This research analyses the reflections of post-graduation Nepalese Business Studies undergraduate and postgraduate graduates from UK universities. It follows their return to Nepal, where the graduates were facing a scarcity of employment opportunities. The primary research was undertaken at a time when UK universities were facing increasing competition to recruit international students and numbers of Nepalese students choosing the UK were decreasing. The mixed methods research was based primarily on semi-structured interviews in Nepal with twenty-three Nepalese graduates, their Nepalese employers and Nepalese education consultancies. Data were analysed using the five systems model of Bronfenbrenner (1979) and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner's (2012) Intercultural Awareness Profiling. Although the overall expectations of Nepalese students and employers towards UK higher education remained positive, results indicated a lowering estimation of the quality and reputation of UK universities and increasing Nepalese University and regional competition. The outcomes make a further contribution to the knowledge of why Nepalese students choose overseas higher education but why Nepalese employers are struggling to see clear benefits from employing UK educated Nepalese business graduates.


This paper examines the Federal quarantine established by USDA in 1996 to prevent the spread of Karnal bunt, a minor disease of wheat. During the early stages of its regulatory strategy, USDA made extensive use of probabilistic risk assessments to determine the efficacy of various quarantine protocols. However, there was less careful consideration given to the costs and benefits of the actions. If risk had been incorporated directly into the cost/benefit analysis, different conclusions would likely have been drawn about the expected impact of the regulations. This paper develops a methodology for combining these two analyses to improve future regulatory decision-making.


For many years, BP Pipelines, North America has used high-resolution Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) inline inspection (ILI) technology to help maintain the integrity of their pipelines. The improvements in this technology that now allow an Operator to make integrity decisions also bring challenges. Reports from ILI can list thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of individual anomalies or features. When combined with data from NDT field measurements and existing pipe tallies, it can become overwhelming. Methods had to be developed to distill this information for further analysis. BP Pipelines NA encouraged cooperation between all parties involved in the integrity process to adapt reporting requirements and work procedures to provide the best available information for integrity analysis and to ensure continued improvements. This cooperation is a key part of the integrity equation and essential to a successful program. This paper presents an overview of the validation process undertaken on a 51 km (32-mile) section of 457 mm (18-inch) pipeline. This pipe section was inspected in 1999 and again in 2003 by the same inspection company. This provided an opportunity to evaluate improvements in inspection technology, assess repeatability of performance and develop an engineering based approach to review, analyze, and validate high-resolution metal loss MFL data. Field verification and data validation included the use of several NDE techniques to acquire field measurements to overlay and compare to the ILI inspection data. Anomaly classification and distribution is examined and methods of selecting validation locations for future inspection developed. In addition to the primary goal outlined, the 2003 repair program provided an opportunity to evaluate the performance of the composite sleeve reinforcements applied in 1999, after 4 years of service.


Changing how pre-trained models behave -- e.g., improving their performance on a downstream task or mitigating biases learned during pre-training -- is a common practice when developing machine learning systems. In this work, we propose a new paradigm for steering the behavior of neural networks, centered around \textit{task vectors}. A task vector specifies a direction in the weight space of a pre-trained model, such that movement in that direction improves performance on the task. We build task vectors by subtracting the weights of a pre-trained model from the weights of the same model after fine-tuning on a task. We show that these task vectors can be modified and combined together through arithmetic operations such as negation and addition, and the behavior of the resulting model is steered accordingly. Negating a task vector decreases performance on the target task, with little change in model behavior on control tasks. Moreover, adding task vectors together can improve performance on multiple tasks at once. Finally, when tasks are linked by an analogy relationship of the form ``A is to B as C is to D", combining task vectors from three of the tasks can improve performance on the fourth, even when no data from the fourth task is used for training. Overall, our experiments with several models, modalities and tasks show that task arithmetic is a simple, efficient and effective way of editing models.


The aeroacoustic feedback loop establishing in a supersonic round jet impinging on a flat plate normally has been investigated by combining compressible large-eddy simulations and modelling of that loop. At the exit of a straight pipe nozzle of radius $r_{0}$ , the jet is ideally expanded, and has a Mach number of 1.5 and a Reynolds number of $6\times 10^{4}$ . Four distances between the nozzle exit and the flat plate, equal to $6r_{0}$ , $8r_{0}$ , $10r_{0}$ and $12r_{0}$ , have been considered. In this way, the variations of the convection velocity of the shear-layer turbulent structures according to the nozzle-to-plate distance are shown. In the spectra obtained inside and outside of the flow near the nozzle, several tones emerge at Strouhal numbers in agreement with measurements in the literature. At these frequencies, by applying Fourier decomposition to the pressure fields, hydrodynamic-acoustic standing waves containing a whole number of cells between the nozzle and the plate and axisymmetric or helical jet oscillations are found. The tone frequencies and the mode numbers inferred from the standing-wave patterns are in line with the classical feedback-loop model, in which the loop is closed by acoustic waves outside the jet. The axisymmetric or helical nature of the jet oscillations at the tone frequencies is also consistent with a wave analysis using a jet vortex-sheet model, providing the allowable frequency ranges for the upstream-propagating acoustic wave modes of the jet. In particular, the tones are located on the part of the dispersion relations of the modes where these waves have phase and group velocities close to the ambient speed of sound. Based on the observation of the pressure fields and on frequency–wavenumber spectra on the jet axis and in the shear layers, such waves are identified inside the present jets, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, for a supersonic jet flow. This study thus suggests that the feedback loop in ideally expanded impinging jets is completed by these waves.


It is clear that society worldwide must immediately begin to mitigate its environmental damage in order to sustain life on Earth. In this regard, researchers all over the global are exploring new energy efficient alternatives to power everything from cars to cell phones. The following brief describes research conducted on Microbial Fuel Cells (MFC) and its ability to utilize bacteria to produce electricity from biological masses for low energy consumer products While structurally the MFC is very similar to a Conventional Fuel Cell, the two systems have inherent differences that change the reactions, inputs and energy output. Currently, we have found MFC to produce only a fraction of the power (~1A/cm2 vs ~1mA/ cm2 ) produced by a conventional CFC, however, its versatility keeps MFCs as a promising fuel source potential. A Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative has organized to examine and test the potential of MFC. The team is divided into three teams based on industry domains and expertise: microbiology, chemistry and electrochemistry, and engineering and modeling. The followin master thesis research was part of the engineering and modeling team lead by Professor Ronney XX. The goal of our team was to construct a first version of a computational model simulating the MFC system. The computational model is be based on combustion kinetics and a diffusion-reaction system theories, and is manipulated to immatate a biological system that can maximize its energy output. The model has been constructed in Fluent. Starting out with a 1D model, and consequently moved on to a 2D version. The final model is a diffusion-reaction system with 6 different species, a 3-step reaction, including a bacterial anodic oxidation, a cathodic reduction, and a possibility of taking into account a counteracting anodic reaction for oxygen crossover through the membrane. While the model has been proven to correlate well with lab tested experimental results, the team will continue to identify conditions to maximize the MFC's efficiency and energy output.


Assessing Breast Cancer Screening Among Cameroonian Women in the United States of America by Jacqueline A. Batcha MPH, Walden University, 2010 BSN, Wilmington University, 2004 B.A Law, University of Yaoundé, 1992 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Health Walden University November 2019 Abstract Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. Nonadherence to recommended screening guidelines and lack of screening contribute to late stage diagnosis and increased morbidity and mortality among racial and ethnic women in the United States. The purpose of this study was to assess breast cancer screening practices, knowledge, and beliefs among Cameroonian immigrant women whoBreast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. Nonadherence to recommended screening guidelines and lack of screening contribute to late stage diagnosis and increased morbidity and mortality among racial and ethnic women in the United States. The purpose of this study was to assess breast cancer screening practices, knowledge, and beliefs among Cameroonian immigrant women who were 40 years and older living in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. region. This quantitative cross-sectional study was guided by the health belief model and used the revised version of Champion's health belief model scale. A convenience sample (N=267) responded to a 60-item self-administered online survey that assessed knowledge of breast cancer screening, demographic variables, constructs of the health belief model and adherence (defined as obtaining a mammogram within two years). Data analyses performed included descriptive analysis, correlational and multiple linear regression. Results of this study revealed that increased level of education and self-efficacy were associated with greater knowledge of the benefits of mammography. Additionally, women who had more self-efficacy in obtaining a mammogram, perceived less cultural barriers, lived longer in the United States, and who had a regular healthcare provider were more likely to be adherent. Study findings suggest that positive social change can be achieved by empowering women to take control of their health. Efforts promoting awareness of breast cancer screening guidelines and facilitating access to a regular healthcare provider could significantly increase uptake of screening services and lead to better health outcomes and reduced mortality. Assessing Breast Cancer Screening Among Cameroonian Women in the United States of America by Jacqueline A. Batcha MPH, Walden University, 2010 BSN, Wilmington University, 2004 B.A Law, University of Yaoundé, 1992 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Public Health


In recent decades, climate change in Iran has led to the introduction of specific plants that have less water requirement than policymakers. Saffron cultivation has a long history in Iran and saffron was ranked as one of these figures on the agenda of policymakers. Here we presented the evaluation of Climate Change Impact on Saffron Water Requirement by GIS Modeling in Ardabil Provincel. We spot periods 1992-2017 and 2017-2040 as base and future period, respectively. For CCCSN, the data from five global climate models (GCMs) from the CGCM3T47 archive were selected that cover three 'Representative Concentration Pathways' (RCPs) scenarios. Potential evapotranspiration is estimated by Torrent White method. The accuracy of models at base period was determined by evaluation criteria, such as the RMSE, R2. Results showed that accuracy of CGCM3T47 model on A1B scenario was higher than other AOGCM models which used on base term. Also, it illustrated that water requirement will rise in all capable regions of state on 2040. In universal, average of addition of water requirement is 67, where in Germi, capital of state, we will have maximum variations by 95 mm ascension for the year 2040. Also, pole of production saffron in state, Bilasvar will have 40 mm ascension in saffron water requirement. Mean water requirement of saffron will be constantly increasing. In the meanwhile, the index of 425.52 mm for the year 2017 to 487.61 mm for the year 2040 were performed.


