. Despite the potential for a SOS response brought about by the appearance of double stranded DNA breaks during the process, fluctuation experiments revealed that the procedure did not increase mutation rates - perhaps due to the protection exerted by I-SceI bound to the otherwise naked DNA termini. With this tool in hand we made sequential deletions of genes mexC, mexE, ttgA and ampC in the genome of the target bacterium, orthologues of which are known to determine various degrees of antibiotic resistance in diverse microorganisms. Inspection of the corresponding phenotypes demonstrated that the efflux pump encoded by ttgA sufficed to endow P. putida with a high-level of tolerance to β-lactams, chloramphenicol and quinolones, but had little effect on, e.g. aminoglycosides. Analysis of the mutants revealed also a considerable diversity in the manifestation of the resistance phenotype within the population and suggested a degree of synergism between different pumps. The directed edition of the P. putida chromosome shown here not only enhances the amenability of this bacterium to deep genomic engineering, but also validates the corresponding approach for similar handlings of a large variety of Gram-negative microorganisms.


The urbanization process inside the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil) facilitated, in approximately five decades, the migration of thousands of peasants to the urban areas of great industrial centers inducing and requesting, at the same time and very often, an amplification of the systems of local urban infrastructure not appropriate for the natural potential of the physical territory. In this content, the city of Sao Jose do Rio Preto (State of Sao Paulo) with little more than 350.000 inhabitants, currently faces serious problems related to the urban planning originating from the unusual occupation and without previous study of suitability. Therefore, the present paper intends to guide and indicate the areas whose potential of urban development leads to an occupation suitable for the construction of shallow foundations in residential buildings of single floor, using an interpretative chart produced by the software GIS-SPRING-4.0 developed by Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais/INPE (Brazil), and based in the methodology of geotechnical mapping developed by the department of geotechnical engineering of EESC/USP (Brazil). The chart for shallow foundation shows that a large portion of the studied area presents serious relationship problems with layers of highly collapsible soils.


Since ancient times, rice has been a staple food in monsoon Asia, an area in Asia which is strongly affected by monsoon activity and home to a dense population comprising many millions of individuals. Since rice is usually produced by a given country to feed its own population, production variability is commonly analysed on a country-by-country basis. However, recent globalisation and the frequency of disasters suggest that production variability, especially poor produc- tion, affects not only the producing country but also nations in the same region. In this research effort we analysed the variability in rice production in monsoon Asia and showed that large depletions in production derive primarily from pro- duction trends in India. Interestingly, India tended to undergo bumper years when China experienced lean years. If bumper years in India are associated with lean years in China, successful production in India can cushion the blow of poor production in China. We found no causal connection between rice production in India and rice production in China. Therefore, we would advocate more accurate analyses in the future that use approaches from disciplines such as climatol- ogy, hydrology and agronomy.


An appropriate management of medicolegal problems in the context of the so-called "whiplash-injury" calls for much effort from both sides, physicians and lawyers. Communication to the latter will be enhanced by medical statements, which are fulfilling the formal as well as the substantial criterias. Incomplete and/or incorrect medical information may end up in misleading conclusions by the lawyers and cause unnecessary difficulties in settlement. One out of the latest leading cases of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, dealing with the aspect of causality, is stressed.


In this paper, a physical model is presented to pre- dict the frequency-dependent characteristics of solenoid-type in- ductors on standard silicon substrates. The model considers the skin-depth effect in the conductor, interwinding capacitance, par- asitic capacitance between the conductor and substrate, substrate resistance, and substrate capacitance of a solenoid inductor on the silicon substrate, which are all computed based on the inductor's geometric dimensions and related material properties. Surface-mi- cromachined inductors of various geometries have been tested to validate the physical model and found a satisfactory consistency between the measured results and the theoretical predictions in the multigigahertz frequency range. It is also suggested that the in- crease of the solenoid aspect ratio is beneficial in enhancing quality factors of solenoid inductors on the silicon substrate at a high fre- quency.


Parkinson's disease (PD) neurodegeneration is characterized by loss of the dopaminergic cells of the substantia nigra, and has been linked to oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. The reactive neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) may play a role in neuronal vulnerability. DA oxidation has been shown to elicit dopaminergic toxicity in animal models, covalently modify proteins, and affect mitochondrial function. However, mitochondrial protein targets of DA modification are unknown. In this study, I utilized proteomic techniques to identify and characterize mitochondrial proteins altered following in vitro exposure to DA oxidation. Using two-dimensional difference in-gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry analyses, I identified a subset of mitochondrial proteins that exhibited decreased abundance following exposure of isolated rat brain mitochondria to DA quinone (DAQ). Losses of two of these proteins, mitochondrial creatine kinase (MtCK) and mitofilin were further confirmed by Western blot analyses. Western blot also confirmed significant decreases of these two proteins in differentiated PC12 cells exposed to DA. I next utilized two-dimensional gel electrophoresis with autoradiography to identify proteins covalently modified by DAQ. I identified a subset of proteins covalently modified by ¹⁴C-DA from rat brain mitochondria exposed to ¹⁴C-DAQ and from differentiated SH-SY5Y cells exposed to ¹⁴C-DA. Proteins including mortalin/GRP75/mtHSP70, subunits of Complex I, MtCK, and mitofilin, amongst other proteins, were found to be covalently modified. We chose to further examine mitofilin, a protein implicated in maintaining mitochondrial structure. To characterize the effect of altered mitofilin levels on cell viability, I utilized overexpression and knockdown techniques to modulate mitofilin expression in dopaminergic cell lines, differentiated PC12 and SH-SY5Y cells, and examined their response to dopaminergic toxins, DA and rotenone. I found that increased mitofilin expression was protective against both DA- and rotenone-induced toxicity in both cell lines, and decreased mitofilin enhanced DA-induced toxicity in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells. Therefore, in this thesis, I identified a subset of mitochondrial and cellular proteins that are potential targets of DA-induced modification, and may have roles in PD pathogenesis. Modulating the expression level of one of these proteins, mitofilin, affected the cellular response to toxins, and may play a role in dopaminergic cell vulnerability.


Application of masking, known as the most robust and reliable countermeasure to side-channel analysis attacks, on various cryptographic algorithms has dedicated a lion's share of research to itself. The difficulty originates from the fact that the overhead of application of such an algorithmic-level countermeasure might not be affordable. This includes the area- and latency overheads and the amount of fresh randomness required to fulfill the resulting design's security properties. There are already techniques applicable in hardware platforms that consider glitches into account. Among them, classical threshold implementations force the designers to use at least three shares in the underlying masking. The other schemes, which can deal with two shares, often necessitates the use of fresh randomness.Here, in this work, we present a technique allowing us to use two shares to realize the first-order glitch-extended probing secure masked realization of several functions, including the S-box of Midori, PRESENT, PRINCE, and AES ciphers without any fresh randomness.


A class of modified state-space self-tuning controllers of the MSEV (minimum state error variance) type is has been considered in this article. A suitable chosen structure for the proposed controller provides for tracking the time-varying reference input, and makes it possible to apply this solution to nonlinear and nonstationary plants. Starting from the changes of innovations sequence statistics, an efficient load disturbance detector is also constructed, and the estimated disturbance amplitude is used to correct the control signal, in order to eliminate the influence of disturbances. The advantage in using the proposed algorithm for nonlinear systems control, in the presence of load disturbances and stochastic disturbances of unknown statistics, is demonstrated through simulation results.


Two novel expert dynamic buffer tuners/controllers, namely, the neural network controller (NNC) and the fuzzy logic controller (FLC) are proposed in this paper. They use soft computing techniques to eliminate buffer overflow at the user/server level. As a result they help shorten the end-to-end service roundtrip time (RTT) of the logical Internet transmission control protocol (TCP) channels. The tuners achieve their goal by maintaining the given safety margin Delta around the reference point of the {0,Delta}2 objective function. Overflow prevention at the Internet system level, which includes the logical channels and their underlying activities, cannot shorten the service RTT alone. In reality, unpredictable incoming request rates and/or traffic patterns could still cause user-level overflow. The client/server interaction over a logical channel is usually an asymmetric rendezvous, with one server serving many clients. A sudden influx of simultaneous requests from these clients easily inundates the server's buffer, causing overflow. If this occurs only after the system has employed expensive throttling and overflow management resources, the delayed overflow rectification could lead to serious consequences. Therefore, it makes sense to deploy an independent user-level overflow control mechanism to complement the preventative effort by the system. Together they form a unified solution to effectively stifle channel buffer overflow


A new seismic design methodology for precast concrete diaphragms has been developed and incorporated into the current American seismic design code. This design methodology recognizes that diaphragm inertial forces during earthquakes are highly influenced by higher dynamic vibration modes and incorporates the higher mode effect into the diaphragm seismic design acceleration determination using a first mode reduced method, which applies the response modification coefficient only to the first mode response but keeps the higher mode response unreduced. However the first mode reduced method does not consider effects of diaphragm flexibility, which plays an important role on the diaphragm seismic response especially for the precast concrete diaphragm. Therefore this paper investigated the effect of diaphragm flexibility on the diaphragm seismic design acceleration for precast concrete shear wall structures through parametric studies. Several design parameters were considered including number of stories, diaphragm geometries and stiffness. It was found that the diaphragm flexibility can change the structural dynamic properties and amplify the diaphragm acceleration during earthquakes. Design equations for mode contribution factors considering the diaphragm flexibility were first established through modal analyses to modify the first mode reduced method in the current code. The modified first mode reduced method has then been verified through nonlinear time history analyses.