Social protection policies related to food security in Burkina Faso play a crucial role in improving the well-being of the population. This report examines the school feeding programme in Burkina Faso; looking at the way it works and identifying key good practices. The government's stable commitment and the gradually planned handover by WFP and CRS are key factors for the continuation of the programme. Other positive aspects include the links to national reserves, the active participation of communities and appropriate geographic targeting. The specific procedures to promote the enrolment and attendance of girls are also positively assessed. The report's recommendations include: ensuring a stable budget; paying the school cooks; promoting local purchases; ensuring food availability during the lean season; connecting the school feeding programme with other health and nutrition-related initiatives; improving programme monitoring; and strengthening the capacity of all actors involved.


Multiphase CFD models recently have proved promising in modelling cross‐shore sediment transport and morphodynamics (Jacobsen et al 2014). However, modelling breaking wave turbulence remains a major challenge for these models, because it occurs at very different spatial and temporal length scales and involves the interaction between surface generated turbulence and turbulence generated in the bottom boundary layer. To an extent these challenges arise from a lack of appropriate experimental data, since most previous experimental studies involved breaking waves at small-scale, and have not permitted investigation of the turbulent boundary layer processes. Moreover, most existing studies have concentrated on regular waves, thereby excluding the flow and turbulence dynamics occurring at wave group time-scales under irregular waves within the surf zone. These limitations motivated a new experiment in the large-scale CIEM wave flume in Barcelona involving regular and irregular waves. The experiment was conducted in May-July 2017 within the HYDRALAB+ Transnational Access project HYBRID.


This dissertation investigates the representation and narratological function of
systemic oppression in the fictional worlds of contemporary middle-grade fantastika
novels. This project aims to add further insights to current discussions regarding
diversity and social justice literature for young readers. In order to distinguish
between the forms of oppression a text critiques and those it accepts as natural and
normal, this thesis offers a method for identifying and critiquing the representation
of systemic oppression in fictional contexts.
This research deploys Black Feminist criticism in the analysis of over one
hundred Anglophone middle-grade fantastika novels published in the first twenty
years of the twenty-first century (2000-2019) from Canada, the United States, the
United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Patricia Hill Collins' theory of the matrix of
domination, a theoretical approach to the differing domains of power in a system of
oppression, is the foundational framework that informs this project.
This thesis's findings include the ways in which defamiliarization may be used
to improve understandings of systemic oppression. A fictional world's ability to
construct familiar social structures in new and innovative ways offers scholars the
opportunity to analyze and understand the organization, management, justification
and experiences of oppression in different contexts. This allows for an understanding
of oppression outside of the examples found in the scholar's own particular context.
From here, narratological and rhetorical studies of literature can better develop
nuanced arguments regarding oppression and oppressed characters.
The conclusion of this project argues the significant necessity of
intersectionality theory, both in the writing and reading of literature. Ostensible
narratives of social justice risk contributing to systemic oppression when they do not
emphasize the harms of oppression in all its intersecting forms. By employing an
intersectional approach, this research distinguishes between diverse and progressive
texts that still maintain the status quo, and those that promote liberating, systemic
upheaval.


Pituitary tumors in which no excess hormone secretion can be identified clinically have been considered as nonfunctioning or null-cell adenomas. Immunocytochemical data presented here suggest that many of these tumors contain subunits of the glycoprotein hormones. Of 160 patients referred for pituitary surgery, 37 (23%) had no evidence of excess hormone secretion on preoperative endocrine evaluation. Immunocytochemical staining of these tumors was carried out using antibodies specific for prolactin, growth hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, the beta subunits of luteinizing hormone (beta-LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (beta-FSH), and thyroid-stimulating hormone (beta-TSH), and the alpha subunit. One or more of these pituitary hormones were detected in 73% of cases. The alpha and beta subunits were detected most frequently, being found in 68% of cases; 27% had staining for one or more beta subunits and 37.9% had staining for both alpha and beta subunits. The incidence was: beta-FSH in 58%, beta-LH in 47%, beta-TSH in 33%, and the alpha subunit in 42%. Staining for multiple glycoprotein hormones was common (52%), and mixed glycoprotein hormones and prolactin cell types were found in 16% of cases. These data suggest that most apparently nonfunctioning pituitary tumors contain immunoreactive hormones and the majority of these are subunits of the glycoprotein hormones. Since the glycoprotein hormone beta subunits must combine with the alpha subunit to produce biologically active hormones, the production of the subunits alone may not have endocrine manifestations.


The World Health Report 2006 - Working together for health contains an expert assessment of the current crisis in the global health workforce and ambitious proposals to tackle it over the next ten years starting immediately. The report reveals an estimated shortage of almost 4.3 million doctors midwives nurses and support workers worldwide. The shortage is most severe in the poorest countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa where health workers are most needed. Focusing on all stages of the health workers career lifespan from entry to health training to job recruitment through to retirement the report lays out a ten-year action plan in which countries can build their health workforces with the support of global partners.


Typical optoelectronic devices are transducers used to realize energy conversion between light and electric current. Optoelectronic devices have a wide variety of applications as diverse as e.g. light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic technology, photoconductive cells, laser diodes, photoemissive camera tubes, optocouplers etc. Their versatile utility necessitates a cost-efficient industrial-scale production. The last decade has witnessed a rapid development and great improvement in the efficiency of optoelectronic devices and revealed their evergrowing need in new organic semiconducting materials that are at the heart of such devices. This review article covers the electronic properties of silole-based organic semiconductors including tetraarylsilole, spirosilole, fused silole molecules and polymers, recently applied in OLEDs and OPVs, and their optoelectronic device performances. And an outlook on the future investigations of silole-based materials is offered.


Abstract The Vietnamese government implemented the forest devolution policy in the 1990s, aiming to provide local households with individual rights to forest land and forest resources. This paper studies effects of the policy on local dynamic use of forest land and forest resources in northern Vietnam. It explores particularly the fuzzy property relations on forest land after the implementation of the policy. The findings show that, despite the emphasis on abstract rules in forest devolution policy, actual property relationships are highly fuzzy and very much contested among local people and between them and various local state agencies. On the ground, different actors maintain different claims to the same resources, and their claims are all equally legitimate. The outcomes of forest devolution policy are shaped not merely by the policy itself, but also by other factors such as villagers' notions of rural landscapes and local power relations. Fuzziness actually creates opportunities for a local elite who have access to political power to channel most of the benefit derived from forest land and forest resources to themselves. Unless all actors agree to sit down and discuss balancing their interests and also their power over the forest, contestation among them will never be resolved.


Objective: To investigate the effect of combination epidural bupivacaine and intravenous parecoxib analgesia on  immune response in patients who underwent open reduction and internal fixation of the lower limb under epidural anesthesia. Methods: This research was conducted using the randomized, placebo-controlled double blind trial method on 52 patients who were randomly divided into 2 groups: the Parecoxib group which received 40 mg intravenous parecoxib for 30 minutes before incision and the control group which received an equal volume of 0.9% normal saline. Both groups received epidural anesthesia and postoperative epidural 0.125% bupivacaine analgesia continously. Venous blood samples were obtained before parecoxib administration, 2 and 24 hours after the surgery. The data were analyzed using Mann Whitney U and Independent t tests (p<0.05). Results: There was a significant difference between the two groups (p<0.05) in IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10 levels and proinflammatory to anti-inflammatory ratio, 2 hours after surgery. Conclusions: Multimodal analgesic combination of 40 mg IV parecoxib and 0.125% bupivacaine epidural analgesia have the effect to alter and stabilize the  systemic immune response. Keywords: Cytokines, epidural analgesia, interleukins, immune response, parecoxib, tissue damage DOI : 10.15850/ijihs.v2n1.272


1. The forms of peripherally triggered or localized pains are differentiated: Local pain of a neuromatous character, propagated pain, sympathalgia, phantom pain, causalgia, and combined forms. 2. Surgical operations are performed locally, to the spinal cord, brain, and sympathicus, as well as by neurostimulation on all levels. 3. The areas of indication differ according to the localization of pain and its probable cause. 4. Serving the prevention of pain after peripheral nerve injuries are the particular topical treatment of a fresh injury, psychic guidance, specific aftercare and physiotherapy, elimination of pension payment problems, and optimum reintegration into normal working life]


To evaluate similar reports of HIV/AIDS and AIDS deaths in Brazil by age, focusing on the geriatric group. Descriptive epidemiological study based on public databases and statistical analyses of HIV reports between 2007-2016 and cases of AIDS and AIDS deaths between 1980-2016, divided by age and sex. Of the 164,535 HIV cases reported between 2007-2016, 3.13% were elderly. Regarding AIDS cases between 1980-2004 and 2005-2016, there was an increase of 109.12% in the elderly and 208.44% in the elderly, associated with the rise in deaths in these groups. Comparing the numbers of AIDS and HIV cases from 2007-2016, there was an increase in the HIV/AIDS relationship with the advancing age. Strategies are needed that provide a decline in the number of elderly people with HIV, through investment in prevention, multidisciplinary team and public policies.