Preserving privacy of continuous and/or high-dimensional data such as images, videos and audios, can be challenging with syntactic anonymization methods which are designed for discrete attributes. Differential privacy, which provides a more formal definition of privacy, has shown more success in sanitizing continuous data. However, both syntactic and differential privacy are susceptible to inference attacks, i.e., an adversary can accurately infer sensitive attributes from sanitized data. The paper proposes a novel filter-based mechanism which preserves privacy of continuous and high-dimensional attributes against inference attacks. Finding the optimal utility-privacy tradeoff is formulated as a min-diff-max optimization problem. The paper provides an ERM-like analysis of the generalization error and also a practical algorithm to perform the optimization. In addition, the paper proposes an extension that combines minimax filter and differentially-private noisy mechanism. Advantages of the method over purely noisy mechanisms is explained and demonstrated with examples. Experiments with several real-world tasks including facial expression classification, speech emotion classification, and activity classification from motion, show that the minimax filter can simultaneously achieve similar or better target task accuracy and lower inference accuracy, often significantly lower than previous methods.


In this thesis, we explore Markov chains with random transition matrices. Such chains are a development on classic Markov chains where the transition matrix is taken to be random. The intuition for this is that we may be interested in modeling phenomenas where the homogeneity assumption of classic Markov chains is invalid. We first use such chains to model credit risk. The randomness of the transition matrix is used to represent the randomness of the economy that underlies credit risk. With this, we model a portfolio of loans and the risk due to having a shared economy. We then proceed to explore theoretical properties of such chains with a focus on their asymptotic behavior. In the case of absorbing chains, we show that the the infinite product of independent and identically distributed random matrices must converge almost surely. We also introduce perturbed Markov chains as a special form of Markov chains with random transition matrices. Perturbed Markov chains are Markov chains with transition matrices of the form P+eQ where P is taken to be a constant matrix, 0<e<1 is a constant and Q random with rows summing to 0. For perturbed Markov chains with P irreducible, we approximate the long-run fluctuation of such chains. As for perturbed Markov chains with P having absorbing states, we approximate the variance of the fundamental matrix and mean time to absorption. We also explore some applications. In the Moran process application, we study the impact of temporal randomness on the Moran process and derive an analytic result to calculate the probability of fixation.


BACKGROUND
Epidemiologic studies indicate that babies born to socio-economically disadvantaged mothers are at higher risk of injury, abuse and neglect, health problems in infancy, and are less likely to have regular well-child care. Home visitation programs have long been advocated as a strategy for improving the health of disadvantaged children. Over the past two decades, a number of randomised trials have examined the effect of home visitation programs on a range of maternal and child health outcomes. The studies in this review evaluate programs which offer additional home based support for socially disadvantaged mothers and their children.

OBJECTIVES
Babies born in socio-economic disadvantage are likely to be at higher risk of injury, abuse and neglect, and to have health problems in infancy. The objective of this review was to assess the effects of programs offering additional home-based support for women who have recently given birth and who are socially disadvantaged.

SEARCH STRATEGY
We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register and the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register. Date of last search: 26 October 1998.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised and quasi-randomised trials of one or more post-natal home visits with the aim of providing additional home based support for socially disadvantaged women who had recently given birth, compared to usual care.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Trial quality was assessed. Study authors were contacted for additional information.

MAIN RESULTS
Eleven studies, involving 2992 families, were included. Most of the trials had important methodological limitations. Seven trial reports are awaiting further assessment. There was a trend towards reduced child injury rates with additional support, although this was not statistically significant (odds ratio 0.74, 95% confidence interval 0.54 to 1.03). There appeared to be no difference for child abuse and neglect (odds ratio 1.12, 95% confidence interval 0.80 to 1.57), although differential surveillance between visited and non-visited families is an important methodological consideration. Babies in the additional support groups were more likely to have complete well-child immunizations. Based on the results of two trials, there was a trend towards reduced hospitalization, although this was not statistically significant.

REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS
Postnatal home-based support programs appear to have no risks and may have benefits for socially disadvantaged mothers and their children, possibly including reduced rates of child injury. Differential surveillance does not allow easy interpretation of the child abuse and neglect findings.


Response rate can influence the behavioral effects of many drugs. Reinforcement magnitude may also influence drug effects. Further, reinforcement magnitude can influence rate-dependent effects. For example, in an earlier report, we showed that rate-dependent effects of two antidepressants depended on reinforcement magnitude. The ability of reinforcement magnitude to interact with rate-dependency has not been well characterized. It is not known whether our previous results are specific to antidepressants or generalize to other drug classes. Here, we further examine rate-magnitude interactions by studying effects of two stimulants (d-amphetamine [0.32-5.6 mg/kg] and cocaine [0.32-10 mg/kg]) and two sedatives (chlordiazepoxide [1.78-32 mg/kg] and pentobarbital [1.0-17.8 mg/kg]) in pigeons responding under a 3-component multiple fixed-interval (FI) 300-s schedule maintained by 2-, 4-, or 8-s of food access. We also examine the effects of d-amphetamine [0.32-3.2 mg/kg] and pentobarbital [1.8-10 mg/kg] in rats responding under a similar multiple FI300-s schedule maintained by 2- or 10- food pellet (45 mg) delivery. In pigeons, cocaine and, to a lesser extent, chlordiazepoxide exerted rate-dependent effects that were diminished by increasing durations of food access. The relationship was less apparent for pentobarbital, and not present for d-amphetamine. In rats, rate-dependent effects of pentobarbital and d-amphetamine were not modulated by reinforcement magnitude. In conclusion, some drugs appear to exert rate-dependent effect which are diminished when reinforcement magnitude is relatively high. Subsequent analysis of the rate-dependency data suggest the effects of reinforcement magnitude may be due to a diminution of drug-induced increases in low-rate behavior that occurs early in the fixed-interval.


Recent human deaths due to infection by highly pathogenic (H5N1) avian influenza A virus have raised the specter of a devastating pandemic like that of 1917-1918, should this avian virus evolve to become readily transmissible among humans. We introduce and use a large-scale stochastic simulation model to investigate the spread of a pandemic strain of influenza virus through the U.S. population of 281 million individuals for R(0) (the basic reproductive number) from 1.6 to 2.4. We model the impact that a variety of levels and combinations of influenza antiviral agents, vaccines, and modified social mobility (including school closure and travel restrictions) have on the timing and magnitude of this spread. Our simulations demonstrate that, in a highly mobile population, restricting travel after an outbreak is detected is likely to delay slightly the time course of the outbreak without impacting the eventual number ill. For R(0) < 1.9, our model suggests that the rapid production and distribution of vaccines, even if poorly matched to circulating strains, could significantly slow disease spread and limit the number ill to <10% of the population, particularly if children are preferentially vaccinated. Alternatively, the aggressive deployment of several million courses of influenza antiviral agents in a targeted prophylaxis strategy may contain a nascent outbreak with low R(0), provided adequate contact tracing and distribution capacities exist. For higher R(0), we predict that multiple strategies in combination (involving both social and medical interventions) will be required to achieve similar limits on illness rates.


Fibre+ (2012-2015) is a European project aiming to develop potential treatments for recovered fibre modification capable of improving the recyclability and the properties of recycled papers. This study reports on the results on fibre morphology, paper properties and recyclability of fibres and papers modified with different chemicals and approaches from both laboratory and pilot plant trials. Sixteen modification chemical agents were studied in a set of laboratory trials. The raw material used was 100% recycled paper grade from old corrugated board containers (OCC). The laboratory analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of fibre modifications treatments included FBRM for pre-screening of chemicals, preparation of laboratory control and modified handsheets to a target grammage of 80 g/m2, and measurement of the fibre morphology, recyclability and mechanical and physical properties of the modified handsheets. Based on the results of laboratory testing, Fibre+ modifications pilot plant trials were carried out at a FEX paper machine. Furthermore the effect of the better dispersion of the cPAM using an ECOWIRL was studied. The overall laboratory and pilot plant results were promising for further implementation of the Fibre+ modifications at industrial scale and projection of improvements of fibre and paper properties on the performance of packaging products thereof


In this article, we describe a general methodology for enhancing sensing accuracy in cyber-physical systems that involve structured human interactions in noisy physical environment. We define structured human interactions as domain-specific workflow. A novel workflow-aware sensing model is proposed to jointly correct unreliable sensor data and keep track of states in a workflow. We also propose a new inference algorithm to handle cases with partially known states and objects as supervision. Our model is evaluated with extensive simulations. As a concrete application, we develop a novel log service called Emergency Transcriber, which can automatically document operational procedures followed by teams of first responders in emergency response scenarios. Evaluation shows that our system has significant improvement over commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors and keeps track of workflow states with high accuracy in noisy physical environment.