Report of a meeting held jointly by the Mineral Deposits Studies Group and the Applied Mineralogy Group of the Mineralogical Society, at Burlington House on 14 May, 1981. This joint meeting adopted as its theme the central topic of fluids involved in mineralization, and 15 papers were presented. The emphasis was on aqueous mineralizing fluids in settings varying from granite-related tin-tungsten deposition to groundwaters involved in syn-sedimentary mineralization. Several speakers reported on studies involving or centred about fluid inclusions. Other subjects included hydro-thermal experimental investigations, mineralogy and wallrock geochemistry. For the most part, the speakers took a practical approach to specific fluid/rock systems, though not neglecting discussion of the broader concepts involved. In the case of fluid inclusion work, continuing advance in analytical procedure is bringing out ever greater detail of fluid chemistry, thus allowing a more direct examination of the problems of metal transport in aqueous systems. Rankin & Alderton reviewed their study of fluid inclusions in quartz from SW England granites, emphasizing the relationship between the variety of inclusion types encountered and the thermal and mineralization history of the area. Improved identification of daughter minerals including unusual chloride phases by SEM and of minor elements in the fluids such as boron and tin by ICP analysis is now an important part of this work. Bull described the complex mineral paragenesis in veins related to minor granite bodies in the Gunnislake area of Cornwall, and related it to


A retrospective analysis was performed on 66 patients with anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) and 177 patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GM). The prognostic importance of age, performance status, tumour location, extent of surgery and radiation treatment was studied. Radiation therapy gave a significant improvement in survival in both AA (p less than 0.003) and GM (p less than 0.002), but was given only to patients in a good neurological condition. Both younger age (p less than 0.003), and good preoperative performance status (p less than 0.002) were associated with a longer survival in AA, but not in GM. Extensive surgery was correlated with a better immediate postoperative performance, a lower one-month mortality rate and a longer survival, in both AA and GM. There was no relationship between preoperative neurological function status and the extent of surgery. Because of the retrospective nature of this study, the conclusion is that performing extensive surgery instead of limited surgery does not lead to more deterioration in postoperative neurological function.


A substantial majority of non-agricultural workers in a developing country such as Cameroon engage in legal businesses below the governmental radar, that is, in the informal sector. Because the financial crisis has expanded the informal sector in the global North, developing economies' experience with that sector is of world-wide relevance. A pilot study in five Cameroonian markets is thus of general interest when it reveals that entrepreneurs there do not benefit from formal business laws, which in turn limits their ability to borrow and their willingness to lend. Formal business laws do exist in the formal sector; however, trying to move informal-sector workers to the formal sector where these laws already offer some protection can disrupt the entrepreneurs' ability to sustain themselves, and to contribute to the national economy. As to bringing the formal business laws to the workers in the informal sector: the one formal law that the interviewees appeared to experience was tax law. The interviewees described a government using power to extract payments, instead of deploying strategies of respectful reciprocity and providing public goods which, according to the tax-morale literature, would encourage compliance. The experience of Cameroon's informal sector with formal tax law is thus not an appropriate template for introducing formal business laws into that sector. The pro-business strategy is, instead, to apply tax-morale learning to reinforcing formal business laws. For informal-sector businesses wherever located, the strategy calls for government authorities that are respectful, and focused on building basic infrastructure.


In high-pressure common rail fuel injection system, fuel pressure wave propagates back and forth in the system during fuel injection, and the cycle fuel injection volume is affected by the fluctuation of fuel injection pressure. Therefore, to reduce the influence of pressure fluctuation on the cycle fuel injection volume fluctuation, it is of great theoretical significance to analyze the mechanism of pressure fluctuation and its influence law. In this chapter, the dynamic pressure fluctuation characteristics of the high-pressure common rail fuel injection system are analyzed based on the injector inlet pressure, and experimental research and theoretical analysis are carried out for the time domain and frequency domain characteristics of injector inlet pressure fluctuation, aiming at revealing the pressure fluctuation mechanism and its influence law, and providing theoretical support for improving the control accuracy of multiple injection cycle fuel injection volume.


Fault tuples represent a defect modeling mechanism capable of capturing the logical misbehavior of arbitrary defects in digital circuits. To justify this claim, this paper describes two types of logic faults (state transition and signal line faults) and formally shows how fault tuples can be used to precisely represent any number of faults of this kind. The capability of fault tuples to capture misbehaviors beyond logic faults is then illustrated using many examples of varying degree of complexity. In particular, the ability of fault tuples to modulate fault controllability and observability is examined. Finally, it is described how fault tuples can and have been used to enhance testing tasks such as fault simulation, test generation, and diagnosis, and enable new capabilities such as interfault collapsing and application-based quality metrics


This paper studies the design of optimal enforcement policies with ordered leniency to detect and deter harmful short-term activities committed by groups of injurers. With ordered leniency, the degree of leniency granted to an injurer who self-reports depends on his or her position in the self-reporting queue. We show that the ordered-leniency policy that induces maximal deterrence gives successively larger discounts to injurers who secure higher positions in the reporting queue. This creates a so-called race to the courthouse in which all injurers self-report promptly and, as a result, social harm is reduced. We show that the expected fine increases with the size of the group, which thus discourages the formation of large illegal enterprises. The first-best outcome is obtained with ordered leniency when the externalities associated with the harmful activities are not too great. Our findings complement Kaplow and Shavell's results for single-injurer environments.


Purpose This research sought to identify the utility value of chest computed tomography (CT) when it comes to the diagnosis of lung metastasis in cases of colorectal cancer. Methods From September 2004 to January 2008, 266 patients who were treated for colorectal cancer at Department of Surgery, Hanyang University College of Medicine, were divided into two groups: one that underwent preoperative and postoperative periodical chest CT (periodical inspection group, PIG; May 2006 to January 2008, 135 patients) and one that did not undergo periodical chest CT (non-periodical inspection group, NPIG; September 2004 to April 2006, 131 patients) for comparison. Results The overall lung metastasis diagnosis rates did not manifest any significant difference. The times to diagnose lung metastasis patients were 6.3 months and 15.7 months for the PIG and the NPIG, respectively (P = 0.022). The size of the metastatic lung nodule was smaller in the PIG than in the NPIG (< 1 cm in 9/9 patients vs. < 1 cm in 6/9 patients in the PIG and the NPIG, respectively; P = 0.02). A solitary lung metastasis was more frequently found in the PIG (5/9 patients) than in the NPIG (1/11 patients) (P = 0.024). During the follow-up period, 100% (2/2 patients) and 60% (3/5 patients) of the patients in the PIG and the NPIG, respectively, with stage III cancer underwent a lung metastasectomy (P = 0.002). Conclusion Chest CT enables early diagnosis with a smaller size and a lower number of lung metastases in patients with colorectal cancer. Moreover, pulmonary the rate of the pulmonary resection for selected patients may be improved. However, the contribution of chest CT to increasing the survival rate must be investigated in a prospective randomized study.


BACKGROUND
Most studies dealing with health problems of the Roma population suggests that a low economic status significantly contributes to their overall poor health. In Serbia, Roma people are members of a marginalized ethnic group with a low socioeconomic status which contributes to their much higher morbidity and mortality rate compared with the majority population. The questions we asked in this paper were: Are Roma children discriminated during hospital care? Do they get the same treatment as the non-Roma children?

PATIENTS AND METHODS
To answer these questions, we examined medical records of 59 Roma children and compared with 59 records of non-Roma children in order to determine whether there are any differences in the health status, as well as the length, course, outcome, and cost of treatment.

RESULTS
Roma children have statistically significant more comorbidity, more malnutritions, more skin diseases (especially parasitic and fungal infections) and were more frequently anemic. Also, the length of hospitalization of Roma children was significantly higher, as well as the number of laboratory tests performed and number of drugs prescribed, which contribute to the significantly higher costs of treatment for Roma children compared to non-Roma children. However, a significantly lower number of Roma children were discharged as "completely cured".

CONCLUSIONS
The results of our study does not support hypothesis of discrimination of Roma children concerning medical treatment in observed hospital. At the same time, our results suggests that social interventions (e.g. hygienic housing, water supply, etc.) and prevention measures could prevent necessity of hospitalized treatment of Roma children and could diminish the drain on the health budget spent on treating the consequences of social neglect.