This study aims to present the clinical features and treatment of a case of maxillary ameloblastic carcinoma. Ameloblastic carcinoma is a rare malignant odontogenic carcinoma that has metastatic potential. Due to its rare incidence, there are few studies focusing on its radiological characteristics. When ameloblastic carcinoma demonstrates an aggressive appearance, it may be diagnosed as a malignant tumor; however, in cases showing a non-aggressive appearance, it is difficult to distinguish ameloblastic carcinoma from ameloblastoma. We report a case of ameloblastic carcinoma of the maxilla in a 59-year-old male patient, including the clinical signs, radiological images and pathological features. A partial area was surgically excised under local anesthesia and the material was sent to the Laboratory of Oral Pathology. The histological sections revealed a fragmented odontogenic tumor of epithelial origin, consisting of solid parenchyma and also revealed basal cells resembling ameloblasts, occasionally arranged in palisades. Certain parts of the architecture resembled that of an ameloblastoma; however, the cytology of other areas confirmed the diagnosis of ameloblastic carcinoma of the maxilla. The patient was scheduled for definitive surgery, including a right maxillectomy and radiotherapy. The patient was followed up every 3 months. After 2 years follow-up, there were no clinical or radiological signs of recurrence.


In Escherichia coli and other enterobacteria, the homologous small RNAs (sRNAs) GlmY and GlmZ act in a hierarchical manner to feedback control expression of key enzyme glucosamine-6-phosphate (GlcN6P) synthase GlmS. Enzyme GlmS catalyzes formation of GlcN6P, which is the rate limiting reaction in the pathway of cell wall biosynthesis. Only sRNA GlmZ can activate the glmS mRNA by base-pairing, which releases the ribosomal binding site and allows synthesis of GlmS. The second sRNA GlmY acts indirectly to activate glmS by stabilizing GlmZ in a process that involves protein YhbJ. However, the molecular mechanism remained elusive. As sRNAs GlmY and GlmZ are crucial in maintaining essential cellular functions and are thus tightly controlled, we aimed to gain insight into the complex regulation of these sRNAs at the level of biosynthesis and decay.
First, we investigated control of glmY and glmZ transcription in several species using Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, Salmonella thyphimurium and E. coli as representatives. Three different promoter architectures were observed: (I) In Y. pseudotuberculosis expression of both sRNAs is driven solely from σ54-promoters; (II) perfectly overlapping σ70- and σ54-dependent promoters control expression of glmY in E. coli and of both sRNA genes in S. thyphimurium; (III) in contrast, glmZ of E. coli is constitutively expressed from a σ70-promoter. These results suggest that the glmY/Z system is in evolutionary transition from σ54- to σ70-dependency in a subset of species. Moreover, the σ54-dependent promoters are activated by the two component system GlrK/GlrR and rely on integration host factor IHF for activity. Further, we found that acetylation of YhbJ is required for full activity of the σ54-promoter of glmY in E. coli and that sirtuin deacetylase CobB drastically reduces promoter activity. In sum, GlmY and GlmZ seem to compose a regulon dependent on σ54, GlrK/GlrR and IHF in the majority of Enterobacteriaceae.
Second, we clarified the molecular mechanism of signal transduction within the GlmYZ cascade. We demonstrated that YhbJ is a novel RNA-binding protein that binds GlmY and GlmZ with high affinity and switches its sRNA binding partners depending on the intracellular GlcN6P level. Under conditions of ample GlcN6P, YhbJ preferably binds GlmZ and recruits its processing machinery by protein-protein interaction with the major endoribonuclease RNase E. GlmZ is inactivated by RNase E and subsequently degraded. Upon GlcN6P depletion, GlmY accumulates and sequesters YhbJ thereby counteracting processing of GlmZ. In analogy to regulated proteolysis we renamed protein YhbJ to RapZ as acronym for RNase adaptor protein for sRNA GlmZ; thus, GlmY acts as an anti-adaptor decoy for protein RapZ. Even though GlmY and GlmZ are highly similar in sequence and structure, both sRNAs act by distinct mechanisms. While GlmZ is a base-pairing sRNA that depends on RNA chaperon Hfq for functionality and stability, GlmY acts solely by protein-binding and does not require Hfq. Moreover, GlmZ is processed by RNase E in a RapZ-dependent manner, whereas GlmY is not. Hence, we exploited GlmY and GlmZ as model system to study the molecular requirements for Hfq-binding and processing by RNase E. We found that the entire 3' end of GlmZ is required for high affinity binding by Hfq and Hfq-dependent stabilization in vivo. In contrast, the lateral bulge within the central stem loop of GlmZ is of prime importance for recognition by RNase E. In sum, our findings reveal an unprecedented mechanism controlling the activity of a small RNA at the level of its turnover. This mechanism involves the novel RNase adaptor protein RapZ, which might be the first of similar proteins conferring substrate specificity to a general ribonuclease.


Electrical and optical properties of interband cascade infrared photodetectors with InAs/GaSb type-II superlattice absorbers are investigated in this work. We compare the detection parameters of detectors grown on the native GaSb substrate and lattice-mismatched GaAs substrate and seek solutions to enhance device performance, specifically with using an optical immersion. The detectors grown on GaAs have better detection parameters at room temperature, but at lower temperatures the misfit dislocations become more important and detectors grown on GaSb become better.


Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a severe inflammatory disorder characterized by activation and proliferation of lymphocytes and histiocytes with cytokine release and uncontrolled hemophagocytosis, especially late in the course of the disease. Clinical features include relapsing fevers, hepatosplenomegaly, cytopenias, lymphadenopathy, and coagulopathy. The diagnosis can be challenging, as the early signs and symptoms are nonspecific and no specific laboratory tests exist. This syndrome is frequently not recognized and has a significant mortality rate. Typical scenarios in which HLH should be considered include mononucleosis (fever, hepatosplenomegaly, and lymphadenopathy) in an infant or young child, aseptic meningitis associated with cytopenias, or a viral syndrome-like illness with cytopenias and lymphadenopathy or splenomegaly, for example. Our approach includes measuring a ferritin level as a screening tool early in the course of such an illness. Two cases of HLH are reviewed, illustrating the frequent complexity of these cases and potential pitfalls to making a prompt diagnosis.


Background: Lower leg trauma with compound wounds of leg with need for wound cover are common injuries encountered by plastic surgeons. Soleus flap is an extremely useful flap in acute management of compound fractures of lower leg especially middle and lower third. However, the soleus being in zone of trauma in such defects, reconstructive surgeons hesitate to use it primarily. This article proposes a novel way of using the soleus muscle by sliding it across the defect and not transecting its lower end as traditionally done. Although many of these wounds can be managed secondarily, addressing the wound primarily with the exposed soleus helps reduces need for more complex reconstructive surgery at a later surgical sitting.
Aims and objectives: The aim of this study is to assess the usefulness of the sliding soleus flap in covering compound wounds of middle and lower third of leg.
Material and methods: The study was conducted during the period between April 2010 to April 2015. The sliding soleus was used to cover 25 cases of lower leg trauma with middle and lower leg defects up to 10 cm above ankle joint.
Results: All the flaps survived though in some cases superficial necrosis was encountered. In these cases, the necrosis was debrided during dressings and did not require any operation theater intervention.
Conclusion: In the acute trauma scenario where the plastic surgeon is called upon to address compound fractures of tibia and fibula, it is recommended to close the exposed bone with sliding soleus flap. Here the soleus muscle is slided into defect without transection. The sliding soleus flap has three advantages. One it has vascularity of both dominant and minor vascular pedicle and is more reliable compared to either a proximal or reversed soleus flaps. The second advantage is that there is no functional deficit as the muscle is only transposed and not disconnected. Thirdly the reach of the soleus muscle for coverage of upper lower third leg defects can be achieved.


Increased oligotrophication is expected for oligotrophic areas as a consequence of ocean warming, which reduces diffusive vertical nutrient supply due to strengthened stratification. Evidence of ocean oligotrophication has been, thus far, reported for the open ocean. Here we reported oligotrophication and associated changes in plankton community metabolism with warming in a pristine, oligotrophic Mediterranean coastal area (Cap Salines, Mallorca Island, Spain) during a 10 years time series. As a temperate area, there were seasonal patterns associated to changes in the broad temperature range (12.0 - 28.4 oC), with a primary phytoplankton bloom in late winter and a secondary one in the fall. Community respiration (R) rates peaked during summers and showed higher rates relative to gross primary production (GPP) with a prevalence of heterotrophic metabolism (2/3's of net community production (NCP) estimates). Chlorophyll a concentration significantly decreased with increasing water temperature in the coastal site at a rate of 0.014 ± 0.003 µg Chla L−1 oC−1 (P< 0.0001). The study revealed a significant decrease with time in Chlorophyll a concentration and nutrients concentration, indicating oligotrophication during the last decade. Community productivity consistently decreased with time as both GPP and R showed a significant decline. Warming of the Mediterranean Sea is expected to increase plankton metabolic rates, but the results indicated that the associated oligotrophication must lead to a slowing down of the community metabolism.


This paper analyzed the thermal dependence on the germination of Urochloa brizantha (Stapf) Webster seeds under constant and fluctuating temperatures through the thermal time model. Germination tests were carried out at constant temperatures ranging from 8 °C to 41.5 °C in order to determine the model parameters: base (Tb), optimal (To) and maximum temperature (Tc) for germination; and the thermal time (θT) required for individual seeds to germinate. Braquiarão seeds germinate within a temperature interval from 8 °C to 41.5 °C, with an optimum range for germination estimated at 31.5 ° ≤ T ≤ 34.5 °C. Actual and expected distributions of cumulative germination percentages of U. brizantha seeds put to germinate both under controlled and uncontrolled temperature regimes were compared, and it can be seen that the model described relatively well the germination at isothermal assays; however the model failed to predict germination at a wide range of thermal fluctuations. Possible explanations for the results are discussed.


The absence of a platform for secure electronic commerce is widely recognised. Across the globe, a host of Certification Authorities (CAs) have emerged to seize the opportunity for issuing digital certificates that constitute the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Yet the take-up of the technology has been bitterly disappointing. The market for digital certificates has failed to reach the critical worldwide mass that was anticipated. Current literature suggests a variety of outstanding technical, legal and policy issues that hinder the adoption of PKI. We argue that another contributing factor in this adverse turn of events is the quality uncertainty surrounding CAs and the certificates they issue. This paper adopts the Lemons principle, an economic theory, to analyse the market situation of quality uncertainty and reviews three countermeasures that remedy this problem: brand names, guarantees and licensing. Applying this economic theory to the PKI market, the paper discusses how these three countermeasures might be used to signal the quality of certificates and hence generate the trust missing between CAs and relying parties in electronic transactions.


Many online businesses seek and provide attention. These online attention rivals provide products and features to obtain the attention of consumers and sell some of that attention, through other products and services, to merchants, developers, and others who value it. The multi-sided business of seeking and providing attention is fluid with rivalries crossing boundaries defined by the features of the products and services. It is also dynamic. Rivals introduce new products and services, some involving drastic and frequent innovation. Online attention rivals impose competitive constraints on one another. Product differentiation tempers the significance of these constraints in particular situations. But the relevant differentiation mainly involves aspects of the attention that is procured and sold rather than, necessarily, particular features of the products and services used for acquiring and delivering that attention. Antitrust analysis should consider these competitive constraints in evaluating market definition, market power, and the potential for anticompetitive effects. The existence of competition among attention rivals does not imply that antitrust should reduce the vigor with which it examines mergers and exclusionary practices among these platforms. It just needs to look for problems in the right places.


Social anxiety and problematic drinking are among the most prevalent disorders present in the college population. Having one or both of these disorders while in college can be detrimental to academic performance and can increase dropout rates. Social anxiety has been found to precede problematic drinking in previous research. The purpose of this study was to help determine what variables may explain this relationship (i.e., mediators). The current study tested whether emotion regulation difficulties, drinking motives, alcohol outcome expectancies, and self-discrepancy mediated the relationship between social anxiety and problematic drinking among college undergraduates (N = 135). Results indicated that emotion regulation difficulties partially mediates the relationship between social anxiety and dependence symptoms. Thus, individuals who experience social anxiety symptoms and have greater difficulties regulating their emotions could be at risk for developing problematic drinking. Therefore, emotion regulation difficulties should be considered in alcohol treatment and prevention programs targeting the college population.


The law of warranty disclaimers has failed to keep pace with the proliferation and growing acceptance of "rolling" or "layered" contracts. Courts have not adequately addressed or resolved this tension and have failed to articulate an appropriate test for assessing these disclaimers in rolling contracts. This Article provides a flexible test based on language in Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code that validates certain disclaimers "unless the circumstances indicate otherwise." The test would enable a trier of fact to find a disclaimer ineffective if the nature of the transaction is such that it puts the buyer off guard as to the existence or effect of a disclaimer. To illustrate the value of this test, the Article applies the test to the critical issue of disclaimers in rolling contracts involving consumer purchases. The Article concludes that although it may be appropriate to provide some terms only after purchase or order, a warranty disclaimer in a consumer purchase is not such a term. A consumer typically expects that, although the seller may provide some minor terms after purchase, all the key product information will be presented "up front" in the transaction. A disclaimer of the implied warranty of merchantability should be considered just such key product information. Thus, when a purchase or order passes without disclosure of a disclaimer, a consumer is likely to be put off guard as to the existence or effect of a disclaimer disclosed afterwards. In short, sellers should generally not be able to "roll" warranty disclaimers into consumer transactions.


A Spiritual Growth Strategy for Postmodern Busters at Trinity Baptist Church in New York City James F. Leonard Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2013 The purpose of this final project is to develop a contextual strategy for inspiring postmodern Busters at Trinity Baptist Church to put on the character of Christ through spiritual formation groups. Trinity is in New York City, a center for global finance, media, art, and entertainment. Trinity reaches people from multiple denominational and ethnic backgrounds. Over thirty languages are spoken within the congregation; the socioeconomic spectrum is equally diverse. The Gospel is taught faithfully, but Trinity has not shifted to postmodernity. Based on REVEAL survey responses, postmoderns at Trinity have not experienced desired depths of spiritual transformation, and 10 percent indicate feeling spiritually stalled. Many proclaim faith but have not put on the character of Christ: where every element of their being is in harmony with God's will and kingdom. Part One examines demographics and characteristics of Trinity and implications for church ministry, including socioeconomic factors and relational connectedness. It considers sub-cultural influences, including cultural shifts and lifestyle patterns. Range of existing ministries, theological convictions, and a description of the need for spiritual formation are considered. Part Two provides theological concepts addressing ecclesiology within Converge (formerly the Baptist General Conference). Strengths and weaknesses are presented; a review of alternative ecclesiastical models of community, postmodern thought, and spiritual formation are addressed. Finally, biblical examples aiding development of a strategy for spiritual formation are examined. Part Three details a pilot project designed to inspire Trinity's congregation to participate in a ten-week, church-wide sermon series, choose from one of three personalized spiritual growth tracks, join a spiritual formation group, and continue their spiritual growth journey by utilizing Engage an online spiritual growth tool. This project sets the stage for a renewed discipleship culture and provides structure and content for groups. Consideration is given to leadership development, timeline, personnel, required resources, and assessment. Content Reader: Keith Matthews, PhD Words: 300 To my parents, Jim and Freddie Leonard, who always encouraged me to pursue the things God placed on my heart


For the spherical Laplacian on the sphere and for the Dirichlet Laplacian in the square}, Antonie Stern claimed in her PhD thesis (1924) the existence of an infinite sequence of eigenvalues whose corresponding eigenspaces contain an eigenfunction with exactly two nodal domains. These results were given complete proofs respectively by Hans Lewy in 1977, and the authors in 2014 (see also Gauthier-Shalom--Przybytkowski, 2006). In this paper, we obtain similar results for the two dimensional isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator. In the opposite direction, we construct an infinite sequence of regular eigenfunctions with as many nodal domains as allowed by Courant's theorem, up to a factor $\frac{1}{4}$. A classical question for a $2$-dimensional bounded domain is to estimate the length of the nodal set of a Dirichlet eigenfunction in terms of the square root of the energy. In the last section, we consider some Schr{\"o}dinger operators $-\Delta + V$ in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and we provide bounds for the length of the nodal set of an eigenfunction with energy $\lambda$ in the classically permitted region $\{V(x) < \lambda\}$.


One can definitely say that as far back as Soviet times and up to the present day the leading scholars of post-Soviet scope (ethnographers, historians and other) treat differently an essence and content of ethnic communities. It is, in particular, referred to such notions as «tribe», «ethnos», and «people». At the same time a definite disagreement is still observed among the specialists on the issue of typology. Taking into consideration this circumstance the present article carries out work on a new classification of the main ethnic communities. At the same time the content of such notions as «ethnos», «people» and «nation» has been made definitely clear.


The present invention relates to a method for introducing molecules in cells by disrupting endosomal and lysosomal membranes using photodynamic treatment, without killing the majority of the cells by the photodynamic treatment. More particularly, this invention includes a method for transferring DNA and/or RNA, such as genes, to cells by photochemically inducing the disruption of endosomes and lysosomes.