The painted redstart Myioborus pictus uses visual displays to flush, pursue, and then capture an abundance of brachyceran Diptera that are equipped with giant fiber escape circuits. This paper investigates the relationships between features of the giant fiber system, the structure of visual stimuli produced by redstarts and their effectiveness in eliciting escape reactions by flies. The results show that dipterous taxa having large-diameter giant fibers extending short distances from the brain to motor neurons involved in escape are flushed at greater distances than taxa with longer and small-diameter giant fibers. The results of behavioral tests show the importance of angular acceleration of expanding image edges on the compound eye in eliciting escape responses. Lateral motion of stimulus profile edges as well as structured visual profiles additionally contribute to the sensitivity of one or more neural systems that trigger escape. Retinal subtense and angular velocity are known to trigger physiological responses in fly giant fiber circuits, but the contributions of edge length and lateral motion in a looming stimulus suggest that escape pathways might also receive inputs from circuits that are tuned to different types of motion. The present results suggest that these several properties of escape pathways have contributed to the evolution of foraging displays and plumage patterns in flush-pursuing birds.


We have undertaken to characterize the role of cytoplasmic 5'-nucleotidase (EC 184.108.40.206) in the phosphorylation of the anti-herpes simplex virus and anti-human cytomegalovirus agent ganciclovir (GCV) in MOLT-4 cells, a human T cell line adapted to grow in suspension culture. The rate of formation of GCV triphosphate was found to be approximately doubled by preincubation of nontransfected MOLT-4 cells with agents that cause the accumulation of IMP, such as ribavirin (20 microM) and mycophenolic acid (1 microM), and the reaction rate was found to be unaffected by high levels of thymidine (100 microM). With herpes simplex virus-1 thymidine kinase (HStk) gene-transduced MOLT-4 cells, the rate of GCV phosphorylation was approximately 40-fold faster than that in uninfected cells and, in marked contrast to uninfected cells, the reaction was significantly inhibited both by IMP dehydrogenase inhibitors and by thymidine. These latter effects appear to be the result of 1) the accumulation of high levels of dTTP in IMP dehydrogenase inhibitor-treated cells, with consequent feedback inhibition of HStk, and 2) direct competitive substrate inhibition by thymidine of the HStk-catalyzed phosphorylation of GCV. Thus, agents that enhance 5'-nucleotidase-catalyzed phosphorylation of GCV in uninfected cells do not play a similar role in HStk-transfected cells, a consequence of the quantitative predominance of the viral thymidine kinase-catalyzed reaction over that attributable to endogenous cytoplasmic 5'-nucleotidase.


Type 2 diabetes accounts for a large proportion of cardiovascular disease within the UK. Inflammation is increasingly seen as a core process (even touted as a causative factor) connecting the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Inflammatory markers, adhesion molecules, transcription regulators such as PPAR-gamma and NF-kappa B are being recognised as key elements of the underlying pathological process. In particular the links between oxidative stress, metabolic syndrome components and a pro-inflammatory milieu are becoming increasingly recognised. Salicylates have been used extensively for more than a hundred years but remain the subject of much research and scientific debate. Mechanisms of aspirin action, such as effects on endothelial function, oxidative stress, hyperglycaemia, inflammation, and mechanisms of aspirin resistance are being elucidated. With the advent of COX-2 selective inhibitors, the importance of the cyclo-oxygenase (COX-1 & COX-2 enzymes) pathways and the implications of more selective COX manipulation are being re-evaluated. There is no universal consensus on the use and dose of aspirin in diabetes. This review focuses upon the impact that aspirin may have to ameliorate the pathophysiology of diabetes and CVD.


Napoleon's scientific contingent made one of the first collections of echinoderms of the Indian Ocean when they visited the Gulf of Suez and the north-western coast of the Red Sea. Our knowledge of the echinoderms of the Indian Ocean is mainly due to the various expeditions, starting with the Challenger Expedition (1873-1874) to the recent International Indian Ocean Expedition (1961-1965) organised with the co-operation of several nations. Apart from these expeditions small vessels engaged in marine survey notably the R.I.M.S. Investigator and the vessels belonging to the Union of South African Fisheries and Marine Biological Survey have collected many echinoderms from the Indian and South African waters respectively. Numerous individual workers who collected the echinoderms from various parts of the Indian Ocean have also significantly contributed to our knowledge of the echinoderms of the Indian Ocean. This paper reviews a history of the echinodermology of the Indian Ocean.


After an embryological review, the author describes the macroscopic and surgical aspects of cervicofacial lymphangiomas and hemolymphangiomas. Therapeutic difficulties are variable and are discussed with regard to different clinical forms. There are all degrees between benign forms which are easy to treat and major forms which raise difficult therapeutic problems because of their extent. These severe forms may threaten the vital prognosis by virtue of their own complications but also because of their excision. Lymphangiomas, or rather hemolymphangiomas, are a complex vascular malformation diagnosed most often shortly after birth, the treatment and surgical excision of which are often delicate, possibly influencing not only the functional prognosis but also the vital prognosis.


PURPOSE
To determine if, with use of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging guidance alone, transcaval puncture of the superior mesenteric vein (SMV) and/or portal vein is feasible with a percutaneous femoral vein approach.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approved the animal studies. Ten inferior vena cava (IVC)-SMV punctures were performed in six pigs. An active MR intravascular needle system was used for all transvascular punctures, and all procedures were performed with a 1.5-T MR unit. The needle was introduced via a 12-F femoral vein sheath and advanced into the IVC by using a real-time gradient-recalled-echo sequence (3.4/1.2 [repetition time msec/echo time msec], 45 degrees flip angle, and six to eight frames per second). Fast transverse spoiled gradient-recalled acquisition in the steady state (SPGR) (6.0/1.5, 60 degrees flip angle, one frame per second) was performed to confirm needle trajectory. The needle system was advanced under real-time MR imaging to puncture the SMV. The location of the needle tip was confirmed with a fast spin-echo sequence (1904/4.5, 36-cm field of view). A direct MR portogram was obtained after the administration of gadopentetate dimeglumine at a concentration of 25% with fast SPGR (6/1.3, 90 degrees flip angle, no section selection, three frames per second). Success was defined as entry into the mesenteric venous system without traversal of any retroperitoneal organs or adjacent vasculature.

RESULTS
Successful MR imaging-guided IVC-SMV punctures were performed in all 10 procedures (100%). The needle was fully visualized as it traversed the retroperitoneum and entered the SMV. MR portograms were successfully obtained following all punctures through the needle. Conventional transverse MR imaging helped confirm that the needle did not traverse any retroperitoneal organs or vessels.

CONCLUSION
With use of only MR imaging guidance and an active MR imaging intravascular needle system, the authors were able to successfully puncture the SMV from the IVC with direct visualization of the needle and all retroperitoneal structures.


Purpose To investigate whether financial incentives could reverse the trend of declining interest in primary care specialties among U.S. medical students. Method An electronic survey was sent to all U.S. fourth-year MD and DO medical students in 2009 with a Department of Defense service obligation. Students not selecting a primary care residency were asked if a hypothetical bonus paid before and after residency or an increase in annual salary of attendings in primary care specialties would have resulted in these students selecting primary care. Logistic regression was used to determine student characteristics associated with accepting a financial incentive. Results The survey response rate was 56% (447/797). Sixty-six percent of students did not apply for a primary care residency. Of these, 30% would have applied for primary care if they had been given a median bonus of $27,500 (interquartile range [IQR] $15,000–$50,000) before and after residency. Forty-one percent of students would have considered applying for primary care for a median military annual salary after residency of $175,000 (IQR $150,000–$200,000). Students who considered primary care but chose a controllable lifestyle specialty (e.g., radiology) were nearly four times more likely to name an influential hypothetical salary than were students who did not consider primary care and chose a noncontrollable lifestyle specialty (e.g., surgery) (67% versus 17%, P < .0001). Conclusions U.S. medical students, particularly those considering primary care but selecting controllable lifestyle specialties, are more likely to consider applying for a primary care specialty if provided a financial incentive.


The dengue vector, the mosquito Aedes aegypti, is present in urban settings in north Queensland, thereby putting the region at risk of outbreaks of dengue. This review describes some features of the 9 outbreaks of dengue that occurred in north Queensland over the 4 years, 2005-2008.


There are an estimated 400 000-550 000 km of unpaved resource roads in British Columbia. These roads are used for forest, mineral, and energy development, commercial and public recreation, and in some cases for access to private land holdings. This literature summary lists road effects on terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, plant communities, and physical elements found across landscapes in British Columbia. These effects may be local or may apply to large areas. Road effects can occur during construction or with subsequent road presence, upkeep, and use. Also summarized are recommendations meant to reduce negative road effects. These include taking a strategic approach to road and access management, using structured road planning methods and tools, implementing mitigation techniques, and following up with effectiveness monitoring and reporting. The summary also provides recommendations for further studies of road effects.