Abstract Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) has been widely performed for the treatment of multilevel cervical degenerative disc disease (CDDD). In recent decades, cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA) and hybrid surgery (HS) have been developed to overcome the shortcomings of ACDF. Controversy still remains with regard to the optimal surgical procedure for skip-level CDDD. A total of 55 patients who received surgical treatment for skip-level CDDD in our department were reviewed. The patients were divided into the HS group (n = 29) and the CDA group (n = 26). The collected data included Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA), Neck Disability Index (NDI), and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) scores, and cervical lordosis (CL), range of motion (ROM), and intervertebral disc height (IDH). Radiological changes at the intermediate segment (IS) were also collected. All data were collected preoperatively and at routine postoperative intervals of 1 week and 3, 6, and 12 months and at the last follow-up period. Compared with preoperative values, mean JOA, NDI, and VAS scores significantly improved after surgery in both the HS and CDA groups (P < .05). However, there were no significant differences between the groups (P > .05). The HS group had better CL recovery than the CDA group after surgery (P < .05). There was no significant difference in the ROM of C2–C7 between the 2 groups (P > .05). A significant difference in the ROM of the IS was found at the last follow-up between the 2 groups (P < .05). At the last-follow-up, 4 discs (14.29%) in the CDA group and 6 discs (19.36%) in the HS group had adjacent segment degeneration (ASD) without symptoms. Both HS and CDA might be considered safe and effective surgical strategies for the treatment of skip-level CDDD. Although the clinical outcomes were similar in the 2 groups, CDA altered the ROM of the IS to a lesser degree.


A papillary adenocarcinoma with metastasis occurred in a 5-year-old child. The neoplasm arose on the anterolateral sublingual aspect of the tongue and metastasized to a submandibular lymph node. Histologically, the tumor contained broad glandular papillary projections. The tumor cells were cuboidal and had vesicular, "ground glass" nuclei. Colloidlike material was found within the stroma and lumen of the glands. To determine whether the papillary adenocarcinoma was of minor salivary gland or ectopic thyroid in origin, ultrastructural, histochemical, and immunohistochemical techniques were applied to make this clinically important distinction. Ultrastructural and immunohistochemical studies did not indicate the site of origin. Histochemical methods, however, demonstrated the colloidlike material to be sulfated mucopolysaccharide, which was nonreducible by ferric ferrocyanide. These histochemical properties and the anterolateral location identified the tumor as salivary gland in origin.


Apache Spark enables a big data application—one that takes massive data as input and may produce massive data along its execution—to run in parallel on multiple nodes. Hence, for a big data application, performance is a vital issue. This project analyzes a WordCount application using Apache Spark, where the impact on the execution time and average utilization is assessed. To facilitate this assessment, the number of executor cores and the size of executor memory are varied across different sizes of data that the application has to process, and the different number of nodes in the cluster that the application runs on. It is concluded that different pairs (data size, number of nodes in the cluster) require different number of executor cores and different size of executor memory to obtain optimum results for execution time and average node utilization.


The aim of this research is to better understand why children consistently surpass adults in their ultimate attainment of language--the sensitive period for language acquisition. I propose the Nested Cognitive and Neural Asynchronies theory to explain this phenomenon. This theory first asserts that an expert neural system for language processing is built in a nested manner, with commitments made first to aspects of language that are learned early. Once built, this system--though expert in processing one's native language--is ineffective in processing other languages, particularly those that differ in these early‐learned aspects of language (such as sound structure). Second, asynchronies in the development of neural substrates supporting learning are thought to contribute to sensitive period phenomena. One consequence of the vast differences in the maturation of various substrates important for learning is that children end up with an abundance of implicit learning mechanisms relative to explicit. Since much of language learning is likely to occur via these implicit mechanisms, the result is that children might simply be better built to learn language.The experiments reported here support this theory. The first study shows that languages that differ from one's native language in the most basic properties (i.e., sounds) are 1) more difficult to learn and 2) represented with distinct neural circuits. The second study demonstrates that the neural circuits recruited by children for a necessary component of explicit learning change substantially over the course of development, suggesting that the neural circuits deployed for learning in children differ greatly from those in adults. The third study shows that explicit learning can be detrimental for learning certain aspects of language. Moreover, when the primary substrate associated with this learning--the prefrontal cortex--is taken offline, this detriment of explicit learning is ameliorated, thereby showing that child-adult learning differences are related to neural maturation. Together, this collection of studies aims not to catalogue sensitive period phenomena in humans but rather to explain why the sensitive period for language exists.


OBJECTIVE
To review some of the abuses and proper uses of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) spontaneous adverse-reaction reporting system, as a way of educating the reader to its strengths and limitations.

DATA SOURCE
Published literature and reports based on information obtained from the FDA's database of spontaneous adverse drug-event reports.

DATA SYNTHESIS
The Freedom of Information Act has increased public access to the FDA's database of spontaneous adverse drug reaction reports. As these reports are voluntarily received and reported to the FDA, their use for comparisons of drug safety is severely limited. Despite these limitations and the FDA's caveats for use of these data, consumer advocacy groups, researchers, and various pharmaceutical marketing groups have used this source to project the incidence of adverse drug reactions.

CONCLUSIONS
The FDA's spontaneous adverse-event reporting system is designed to generate signals of unexpected adverse drug events. Use of the data gathered by this system to make drug safety comparisons is beyond their credible scope because many factors influence the reporting of adverse events. Researchers and peer reviewers should place these data in the proper perspective and support sound research into questions of drug safety.


On January 2020, a new coronavirus (officially named SARS-CoV-2) was associated with alarming outbreak of a pneumonia-like illness, which was later named by the WHO as COVID-19, originating from Wuhan City, China. Although many clinical studies involving antiviral and immunomodulatory drug treatments for SARS-CoV-2 all without reported results, no approved drugs have been found to effectively inhibit the virus so far. Full genome sequencing of the virus was done, and uploaded to be freely available for the world scientists to explore. A promising target for SARS-CoV-2 drug design is a chymotrypsin-like cysteine protease (3CLpro), a main protease responsible for the replication and maturation of functional proteins in the life cycle of the SARS coronavirus. Here we aim to explore SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro as possible drug targets based on ligand- protein interactions. In addition, ADME properties of the ligands were also analyzed to predict their drug likeliness. The results revealed Out of 9 ligands, 8 ligands (JFM, X77, RZG, HWH, T8A, 0EN, PEPTIDE and DMS) showed best ADME properties. These findings suggest that these ligands can be used as potential molecules for developing potent inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro, which could be helpful in inhibiting the propagation of the COVID-19. Furthermore, 10 potential amino acids residues were recognized as potential drug binding site (THR25, HIS41, GLY143, SER144, CYS145, MET165, GLU166, GLN189, ASP295 and ARG298). All those amino acid residues were subjected to missense SNP analysis were recognized to affect the structure and function of the protein. These characteristics provide them the promising to be target sites for the fresh generation inhibitors to work with and overcome drug resistance. These findings would be beneficial for the drug development for inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro hence assisting the pharmacogenomics effort to manage the infection. of SARS-CoV-2.


In this paper, we describe the Augmented Viewport, a new action at a distance technique for outdoor augmented reality using wearable computers. Augmented viewport is inspired by the virtual viewport window that has been widely used in virtual reality systems. Our technique utilizes a physical camera, which either is placed at a distant location or can zoom closer to a distant location, to provide the physical world information for the viewport window. Using the augmented viewport, the user can perform selection and affine transformations of distant virtual objects, using techniques that are more effective from a close distance, such as ray casting or image plane. We conducted a user study with results showing that the augmented viewport technique enhances the precision of object manipulations, and reduces time and effort.


No-flow underfill has greatly improved the production efficiency of flip-chip process. Due to its unique characteristics, including reaction latency, curing under solder reflow conditions and the desire for no post-cure, there is a need for a fundamental understanding of the curing process of no-flow underfill. Starting with a promising no-flow underfill formulation, this paper seeks to develop a systematic methodology to study and model the curing behavior of this underfill. A differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) is used to characterize the heat flow during curing under isothermal and temperature ramp conditions. A modified autocatalytic model is developed with temperature-dependent parameters. The degree of cure (DOC) is calculated; compared with DSC experiments, the model gives a good prediction of DOC under different curing conditions. The temperature of the printed wiring board (PWB) during solder reflow is measured using thermocouples and the evolution of DOC of the no-flow underfill during the reflow process is calculated. A stress rheometer is used to study the gelation of the underfill at different heating rates. Results show that at high curing temperature, the underfill gels at a lower DOC. Based on the kinetic model and the gelation study, the solder wetting behavior during the eutectic SnPb and lead-free SnAgCu reflow processes is predicted and confirmed by the solder wetting tests.