A problem that is frequently found in large-scale multiple testing is that, in the present stage of experiment (e.g. gene microarray, functional MRI), the signals are so faint that it is impossible to attain a desired level of testing power, and one has to enroll more samples in the follow-up experiment. Suppose we are going to enlarge the sample size by n times in the follow-up experiment, where n > 1 is not necessary an integer. A problem of great interest is, given data based on the current stage of experiment, how to predict the testing power after the sample size is enlarged by n times. We consider test z-scores and model the test statistics in the current experiment as Xj ∼ N(μj , 1), 1 ≤ j ≤ p. We propose a Fourier approach to predicting the testing power after n replicates. The approach produces a very accurate prediction for moderately large values of n ( n ≤ 7). Finally, we discuss potential applications of this method on real data with emphasis on gene microarray data. Acknowledgement : I would like to thank Peter Huggins for his valuable discussions.


Renewable energy sources play a key role. The Polish legal system takes into account public participation in the investment process. This also applies to the construction of a wind power plant. In Poland, there is still opposition from local communities to the choice of location and the implementation of an investment project involving the construction of a wind power plant. The aim of this article is to assess the public perception of the construction of a wind farm located in the municipality of Rajgród. The survey of the local community opinion was conducted on the basis of a questionnaire carried out through a direct interview. By using the conditional valuation method (CVM), which uses the ready-to-pay (WTP) techniques, residents' preferences regarding participation in investment financing costs were also examined. Surveys carried out show that the inhabitants of the commune support renewable energy sources and some of the respondents are willing to partially subsidize them. The research has shown that there is a correlation between the age, education and income of the respondents and the amount of co-financing declared by them for the construction of a wind farm in the commune of Rajgród. The largest group of people willing to finance the investment were people in the age groups 26-40 and 41-65. The declared willingness to finance the investment was 1,86 EUR (10% of people) and 2,33 EUR (15% of people). These were people aged between 41-65 with their income of over 232,56 EUR. Only 2% of the respondents declared the amount of 1,16 EUR and they were people over 65 years of age with an average monthly income of about 116,28 EUR.


To the Editor.— Women who have been pregnant before the diagnosis of their cutaneous melanoma have been reported to have a greater survival rate than that noted for nulligravida women. The longer survival was said to be greater in women older than 50 years. Hersey et al 1 postulated that the exposure of women during pregnancy to foreign antigens may, in some way, result in enhanced resistance to their tumor. A review of 301 clinical stage I women with cutaneous melanoma (prospective consecutive series—Melanoma Clinical Cooperative Group—Massachusetts General Hospital and New York University [1972-1977]) revealed that neither the five-nor nine-year survival rates were statistically different when the nulligravida and the prior pregnancy groups were compared. The nine-year survival rate for the 92 never pregnant women was 87% compared to 83% for the 199 parous women. Of the 141 women older than 50 years, the nine-year survival rates were 86%


The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology recently hosted a special exhibition, entitled Life in Miniature: Identity and Display at Ancient Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, co-curated by myself (Stephanie Langin-Hooper) and Sharon Herbert. Indeed, the focus of the show was to illustrate how and why terracotta figurines and other miniatures were used in the everyday lives of the people of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris.


Aims To investigate the risks posed to young people from the recreational use of nitrous oxide ("laughing gas"). Methods We highlight the case of a girl aged 15 who presented to a Children's Emergency Department with significant subcutaneous emphysema, pneumothorax and pneumomediastinum, following nitrous oxide inhalation at a festival the previous day. We reviewed the current literature in order to understand the scope of nitrous oxide use amongst the teenage population. We reviewed previous published case studies along with statistics from the International Centre for Drug Policy.1 Results Pneumothorax and pneumomediastinum are recognised complications of illicit drug use. The underlying pathophysiology relates to barotrauma created by the inhalation technique.2 Inhalation of Nitrous Oxide has the added complication of pneumothorax expansion, due to its high blood-gas partition coefficient. Accordingly complications from the inhalation of nitrous oxide may be significantly worse than for users of other inhaled recreational drugs. Recreational nitrous oxide use amongst the teenage population has risen exponentially over the past five years, with 7.6% of 16–24 year olds in England and Wales admitting to having tried nitrous oxide in 2013.3 Seventeen deaths in the UK were attributable to nitrous oxide between 2006–2012,1 a figure which we would expect to rise given current surge in usage. Conclusion Nitrous oxide inhalation poses a significant risk to the teenage population. Pneumothorax should be considered in any teenager presenting after inhaling gaseous or volatile agents, and recreational drug use should be considered and addressed in teenagers presenting with a pneumothorax of unknown aetiology. References John Corkery HC, Loi B, Goodair C, Schifano F. Drug Related Deaths in the UK: Jan-Dec 2012–2013 Phillipe Camus ECR. Drug-induced and Iatrogenic Respiratory Disease: CRC Press; 2010. 364p Office H. Drug Misuse: Findings from the 2013/14 Crime Survey for England and Wales. www.gov.uk: Government, ONS; 2014 15/08/2014.


Familismo in the Latino culture is a value hallmarked by close relations with nuclear and extended family members throughout the life span, with pronounced levels of loyalty, reciprocity, and solidarity. Familismo is posited as health protective against alcohol misuse among Latinos in the United States. This study examines the relative influence of pre- and postimmigration familismo on alcohol use behaviors among recent Latino immigrants while accounting for myriad sociocultural factors (gender, age, documentation status, education, income, marital status, presence of family members in the United States, primary language used in the community, English language proficiency, and time in the United States). Participants included 405 young adults, aged 18 to 34 years, who were primarily of Cuban (50%), Columbian (19%), and Central American (15%) descent. Retrospective assessment of preimmigration familismo occurred during participants' first 12 months in the United States. Follow-up assessment of alcohol use behaviors occurred during participants' second year in the United States. Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) path modeling was used to test study hypotheses. Inverse associations were determined between preimmigration familismo and alcohol use quantity and harmful/hazardous alcohol use. Men and participants who reported more proficiency in English, and those living in neighborhoods where English is predominantly spoken, indicated more alcohol use quantity and harmful/hazardous alcohol use. By considering both pre- and postimmigration determinants of alcohol use, findings offer a fuller contextual understanding of the lives of Latino young adult immigrants. Results support the importance of lifelong familismo as a buffer against alcohol misuse in young adulthood.


The disinvestment decision is of importance in many contexts: if funds are tied up for too long in a poorly-performing project, then opportunities for re-investment may be missed. Optimal disinvestment theory is a component of real options theory, but is relatively ignored by experimentalists. Two recent papers conclude that decision-makers stay in projects longer than that prescribed by the optimal behaviour of a risk-neutral agent. This departure is explained through riskaversion, but without a formal hypothesis under test. We report here on an experiment which explains the behaviour of the subjects through an estimationof risk-aversion. We also explore an alternative hypothesis – that subjects are myopic. Our results show that few subjects appear to be risk-neutral, many seem to be risk-averse but few are myopic.


Bilingual termbanks are important for many natural language processing (NLP) applications, especially in translation workflows in industrial settings. In this paper, we apply a log-likelihood comparison method to extract monolingual terminology from the source and target sides of a parallel corpus. Then, using a Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation model, we create a bilingual terminology with the extracted monolingual term lists. We manually evaluate our novel terminology extraction model on English-to-Spanish and English-to-Hindi data sets, and observe excellent performance for all domains. Furthermore, we report the performance of our monolingual terminology extraction model comparing with a number of the state-of-the-art terminology extraction models on the English-to-Hindi datasets.


Abstract The assessment of major organ toxicities through in silico predictive models plays a crucial role in drug discovery. Computational tools can predict chemical toxicities using the knowledge gained from experimental studies which drastically reduces the attrition rate of compounds during drug discovery and developmental stages. The purpose of in silico predictions for drug leads and anticipating toxicological endpoints of absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity, clinical adverse impacts and metabolism of pharmaceutically active substances has gained widespread acceptance in academia and pharmaceutical industries. With unrestricted accessibility to powerful biomarkers, researchers have an opportunity to contemplate the most accurate predictive scores to evaluate drug's adverse impact on various organs. A multiparametric model involving physico-chemical properties, quantitative structure-activity relationship predictions and docking score was found to be a more reliable predictor for estimating chemical toxicities with potential to reflect atomic-level insights. These in silico models provide informed decisions to carry out in vitro and in vivo studies and subsequently confirms the molecules clues deciphering the cytotoxicity, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics and organ toxicity properties of compounds. Even though the drugs withdrawn by USFDA at later phases of drug discovery which should have passed all the state-of-the-art experimental approaches and currently acceptable toxicity filters, there is a dire need to interconnect all these molecular key properties to enhance our knowledge and guide in the identification of leads to drug optimization phases. Current computational tools can predict ADMET and organ toxicities based on pharmacophore fingerprint, toxicophores and advanced machine-learning techniques.


Pro-social and ethical behavior primarily understood as the ability to sacrifice one's own interest to the benefit of others leads to welfare improvements and social progress, whereas anti-social and unethical actions result in irrevocable welfare losses and destruction. This dissertation includes three independent laboratory experiments that investigate specific factors behind people's ethicality and prosociality. The research framework of the thesis is based on the moral psychology theories of self-image maintenance. The key idea of this approach is that people strive to maintain a positive self-image of themselves and use situational excuses to pursue a self-interest action they would otherwise consider inappropriate. In this respect, pro-social preferences are context dependent. The main emphasis of the experiments included in the thesis is on the dynamic nature of pro-social and ethical behavior, where one choice is studied in the context of another morally relevant action. Thus, the preferences to behave pro-socially are shown to be not only context but also path dependent. The thesis discusses the circumstances under which in the sequence of morally relevant choices consistent vs. balancing behavior emerges and seeks to provide empirical support for this discussion. The specific research questions addressed in the dissertation are as follows: is people´s willingness to donate affected by the ex-post information about the true need of the recipient? Are people that have been engaged in lying trying to compensate their wrongdoing afterwards by sharing more in the dictator game? To what extent the compensatory behavior is affected by the indirectness (delegation) of lying? Do participants with different mind-sets (outcome-based vs. rule based) account their previous ethical actions differently? The main findings of the dissertation corroborate the self-image maintenance paradigm. Participants who choose not to disclose the true need of the recipient shared significantly less, i.e. the ex-post blindness serves as an excuse for selfishness. Delegation of choice increases the incidence of lying, however, participants who delegate share more in the dictator game, i.e., they strive to compensate more than direct liars. Participants with rule-based mind-set (those who consider it inappropriate to sacrifice one person life to save five people in the trolley-dilemma task) and not the outcome-based participants react to examples of the unethical behavior of others by reducing their donations. The conclusion section of the dissertation outlines the areas for future research: the interplay of responsibility behind the action and the tendency to balance or compensate for it; the role of information acquisition in emotion-driven reciprocal behavior in social interactions; the effect of the moral account (previous un-ethical actions) on the social evaluation of the actors' behavior.


Our understanding of estrogen (17b-estradiol, E2) receptor biology has evolved in recent years with the discovery and characterization of a 7-transmembrane-spanning G protein–coupled estrogen receptor (GPER/GPR30) and the development of GPER-selective functional chemical probes. GPER is highly expressed in certain breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancers, establishing the importance of noninvasive methods to evaluate GPER expression in vivo. Here, we developed Tc-labeled GPER ligands to demonstrate the in vivo status of GPER as an estrogen receptor (ER) and for GPER visualization in whole animals. A series of Tc(I)-labeled nonsteroidal tetrahydro-3H-cyclopenta[c]quinolone derivatives was synthesized utilizing pyridin-2-yl hydrazine and picolylamine chelates. Radioligand receptor binding studies revealed binding affinities in the 10 to 30 nmol/L range. Cell signaling assays previously demonstrated that derivatives retaining a ketone functionality displayed agonist properties, whereas those lacking such a hydrogen bond acceptor were antagonists. In vivo biodistribution and imaging studies performed on mice bearing human endometrial and breast cancer cell xenografts yielded significant tumor uptake (0.4–1.1%ID/g). Blocking studies revealed specific uptake in multiple organs (adrenals, uterus, and mammary tissue), as well as tumor uptake with similar levels of competition byE2 andG-1, aGPER-selective agonist. In conclusion, we synthesized and evaluated a series of first-generation Tc-labeled GPER-specific radioligands, demonstrating GPER as an estrogenbinding receptor for the first time in vivo using competitive binding principles, and establishing the utility of such ligands as tumor imaging agents. These results warrant further investigation into the role of GPER in estrogenmediated carcinogenesis and as a target for diagnostic/therapeutic/image-guided drug delivery. Implications:These studies provide a molecular basis to evaluate GPER expression and function as an ER through in vivo imaging. Mol Cancer Res; 12(11); 1635–43. 2014 AACR.


In this article we present three central texts from the Dutch debate on the sublime between 1750 and 1850. It is surprising that hardly any attention has been paid to these three texts – and, by extension, to the translations of international works on the sublime that preceded their publication in the Dutch-language area. These texts, however, are not the work of second-rate authors: Paulus van Hemert, Johannes Kinker and Willem Bilderdijk are leading representatives of Dutch culture in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Each of these three authors was sufficiently familiar with the international debate on the sublime, as the occasional references in their texts to the writings of fellow authors on the sublime from other countries testify. They were also familiar with the history of the sublime, to which they no doubt hoped to contribute with their own texts. We give a short outline of this historical development and then try to place the Dutch interventions within the framework of the international debate. From this it may then transpire that 'Dutch attempts at sublimity' should not by definition be thought of disparagingly.


This study examines how the effect of entrepreneurship education on students' entrepreneurial intentions is (1) contingent on the mode of education (active, e.g. business plan seminar, vs reflective, e.g. theory lectures), (2) contingent on the regional context and (3) complemented by individual-level influences such as role models or work experience. Results show that active modes of entrepreneurship education directly increase intentions and attitudes, whereas the impact of reflective modes depends on the regional context. Parental role models and work experience are found to complement entrepreneurship education in different ways. The findings have important implications for theory building as well as for the practice of teaching entrepreneurship.


Genus Amblycorypha (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) is comprised of 14 nominal species exhibitinghighly similar morphologies. Three major morphologically similar species complexes exist in Amblycorypha – the uhleri, oblongifolia, and rotundifolia complexes. While each species ismorphological similar, the songs that males use to attract mates differ drastically among species. Recently collected male and female mating songs suggest multiple undescribed species exist within the rotundifoliacomplex. Using molecular techniques, I aim to delimit species groups within Amblycorypha and attempt to reconstruct their evolutionary histories. The ITS1 (~461 bp), 5.8S (174 bp), and ITS2 (240 bp) nuDNA regions and a partial CO1 (523 bp) mtDNA gene were sequenced using massively parallel sequencing technologies. The CO1 mtDNA region was the most variable (10.1% overall mean distance), followed by ITS2 (1.1% mean distance), ITS1 (0.9% mean distance), and 5.8S (0.02% mean distance). A single nucleotide polymorphism was present in 5.8S uniting the uhleri complex as a clade. K2P interspecificdifferences had large overlap in both nominal species groups and unknown species groups. ML and MSC phylogenetic analyses recovered the uhleri complex as monophyletic, while the oblongifolia and rotundifolia complexes were polyphyletic. Additionally, 6 distinct clades of 'unknown specimens' were recovered in ML and MSC analyses using all gene targets. Finally, A. bartrami may represent a species complex based on the molecular evidence presented here. This study represents the first molecularphylogeny for genus Amblycorypha. While incomplete, this study supports additional cryptic species within the rotundifolia complex that were initially detected based on male songs.


To study the genetic polymorphisms of Y-chromosome-specific STR loci in Chinese of different surnames, 9 Y-STR loci were amplified by single fluorescent multiplex PCR and the PCR products were detected by using ABI Prism (superscript TM) 3100 DNA Sequencer. Samples were randomly-selected from male blood donors in ShenZhen. These individuals, who were otherwise unrelated, had the most common surnames among Chinese as their surnames, namely Li, Wang or Zhang. There were 139 subjects with surname Li, 118 with surname Wang and 119 with the surname Zhang. In the Li population, a total of 126 haplotypes was found and 118 of them were unique, with a haplotype diversity 0.9974. In the Wang population, a total of 105 haplotypes was found and 94 of them were unique, with a haplotype diversity of 0.9953. In the Zhang population, a total of 101 haplotypes was found and 88 of them were unique, with a haplotype diversity of 0.9964. Our results indicated that the genetic polymorphisms of Y-STR haplotypes at these 9 loci in unrelated male individuals with Chinese surnames of Li, Wang or Zhang are highly polymorphic and showed no significant differences with our previous data of haplotype polymorphisms in unrelated male individuals from the Chinese ethnic Han population.


Session-based recommendation aims to predict a user's next action based on previous actions in the current session. The major challenge is to capture authentic and complete user preferences in the entire session. Recent work utilizes graph structure to represent the entire session and adopts Graph Neural Network (GNN) to encode session information. This modeling choice has been proved to be effective and achieved remarkable results. However, most of the existing studies only consider each item within the session independently and do not capture session semantics from a high-level perspective. Such limitation often leads to severe information loss and increases the difficulty of capturing long-range dependencies within a session. Intuitively, compared with individual items, a session snippet, i.e., a group of locally consecutive items, is able to provide supplemental user intents which are hardly captured by existing methods. In this work, we propose to learn multi-granularity consecutive user intent unit to improve the recommendation performance. Specifically, we creatively propose Multi-granularity Intent Heterogeneous Session Graph (MIHSG) which captures the interactions between different granularity intent units and relieves the burden of long-dependency. Moreover, we propose the Intent Fusion Ranking (IFR) module to compose the recommendation results from various granularity user intents. Compared with current methods that only leverage intents from individual items, IFR benefits from different granularity user intents to generate more accurate and comprehensive session representation, thus eventually boosting recommendation performance. We conduct extensive experiments on five session-based recommendation datasets and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. Compared to current state-of-the-art methods, we achieve as large as 10.21% gain on HR@20 and 15.53% gain on MRR@20.