Abstract Mantle potential temperatures (Tp) provide insights into mantle circulation and tests of whether Earth is the only planet to exhibit thermally bi-modal volcanism—a distinctive signature of modern plate tectonics. Planets that have a stagnant lid, for example, should exhibit volcanism that is uni-modal with Tp, since mantle plumes would have a monopoly on the genesis of volcanism. But new studies of magmatic ferric-ferrous ratios (XFe2O3liq/XFeOliq$X_{{\text{F}}{{\text{e}}_{\text{2}}}{{\text{O}}_{\text{3}}}}^{{\text{liq}}}{\text{/}}X_{{\text{FeO}}}^{{\text{liq}}}$) (Cottrell and Kelley 2011) and the olivine-liquid Fe-Mg exchange coefficient, KD(Fe-Mg)Ol-liq (or KD) (Matzen et al. 2011) indicate that re-evaluations of Tp are needed. New tests and calibrations are thus presented for oxygen fugacity (fO2), XFe2O3liq/XFeOliq$X_{{\text{F}}{{\text{e}}_{\text{2}}}{{\text{O}}_{\text{3}}}}^{{\text{liq}}}{\text{/}}X_{{\text{FeO}}}^{{\text{liq}}}$, potential temperature (Tp), melt fraction (F), KD, and peridotite enthalpies of fusion (∆Hfus) and heat capacities (CP). The new models for XFe2O3liq/XFeOliq$X_{{\text{F}}{{\text{e}}_{\text{2}}}{{\text{O}}_{\text{3}}}}^{{\text{liq}}}{\text{/}}X_{{\text{FeO}}}^{{\text{liq}}}$ and fO2 reduce error by 25–30%, and residual error for all models appears random; this last observation supports the common, but mostly untested, assumption that equilibrium is the most probable of states obtained by experiment, and perhaps in nature as well. Aggregate 1s error on Tp is as high as ~±77 °C, and estimates of F, and mantle olivine composition, are the greatest sources of error. Pressure and ∆Hfus account for smaller, but systematic uncertainties (a constant ∆Hfus can under-predict Texcess = Tpplume−Tpambient$T_{\text{p}}^{{\text{plume}}} - T_{\text{p}}^{{\text{ambient}}}$; assumptions of 1 atm can under-predict Tp). However, assumptions about whether parental magmas are incremental, accumulated, or isobaric batch melts induces no additional systematic error. The new models show that maximum Tp estimates on the oldest samples from Earth, Mars, Moon, and Vesta, decrease as planet size decreases. This may be expected since Tp should scale with accretion energy and reflect the Clausius-Clapeyron slope for the melting of silicates and Fe-Ni alloys. This outcome, however, occurs only if shergottites (from Mars) are 4.3 Ga (e.g., Bouvier et al. 2009; Werner et al. 2014), and the highest MgO komatiites from Earth's Archean era (27–30% MgO; Green et al. 1975) are used to estimate Tp. With these assumptions, Earth and Mars exhibit monotonic cooling, and support for Stevenson's (2003) idea that smaller planets cool at similar rates (~90–135 °C/Ga), but at lower absolute temperatures. Tp estimates for Mars and Earth are also important in two other ways: Mars exhibits non-linear cooling, with rates as high as 275–550 °C/Ga in its first 0.5 Ga, and Archean volcanism on Earth was thermally bi-modal. Several hundred Archean volcanic compositions are in equilibrium with Fo92–94 olivine, and yield Tp modes at 1940 and 1720 °C, possibly representing plume and ambient mantle, respectively. These estimates compare to modern Tp values of 1560–1670 °C at Mauna Loa (plume) and 1330–1450 °C at MORB (ambient). We conclude that plate tectonics was active in some manner in the Archean, and that assertions of an Archean "thermal catastrophe" are exaggerated. Our new models also show that the modern Hawaiian source, when compared at the same T, has a lower fO2 compared to MORB, which would discount a Hawaiian source rich in recycled pyroxenite.


Endometriosis is a common gynecological disease associated with pelvic pain and subfertility. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in 3,194 individuals with surgically confirmed endometriosis (cases) and 7,060 controls from Australia and the UK. Polygenic predictive modeling showed significantly increased genetic loading among 1,364 cases with moderate to severe endometriosis. The strongest association signal was on 7p15.2 (rs12700667) for 'all' endometriosis (P = 2.6 × 10−7, odds ratio (OR) = 1.22, 95% CI 1.13–1.32) and for moderate to severe disease (P = 1.5 × 10−9, OR = 1.38, 95% CI 1.24–1.53). We replicated rs12700667 in an independent cohort from the United States of 2,392 self-reported, surgically confirmed endometriosis cases and 2,271 controls (P = 1.2 × 10−3, OR = 1.17, 95% CI 1.06–1.28), resulting in a genome-wide significant P value of 1.4 × 10−9 (OR = 1.20, 95% CI 1.13–1.27) for 'all' endometriosis in our combined datasets of 5,586 cases and 9,331 controls. rs12700667 is located in an intergenic region upstream of the plausible candidate genes NFE2L3 and HOXA10.


Of all the environmental problems facing humankind today, anthropogenic-induced climate change is regarded as one of the most damaging in its potential repercussions. For this reason, the perceptions of climate change among high-school learners, who represent future decision-makers and stand as a proxy for the next generation, are of importance. This study was designed so as to gain insight into the nature of perceptions and associated determinants among Grade 11 learners in the Tshwane metropolitan municipal area. Specifically, it probed dynamics between the content in the formal curriculum (Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement or CAPS) and learners' exposure to electronic media, their peers and parents (their arenas of social interaction) in forming these perceptions. The study involved a qualitative analysis of 68 questionnaires completed by learners from two high schools. Findings include misconceptions regarding climate change among learners, as they conflate climate change and the greenhouse effect. The learners' perceptions seem to be shaped by the cumulative outcomes of dynamics between different arenas of exposure and influence (formal education, peers, parents and the media). It is argued that learners' perceptions about climate change fostered in formal education should also be understood in the context of their potential exposure to: (1) alarmist framings of climate change in the media; (2) conceptual disagreements in the climate change research community; and (3) the influence of peers and parents. Rather than avoiding the dynamics from contesting and diverging 'arenas of exposure', future climate change education planning should accommodate and align contending views that might influence the learning process. Keywords: Climate change, school curriculum, learner perceptions, media, peers


The resonant dynamics of mediated interactions supports zero-sound in a cold atom degenerate mixture of a single component fermion gas and a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We characterize the onset of instability in the phase separation of an unstable mixture and we find a rich collective mode structure for stable mixtures with one undamped mode that exhibits an avoided crossing and a Landau-damped mode that terminates.


DNA methylation plays important roles in regulating gene expression and chromosome integrity via addition of methyl groups to cytosine residues. A growing number of human diseases have been found to be associated with aberrant DNA methylation. DNA methylation also provides potential cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, with an estimated 224,390 new cases and 158,080 deaths in the U.S. alone in 2016. In Chapter 1, the association between overall survival and DNA methylation of a tumor-suppressor gene named LRRC3B was investigated in 1,230 early-stage non-small cell lung cancer patients. It provides evidence of plausibility for building biomarkers on DNA methylation of LRRC3B for overall survival of early-stage non-small cell lung cancer, thus filling a gap between previous in vitro studies and clinical applications.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a severe lung disease with a mortality rate of over 40% among moderate-to-severe patients. In Chapter 2, we conducted an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) between DNA methylation and 28-day survival time in 185 moderate-to-severe ARDS patients from intensive care units (ICUs). We identified four CpG sites that were significantly associated with ARDS survival in two independent cohorts. By integrating all four statistically significant methylation sites, we built a methylation risk score for each patient. Patients with a higher methylation risk score had a significantly higher hazard of death within 28 days.
As the next generation sequencing (NGS) technology becomes more and more affordable, sequencing-based methylation measurements would become popular in epigenetic studies. But it also presents challenge in data analysis, including co-methylation network analysis. In Chapter 3, we showed that while standard sequencing-based methylation measurement provides an unbiased estimate for the methylation level, it leads to a biased estimate for correlation between methylation sites. In Chapter 4, we also showed that sequencing-based methylation measure also leads to biased estimates for linear regression coefficients. We proposed a new method to obtain unbiased estimate for methylation correlation and linear coefficients based on bisulfite sequencing data. We demonstrated its performance using various simulation settings as well as real data generated using bisulfite sequencing technique.


This guide provides examples of how to cite various music materials according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed.


The study reported here investigated the extent and nature of interpersonal conflict experienced by volunteer leaders of 4-H horse clubs. Despite anecdotal accounts of high levels of conflict in county 4-H horse programs, conflict does not appear to be universal, and the majority report that horse leaders are mostly to extremely cooperative. If leaders perceive that county agents are engaged in the horse project, by attending horse leaders' meetings, facilitating conflict resolution, and addressing concerns, less conflict among 4-H horse leaders is reported. The results of the study have clear implications for managing county 4-H Horse programs.


Abstract The effects of different night temperatures on grain yield were examined in rice (Oryza sativa L. Akita-63) during the ripening period. Plants were grown under two different night temperatures (22 and 27°C) from anthesis to harvesting. The day temperature was maintained at 27°C in both treatments. Although the final biomass at harvest did not differ between the treatments, the dry weight of the panicles was significantly greater in the cool night temperature treatment. This increase in panicle weight was associated with increases in the 1000-kernel weight and the ratio of filled spikelets. Although panicle respiration in the high night temperature treatment decreased to almost zero just after the cessation of grain filling, the net CO2 fixation rate per day in the whole plant in this treatment tended to be higher, and this was associated with a higher level of starch accumulation. After grain filling, the starch content decreased and the final dry weight of other plant parts, including dead organs and new tillers, was greater in the high night temperature treatment. Thus, the noted decline in yield at the high night temperature led to changes in carbon allocation to new sinks for vegetative reproduction at the whole plant level. From these results, we considered the possibility that a cool night temperature tends to favor carbon allocation to panicles, resulting in higher yield.