Abstract Sports studies is currently dominated by the intellectualist approach to understanding skill and expertise, meaning that questions about the phenomenological nature of skilled performance in sport have generally been overshadowed by the emphasis on the cognitive. By contrast, this article responds to calls for a phenomenology of sporting embodiment by opening up a philosophical exploration of the nature of athletic being-in-the-world. In particular, the paper explores the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-Ponty's important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence. I also draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with professional contemporary dancers to explore dancers' concepts of 'being in your body' and 'being in the moment', and to suggest that during the actual embodied practice of dance, dancers do not experience transcendence and immanence as they are conceptualised in philosophy. Rather, I argue, dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between these two binary terms. I have called this 'inhabited transcendence'.


Xenopus laevis oocytes were prelabeled with [32P]orthophosphate overnight before maturation was induced by progesterone stimulation. The phosphorylation status of ribosomal protein S6 from control oocytes and the temporal changes in S6 phosphorylation after progesterone treatment were analyzed by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. S6 protein was separated in up to five distinct S6 species, which differed in their degree of phosphorylation. 32P labeling of S6, as judged from the shift of radioactivity into more highly phosphorylated S6 derivatives, continuously increased in progesterone-stimulated oocytes even at later times when germinal vesicle breakdown was completed. S6 protein of unstimulated oocytes was labeled to a lower degree. Trypsin cleavage of total S6 protein, isolated from control and maturing oocytes, gave rise to different complex phosphopeptide patterns reflecting the existence of various multiply phosphorylated S6 derivatives in both samples. Two of the more highly phosphorylated S6 derivatives showed considerable differences between the phosphopeptide elution profiles of control and stimulated oocytes indicating that dissimilar sites had been modified under both physiological conditions. Only phosphoserine was detected in the phosphoamino acid analysis of individual S6 derivatives.


This paper demonstrates and provides additional findings and instructions to produce new cold-recycled layers of pavement structures spatially and temporally sustainable. At the same time, recycled pavement structures have been enhanced with optimum amounts of new stone materials and binders made of cement and foamed bitumen. The subject of the research is based on the examination of recycled asphalt from surface and bituminous base courses of pavement structures for use on higher-type roads. The aim of the research is to model the process of producing recycled asphalt by cold recycling to optimize the process of influential parameters. In addition, one of the primary goals of the research is to demonstrate a sustainable way of producing new cold-recycled layers of pavement structures. The obtained results indicated the inevitability of the use of recycled material from pavement structures with the possibility of applying secondary and tertiary crushing of recycled mass, which depends on the type of layer for which the recycled material would be used. The research resulted in an optimum mixture variant of the stabilization layer of pavement structure that consists mainly of recycled material from a worn pavement structure improved with a relatively small amount of new aggregate with the addition of minimal stabilizers made of cement and foamed bitumen. The results showed that the optimum mixture variant of the stabilization layer is spatially and temporally stable. Additionally, the presented optimum variant of the stabilization layer enables sustainable development of road networks with minimum consumption of new natural resources.


Purpose of review This review assesses recently published data on cytomegalovirus (CMV) antiviral drug resistance. Recent findings Resistance is typically encountered after prolonged ganciclovir treatment for posttransplant primary CMV infection and is diagnosed by the detection of characteristic mutations in the viral UL97 kinase and UL54 DNA polymerase genes in clinical specimens. One of seven canonical UL97 mutations is detected in most cases of ganciclovir resistance, but many viral sequence variants of unknown relevance are being reported after drug exposure in vitro and in vivo. Rapid technical advances in recombinant phenotyping have shown that many of these variants confer no detectable drug resistance, whereas some unusual resistance mutations are newly confirmed. All currently marketed CMV antiviral drugs, including foscarnet and cidofovir, target the viral DNA polymerase, and cross-resistance may result from some UL54 mutations. To decrease cross-resistance and toxicity, there is an ongoing effort to develop anti-CMV drugs with different resistance pathways and alternative targets, such as the UL97 kinase or UL56–UL89 terminase enzymes. Summary An increasing volume of information correlating CMV genotypes and drug susceptibility phenotypes is becoming available. This will improve the interpretation of sequence-based assays currently used for clinical diagnosis and guide the development of new antiviral drugs.


A low cost electronic load for Renewable Energy Systems (RES) has been designed and tested as
part of a project on the monitoring and optimising renewable energy usage. This paper describes how MOSFETs, controlled by a microcontroller, can be used as linear loads to simulate the daily power consumption profile of a household. For test purposes, a prototype capable of dissipating 60W has been built: the obtained results demonstrate the load capability of simulating any household energy consumption profile. The simulation of load spikes and steps changes on a RES can also be performed in order to test the control and stability. The results show that the linearity of the load demonstrates favorable results compared to switched loads since much smoother energy profiles can be reproduced. A microcontroller has been used to enable the load to be connected to many different
applications. By increasing the dissipation capability, the load can greatly assist designers and researchers in the development and analysis of domestic scale RES. The total cost for a 2kW load unit is approximately a quarter of the cost of current, commercially available, programmable electronic loads.


If scientific knowledge is to influence international environmental policy it needs to be recognised as authoritative and impartial by key politicians and policy makers. In the case of climate change this is achieved by a boundary organisation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which enables climate scientists to demonstrate the veracity of their research to climate policy makers while, for the most part, maintaining scientific integrity and resisting political interference in scientific conclusions. However, in the absence of such an organisation for forest science the international forest science community has come forward and created its own mechanism – the Global Forest Expert Panels – which responds to demands from the forest policy community for knowledge in particular areas and which in some respects is based on the IPCC model. However, even if a more effective forest-science policy boundary organisation were to exist, progress in international forest policy would be constrained by some long standing political divisions, in particular on the financing of sustainable forest management.


Maternal breast milk is the best source of enteral nutrition for preterm or low birthweight infants. With insufficient volumes of maternal breast milk, donor-expressed breast milk (DEBM) or artificial formula are two common alternatives. Despite publication of a recently updated Cochrane review1 demonstrating a decrease in the risk of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) in babies receiving DEBM compared with those receiving formula, concerns about the methodological quality of some of the included studies, their applicability to current neonatal practices (the majority of included trials were carried out in the 70 s and 80 s), the slower in-hospital growth rates of those on DEBM and the fact that growth-restricted premature infants as well as unwell infants were generally excluded …


A new arterial clamp has been developed for the perfusion of kidneys with single or multiple renal arteries which significantly reduces the risk of intimal damage. The use of this clamp completely eliminates the necessity for renal artery cannulation and also minimizes several disadvantages currently encountered with en block perfusion and preservation.


Railway switch and crossing (S&C) systems have a very complex structure that requires not only a large number of components (such as rails, check rails, switches, crossings, turnout bearers, slide chair, etc.) but also different types of components and technologies (mechanical devices to operate switches, electrical and/or electronic devices for control, etc.). This complexity of railway S&C systems makes them vulnerable to failures and malfunctions that can ultimately cause delays and even fatal accidents. Thus, it is crucial to develop suitable condition monitoring techniques to deal with fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) in railway S&C systems. The main contribution of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the existing FDD techniques for railway S&C systems. The aim is to overview the state of the art in rail S&C and in doing so to provide a platform for researchers, railway operators, and experts to research, develop and adopt the best methods for their applications; thereby helping ensure the rapid evolution of monitoring and fault detection in the railway industry at a time of the increased interest in condition based maintenance and the use of high-speed trains on the rail network.


Background Patient preference is pivotal for widespread adoption of tests in clinical practice. Patient preferences for invasive versus other noninvasive tests for coronary artery disease are not known. Purpose To compare patient acceptance and preferences for noninvasive and invasive cardiac imaging in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. Materials and Methods This was a prospective 16-center trial in 381 study participants undergoing coronary CT angiography with stress perfusion, SPECT, and invasive coronary angiography (ICA). Patient preferences were collected by using a previously validated questionnaire translated into eight languages. Responses were converted to ordinal scales and were modeled with generalized linear mixed models. Results In patients in whom at least one test was associated with pain, CT and SPECT showed reduced median pain levels, reported on 0-100 visual analog scales, from 20 for ICA (interquartile range [IQR], 4-50) to 6 for CT (IQR, 0-27.5) and 5 for SPECT (IQR, 0-25) (P < .001). Patients from Asia reported significantly more pain than patients from other continents for ICA (median, 25; IQR, 10-50; P = .01), CT (median, 10; IQR, 0-30; P = .02), and SPECT (median, 7; IQR, 0-28; P = .03). Satisfaction with preparation differed by continent and test (P = .01), with patients from Asia reporting generally lower ratings. Patients from North America had greater percentages of "very high" or "high" satisfaction than patients from other continents for ICA (96% vs 82%, respectively; P < .001) and SPECT (95% vs 79%, respectively; P = .04) but not for CT (89% vs 86%, respectively; P = .70). Among all patients, CT was preferred by 54% of patients, compared with 18% for SPECT and 28% for ICA (P < .001). Conclusion For cardiac imaging, patients generally favored CT angiography with stress perfusion, while study participants from Asia generally reported lowest satisfaction. © RSNA, 2019 Online supplemental material is available for this article. See also the editorial by Woodard and Nguyen in this issue.