Abstract. Lakes Prespa and Ohrid, in the Balkan region, are considered to be amongst the oldest lakes in Europe. Both lakes are hydraulically connected via karst aquifers. From Lake Ohrid, several sediment cores up to 15 m long have been studied over the last few years. Here, we document the first long sediment record from nearby Lake Prespa to clarify the influence of Lake Prespa on Lake Ohrid and the environmental history of the region. Radiocarbon dating and dated tephra layers provide robust age control and indicate that the 10.5 m long sediment record from Lake Prespa reaches back to 48 ka. Glacial sedimentation is characterized by low organic matter content and absence of carbonates in the sediments, which indicate oligotrophic conditions in both lakes. Holocene sedimentation is characterized by particularly high carbonate content in Lake Ohrid and by particularly high organic matter content in Lake Prespa, which indicates a shift towards more mesotrophic conditions in the latter. Long-term environmental change and short-term events, such as related to the Heinrich events during the Pleistocene or the 8.2 ka cooling event during the Holocene, are well recorded in both lakes, but are only evident in certain proxies. The comparison of the sediment cores from both lakes indicates that environmental change affects particularly the trophic state of Lake Prespa due to its lower volume and water depth.


This research discussed how the use herringbone technique  to improve the students' ability in reading. This research used quasi experimental design that applied a pre-test and post-test design. The data was analyzed by using t-test. The population of this research was the eight year students of SMP Negeri 9 Parepare in academic year 2013/2014. There were two classes, a class for experimental class and a class for control class. It utilized cluster random sampling technique. The number of each class was 30 students. The instrument used in this research was reading test use of herringbone technique in learning reading. The result of this research was a significant difference between experimental group and control group. This indicates the mean score of the post-test of experimental group was 97 while that of the control group was 92. Moreover, the t-test value (7,24) was higher than t-table value (2.021). In other words, Hypothesis Alternative (H1) was accepted and Hypothesis Null (H0) was rejected. This means that Using Herringbone technique can improve the students' reading comprehension by using herringbone technique.


The interplay between the kinases ERK and p38 controls neutrophil migration along a chemoattractant gradient. Tuning the ERK migration engine The chemotaxis of neutrophils toward the source of the bacterial peptide fMLP is critical for the early immune response to infection. As they travel up a concentration gradient of fMLP, neutrophils switch from exhibiting directed migration to showing a circuitous movement. Zhang et al. used video microscopy to monitor neutrophil migration along a gradient of fluorescent fMLP and found that the switch in migration modes occurred at about 100 nM fMLP. This was also the position in the gradient at which the kinase ERK, which up to this point drove migration, became inhibited. Furthermore, this concentration of fMLP stimulated the activity of the kinase p38, which in turn inhibited ERK activity. Together, these data suggest that the fMLP concentration–dependent interplay between ERK and p38 activities controls neutrophil migration. The directed migration (chemotaxis) of neutrophils toward the bacterial peptide N-formyl-Met-Leu-Phe (fMLP) is a crucial process in immune defense against invading bacteria. While navigating through a gradient of increasing concentrations of fMLP, neutrophils and neutrophil-like HL-60 cells switch from exhibiting directional migration at low fMLP concentrations to exhibiting circuitous migration at high fMLP concentrations. The extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) pathway is implicated in balancing this fMLP concentration–dependent switch in migration modes. We investigated the role and regulation of ERK signaling through single-cell analysis of neutrophil migration in response to different fMLP concentrations over time. We found that ERK exhibited gradated, rather than all-or-none, responses to fMLP concentration. Maximal ERK activation occurred in response to about 100 nM fMLP, and ERK inactivation was promoted by p38. Furthermore, we found that directional migration of neutrophils reached a maximal extent at about 100 nM fMLP and that ERK, but not p38, was required for neutrophil migration. Thus, our data suggest that, in chemotactic neutrophils responding to fMLP, ERK displays gradated activation and p38-dependent inhibition and that these ERK dynamics promote neutrophil migration.


Background: Many leukemias result from chromosomal rearrangements. The t(8;21) chromosomal translocation produces AML1-ETO, an oncogenic fusion protein that compromises the function of AML1, a transcription factor critical for myeloid cell differentiation. Because of the pressing need for new therapies in the treatment of acute myleoid leukemia, we investigated the genome-wide occupancy of AML1-ETO in leukemic cells to discover novel regulatory mechanisms involving AML-ETO bound genes. Results: We report the co-localization of AML1-ETO with the N-CoR co-repressor to be primarily on genomic regions distal to transcriptional start sites (TSSs). These regions exhibit over-representation of the motif for PU.1, a key hematopoietic regulator and member of the ETS family of transcription factors. A significant discovery of our study is that genes co-occupied by AML1-ETO and N-CoR (e.g., TYROBP and LAPTM5 ) are associated with the leukemic phenotype, as determined by analyses of gene ontology and by the observation that these genes are predominantly up-regulated upon AML1-ETO depletion. In contrast, the AML1-ETO/p300 gene network is less responsive to AML1-ETO depletion and less associated with the differentiation block characteristic of leukemic cells. Furthermore, a substantial fraction of AML1-ETO/p300 co-localization occurs near TSSs in promoter regions associated with transcriptionally active loci. Conclusions: Our findings establish a novel and dominant t(8;21) AML leukemia signature characterized by occupancy of AML1-ETO/N-CoR at promoter-distal genomic regions enriched in motifs for myeloid differentiation factors, thus providing mechanistic insight into the leukemic phenotype.


As of late there's been great interest in social media's ability to predict elections. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, owing to their cultural ubiquity, offer a plethora of data and an opportunity to track public perception at a granular level in real time.
The ability to passively analyze public opinion is a massive step forward in the realm of political prediction, and has the potential to redefine the field of campaign strategy.
In this piece of research I analyzed the current state of social media based electoral prediction. I examined the methods and techniques used to collect and analyze data, and compared their results against both each other and other methods of prediction such as telephone polling.
In this I found a field that is still in its infancy. Much work remains to be done until a set of best practices surrounding social media based electoral prediction are accumulated.


This thesis is a study of the work of the American poet Lorine Niedecker (1903 - 1970). Since Niedecker has been so neglected by critics and students of American poetry, one of the aims of the thesis has been to determine her affinities, and to place her in relation to certain poetic traditions, for example, the Modernism of Pound or Williams, or the Objectivism of Louis Zukofsky. Firstly, I examine some of the choices Niedecker made as a practising poet, and suggest that these have affected not only the writing of her poetry but also its reception, especially with regard to her gender and marginality. The second part of the thesis looks at how Niedecker has been misrepresented by critics and editors who have concentrated on certain themes and subjects in her work, ignoring others. Thus the prevalent image of Niedecker as a poet of place or locality and of nature is challenged and more subversive work on war, politics, and women, is recovered for discussion. Finally I argue that silence is an integral part of Niedecker's poetics, with specific investigation of condensation, the unspoken, sound, and the use of space in poetic form. Again, critics have misrepresented Niedecker's poetics, and it has seldom been recognized that her poetics often continue and further previous poetic practice, as well as being innovative and at times subversive. This thesis aims to demonstrate not only how Niedecker relates to the poetic canon, but also that by the very nature of her poetic practice and her identity as a (woman) poet, Niedecker challenges that canon and the criteria which exclude her from it.


Suprarenal cysts are rare. A case of a 3.5 l cyst incidentally discovered in a 30 year old woman is described. Operative treatment is recommended in order to avoid spontaneous rupture and to exclude malignancy. Endothelial origin can be established by a specific immunohistochemical staining, factor VIII antibody.


We have discovered that the enzyme phospholipase D2 (PLD2) binds directly to the small GTPase Rac2, resulting in PLD2 functioning as a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF), because it switches Rac2 from the GDP-bound to the GTP-bound states. This effect is large enough to be meaningful (∼72% decrease for GDP dissociation and 300% increase for GTP association, both with PLD2), it has a half-time of ∼7 min, is enhanced with increasing PLD2 concentrations, and compares favorably with other known GEFs, such as Vav-1. The PLD2-Rac2 protein–protein interaction is sufficient for the GEF function, because it can be demonstrated in vitro with just recombinant proteins without lipid substrates, and a catalytically inactive lipase (PLD2-K758R) has GEF activity. Apart from this function, exogenous phosphatidic acid by itself (300 pM) increases GTP binding and enhances PLD2-K758R–mediated GTP binding (by ∼34%) but not GDP dissociation. Regarding the PLD2-Rac2 protein–protein association, it involves, for PLD2, residues 263–266 within a Cdc42/Rac interactive binding region in the PH domain, as well as the PX domain, and it involves, for Rac2, residue N17 within its Switch-1 region. PLD2's GEF function is demonstrated in living cells, because silencing PLD2 results in reduced Rac2 activity, whereas PLD2-initiated Rac2 activation enhances cell adhesion, chemotaxis, and phagocytosis. There are several known GEFs, but we report that this GEF is harbored in a phospholipase. The benefit to the cell is that PLD2 brings spatially separated molecules together in a membrane environment, ready for fast intracellular signaling and cell function.


|In this work we studied the performance of the hybrid type-II Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) system on Rayleigh fading channels. This system is based on High Rate Optimized Rate Compatible Punctured Convolutional (HRO-RCPC) codes combined with simple repetition codes. The performance is investigated for di erent packet sizes and constraint lengths of the convolutional encoder. Additionally the e ect of packet size on the performance in di erent fading environments is studied in more detail. We have also studied the performance of the HRO-RCPC codes combined with optimized Rate Compatible Repetition Convolutional (RCRC) codes as another alternative for channel coding in hybrid type-II ARQ schemes. The simulation results show that HRO-RCPC codes combined with optimized RCRC codes with high parent code rate perform almost as good as the HRO-RCPC codes with simple repetition codes at lower parent code rate. Also a tailbiting decoder using Circular Viterbi Algorithm (CVA) is examined for di erent hybrid type-II ARQ schemes and packet sizes. It is shown that the improvement of the performance due to tailbiting is noticeable for only short packets. For long packets, the sub-optimality of CVA decoding compared to the General Viterbi Algorithm (GVA) degrades the performance considerably. Keywords|Rayleigh fading channels, BPSK modulation, Rate compatible convolutional codes, hybrid type-II ARQ, tailbiting decoder.


In a powerful passage, Foucault explores differential illegalities at the moment of punishment and their role in the social process. I seek to extend this key idea to the differentiation of detection and arrest versus non-detection and non-arrest. I do this by conceptualizing a profoundly unequal continuum, with some social actors viewed as "risks" and thus subject to continual attempts at detection (and thus facing the risk of arrest), and other social actors viewed as "trustworthy" and therefore mostly entirely excused from police examination (and thus largely removed from the chance of being arrested for something). The differentiation of trust and risk positions vis-a-vis the law matters significantly to quotidian experiences, subjectivities, social representations, and collective social relations. My empirical ground is various inspections checkpoints and inspectorial encounters in the heavily policed borderlands of the United States at and near its boundary with Mexico.


Cutaneous leishmaniasis remains both a public health and a therapeutic challenge. To date, no ideal therapy for cutaneous leishmaniasis has been identified, and no universally accepted therapeutic regimen and approved vaccines are available. Due to the mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) immunomodulatory capacity, they have been applied in a wide variety of disorders, including infectious, inflammatory, and allergic diseases. We evaluated the potential effects of bone marrow MSC therapy in a murine model of cutaneous leishmaniasis. In vitro, coculture of infected macrophages with MSC increased parasite load on macrophages in comparison with controls (macrophages without MSCs). In vivo, BALB/c mice were infected with 2 × 106 Leishmania amazonensis (Josefa strain) promastigotes in the footpad. 7 and 37 days after infection, animals were treated with 1 × 105 MSCs, either intralesional (i.l.), i.e., in the same site of infection, or intravenously (i.v.), through the external jugular vein. Control animals received the same volume (50 µL) of phosphate-buffered saline by i.l. or i.v. routes. The lesion progression was assessed by its thickness measured by pachymetry. Forty-two days after infection, animals were euthanized and parasite burden in the footpad and in the draining lymph nodes was quantified by the limiting dilution assay (LDA), and spleen cells were phenotyped by flow cytometry. No significant difference was observed in lesion progression, regardless of the MSC route of administration. However, animals treated with i.v. MSCs presented a significant increase in parasite load in comparison with controls. On the other hand, no harmful effect due to MSCs i.l. administered was observed. The spleen cellular profile analysis showed an increase of IL-10 producing T CD4+ and TCD8+ cells in the spleen only in mice treated with i.v. MSC. The excessive production of IL-10 could be associated with the disease-aggravating effects of MSC therapy when intravenously administered. As a conclusion, in the current murine model of L. amazonensis-induced cutaneous disease, MSCs did not control the damage of cutaneous disease and, depending on the administration route, it could result in deleterious effects.


Environmental insults during sensitive periods can affect hippocampal development and function, but little is known about peripheral infection, especially in humans and other animals whose brain is gyrencephalic and experiences major perinatal growth. Using a piglet model, the present study showed that inoculation on postnatal day 7 with the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) caused microglial activation within the hippocampus with 82% and 43% of isolated microglia being MHC II+ 13 and 20 d after inoculation, respectively. In control piglets, <5% of microglia isolated from the hippocampus were MHC II+. PRRSV piglets were febrile (p < 0.0001), anorectic (p < 0.0001), and weighed less at the end of the study (p = 0.002) compared with control piglets. Increased inflammatory gene expression (e.g., IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, and IFN-γ) was seen across multiple brain regions, including the hippocampus, whereas reductions in CD200, NGF, and MBP were evident. In a test of spatial learning, PRRSV piglets took longer to acquire the task, had a longer latency to choice, and had a higher total distance moved. Overall, these data demonstrate that viral respiratory infection is associated with a marked increase in activated microglia in the hippocampus, neuroinflammation, and impaired performance in a spatial cognitive task. As respiratory infections are common in human neonates and infants, approaches to regulate microglial cell activity are likely to be important.


By means of a grid and three centered and astigmatic optical systems, it is possible to get an arbitrary orientation of the image of the slits of the grid with respect to the measuring direction. Such a device improves the accuracy of the observation of boundary layers encountered in aerodynamical, thermal, and mass transport phenomena. This process can also easily be applied to differential interferometry.


Applying the Foster, Haltiwanger, and Krizan (2001) decomposition to plant-level manufacturing data from Chile and Korea, we find that the entry and exit of plants account for a larger fraction of aggregate productivity growth during periods of fast GDP growth. To analyze this relationship, we develop a model of firm entry and exit based on Hopenhayn (1992). When we introduce reforms that reduce entry costs or reduce barriers to technology adoption into a calibrated model, we find that the entry and exit terms in the FHK decomposition become more important as GDP grows rapidly, just as they do in the data from Chile and Korea. (JEL D24, E23, L13, L60, O14, O32, O47)


Previously, because of low population, water crisis was not too tangible like these days so currently the given crisis has been exacerbated more than ever by rising growth of population. Gradually by increasing demand for water, the requirement for supply and development of water sources, thus developing stateofart technologies will be increased in order to restore and expand fresh water sources, as well. With respect to this fact that water is considered as the main factor for life and cultivation, but UN has proposed this decade as water scarcity decennium (2005-2015) and a global concern so this problem has encompassed the main parts of the world, particularly Africa and Asia, while the given body warned about its adverse consequences. There are some potential threats to which water sources management, especially fresh water supplies has been faced with during the forthcoming years including rising population, droughts, lowering the level of water tables, penetration of salt water into fresh water sources, qualitative change in water sources, endangering of public health, threatening in nutrient security, malnutrition and famine, local and regional and international conflicts, deserting rural areas due to water scarcity (as life main infrastructure), destruction of biologic diversity in ecosystems and wildlife etc. Overall, dryness of climate, droughts, water tensions due to over population etc are considered as the essential factors for water scarcity. The foremost appropriate solutions for management of water scarcity also include water optimal consumption and training for this purpose, construction of dams, water storage, treatment of salt water into fresh water, improvement of water sources productivity, revival and renovation of aqueducts, keeping and control waste waters and control of waterfloods etc where managerial methods, existing challenges and some appropriate strategies will be described in detail in the full paper.


RATIONALE
Although occupational exposure to dust and fumes is considered a risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, this determination has been limited by reliance on spirometry alone to assess disease severity in predominantly male populations.

OBJECTIVES
To determine the effect of occupational exposure on lung function, respiratory symptoms, and findings of emphysema and airway wall thickness measured using quantitative computed tomography in men and women.

METHODS
COPDGene is a multicenter study of current and former smokers that underwent standardized volumetric chest computed tomography scans to assess airways, % emphysema, and % gas trapping. Spirometry and a respiratory questionnaire including occupational history were also analyzed in 9,614 subjects (4,496 women). Logistic regression and analysis of covariance was used to assess associations with exposure.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Occupational exposure to both dust and fumes was reported by 47.9% of men and 20.1% of women. Adjusting for age, race, body mass index, education, and current and lifetime smoking, the odds ratios for persons with dust and fume exposures for chronic cough, chronic phlegm, persistent wheeze, and Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease stages 2 and higher chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were significantly elevated and similar for men (1.83, 1.84, 2.0, 1.61, respectively) and women (1.65, 1.82, 1.98, 1.90, respectively). The % predicted FEV1 was similarly lower in those with exposure in men (70.7 ± 0.8 vs. 76.0 ± 0.9; P < 0.001) and women (70.5 ± 0.8 vs. 77.2 ± 0.8; P < 0.001). Percent emphysema and gas trapping was greater in those exposed to dust and fumes in men and women. In men, but not in women, persons with exposure had a greater mean square root wall area of 10-mm internal perimeter airways.

CONCLUSIONS
Occupational exposure to dust and fumes in men and women is similarly associated with airflow obstruction, respiratory symptoms, more emphysema, and gas trapping in men and women.