We investigated the relationship between taxonomy and functioning of soil bacterial communities in soils from a Mediterranean holm oak forest using a high-throughput DNA pyrosequencing technique. We used nonparametric tests (Mann-Whitney U-test) to evaluate the sensitivity of each single bacterial genus within the community to the fluctuations of plant physiological and environmental abiotic variables, as well as to fluctuations in soil microbial respiration. Within-lineage (phylum/class) functional similarities were evaluated by the distribution of the Mann-Whitney U-test standardized coefficients (z) obtained for all genera within a given lineage. We further defined different ecological niches and within-lineage degree of functional diversification based on multivariate analyses (principal component analyses, PCA). Our results indicate that strong within-lineage functional diversification causes extensive functional overlapping between lineages, which hinders the translation of taxonomic diversity into a meaningful functional classification of bacteria. Our results further suggest a widespread colonization of possible ecological niches as taxonomic diversity increases. While no strong functional differentiation could be drawn from the analyses at the phylum/class level, our results suggest a strong ecological niche differentiation of bacteria based mainly on the distinct response of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria to fluctuations in soil moisture.


Background: Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited hematological disorder and a serious global health problem, affecting between 20 and 25 million people worldwide [1]. In the Sub-Saharan Africa, where it is more prevalent, it contributes up to 90% of under-5 mortality [2]. Although hydroxyurea (HU) is the leading treatment for these patients, its effects on the gut microbiome have not yet been explored. Some studies reported that gastroenteritis events were less frequent in SCA children taking HU and it also significantly improved the survival from pneumococcal infections [3,4]. HU may have a protective effect, not only by improving several hematological parameters but also by lowering the risk of some bacterial infections. Aims: In this context, the aim of this study was to investigate this association by characterizing the gut microbiome of an Angolan SCA pediatric population before and after 6 months of HU treatment and comparing with a control group of healthy siblings. Results: A total of 113 fecal samples were obtained and sequenced by NGS for the 16S rRNA gene (V3-V4 regions), which corresponded to 40 children in the control and before HU groups and 33 after HU, aged between 4-12 years old. Our findings revealed that these three groups exhibit some notable differences, especially within Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae family. After HU treatment there was an increase of several beneficial bacteria, such as: Blautia coccoides (p=0.009), Blautia luti (p<0.001), Blautia faecis (p=0.008), Bifidobacterium longum (p=0.011), Dorea formicigenerans (p<0.001), Dorea massiliensis (p=0.003), Eubacterium halii (p=0.004), Elusimicrobium spp (p=0.032), Ruminococcus callidus (p=0.037), Ruminococcus faecis (p=0.012), Roseburia spp (p=0.050) and Subdoligranulum variabile (p=0.009). Most of those OTUs are SCFAs producing species, having butyrate or propionate as end-products of bacterial metabolism, both exhibiting anti-inflammatory properties. Moreover, children before HU had higher abundance of bacteria considered pathogenic, like E. coli (p=0.001), Clostridiun_g24 (p=0.039) and H. influenzae (p=0.050). Conclusion: Overall, this study provides the first evidence of the HU effect on the gut microbiome and provides a rationale for further research for developing treatments to reduce gut microbiota-driven inflammation, which may attenuate the dysbiosis and chronic symptoms experienced by these patients. This work was supported by FCT/Aga Khan (project no330842553) and FCT/MCTES (UIDB/05608/2020 and UIDP/05608/2020) –H&TRC.


This review article assesses the accomplishments and limitations of the best of recent research on democratization and democracy in Europe, South America, and post-Soviet Eurasia with regard to the challenge of theory building. Concerning the dependent variables of this literature, the article argues that the concepts of democratic transition, democratic consolidation, and democratic quality, as currently conceptualized, do not provide a clear focus for causal theorizing. It recommends, rather, that the proper subject matter of regime analysis should be the origins and stability of regime types and suggests how the semantic field of democracy studies could be clarified through a focus on the concepts of democratic transition and democratic stability. Relatedly, it argues that democracy scholars have made unwarranted use of aggregate and dichotomous measures and advocates instead the use of more disaggregate and nuanced measures. Concerning causal theories, the article shows that researchers have identified a range of potential explanatory factors and proposed suggestive complex causal models. Nonetheless, it also argues that democracy scholars have rarely formulated clearly specified general causal models and identifies some key pitfalls to be avoided as scholars tackle two key tasks: the development of thick and general theory and the definition of causal models. The conclusion raises the need to place theory building in context and argues that scholars must also turn their attention to the demanding challenges of data generation and causal assessment.


PURPOSE
The aim of the study was to evaluate knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of Turkish women over 20 years old on cervix cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This descriptive study was performed at a primary care center covering 246 women using a questionnaire composed of 3 sections and 38 questions. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square test in univariate analysis and multivariate hierarchical logistic regression analysis.

RESULTS
Of the 93.7% women who knew about cervical cancer, 68.0% of them had heard pap smear test and 46.1% had actually undergone a Pap smear once or more throughout their lives. According to the results of the hierarchical logistic regression analysis about factors affecting the Pap smear test; in Model 1, increase in age and education levels, in Model 2 and Model 3 increase in age and cervical cancer information points were determined. The most important information source for cervical cancer was TV-radio/media (59.9%) and health care workers (62.8%) for pap smear test.

CONCLUSIONS
Although most women have heard of cervical cancer, knowledge about cervical cancer and also Pap smear screening rate are significantly lower. Having Pap smear test for women was affected by age and knowledge level about cervical cancer. Informing women about cervical cancer would be an important intervention.


Aware of the difficulties encountered by the centers in the outpatient management of peritoneal dialysis patients, on March 21, 2016, the French Language Peritoneal Dialysis Registry (RDPLF) launched an «alloDP» nursing list for the benefit of Home Dialysis units active in the Registry. Difficulties in relation to the isolation of the teams, the size of the centers, the number of participants, the lack of knowledge in the technique are undeniably a hindrance to the development of home treatment.
This mailing list is exclusively reserved for home dialysis nurses after registration by the RDPLF. They need an email address, if possible, personal. Nephrologists and nurses at the material supply commercial providers may have access to alloDP, upon request, but only as «readers».
To break her isolation, or sense of isolation, the nurse simply sends her question, request, or need to the nursing community to the address firstname.lastname@example.com. The wealth of sharing does the rest.
To illustrate the content of the exchanges, we have chosen to summarize six of them in this article.


In real-time distribution operations, it is generally assumed that demand process parameters can be precisely estimated. However, this is rarely the case, particularly for products with a short life cycle. Experiments were done to investigate the performance of various strategies for online distribution operations under disruptions caused by surges in demand patterns at a particular facility. Two sets of strategies are considered: (a) optimization-based strategies, in which an off-line optimization problem is formulated and used to update routing and inventory allocation plans, and (b) fixed-tour strategies, in which a priori sets of routes to provide retailers with recourse actions depending on different degrees of real-time information capabilities for controlling the system are used. These are compared against two benchmark policies. Simulation results for two scenarios (high and low inventory holding cost products) show that strategies that use real-time information to update delivery plans systematically outperform strategies in which routes are not modified after the vehicle leaves the depot. The differences tend to be higher in scenarios of products with low inventory holding costs. For replanning strategies, the benefits of en route plan updates are significant, in particular the possibility of diverting the vehicle. In the case of fixed-tour strategies, the possibility of updating tour intervals provides potentially great savings. Replanning strategies systematically outperform fixed-tour strategies.


An improved conventional-to-micro/minichannel threshold was proposed as Bo = 4 and BoRe(1)(0.5) = 200, where Bo is the Bond number and Re-1 is the liquid Reynolds number. The region Bo < 4 and BoRe(1)(0.5) < 200 is termed as micro/minichannel because bubbles tend to be confined and elongated in the channel and the conventional two-phase flow theory loses its applicability. Flow-pattern based heat transfer correlations for elongated bubbly flow and annular flow in flow boiling micro/minichannels were developed separately based on a collected micro/minichannel heat-transfer database. As significant disagreement in experimental trends and heat transfer mechanisms was reported for flow boiling in micro/minichannels in the literature, it is not possible to explain the discrepancy and predict all data points by a single correlation without considering the different flow patterns. The newly developed flow-pattern based predictive tool can not only present a decent overall accuracy, but also estimate the parametric trends correctly. Over 95% of the data points can be predicted by the proposed correlations within a +/- 50% error band for both elongated bubbly flow and annular flow. Therefore, the simple flow-pattern based correlations can be applied for heat exchanger design, improve understanding of the underlying heat transfer mechanisms, and guide development of further enhancement techniques for flow boiling in micro/minichannels. (Less)


The aim was to investigate HA as a potential contrast agent for first‐pass myocardial perfusion imaging*, and to assess the imaging performance of gadolinium‐hyaluronic acid (HA) polymer complexes from HA‐ligand constructs by determining the proton longitudinal relaxivities and accurate relaxation rates in saline solutions at 10.72 MHz. Imaging of same solutions in well defined dialysis tubing at 3T using a constructed phantom was then used to measure the rate of diffusion to determine if the Gd‐complex polymer conjugate would have a sufficiently large hydrodynamic size to prevent immediate perfusion through vascular wall‐like conditions to account for leaks from the intravascular to interstitial space. Samples denoted as HW02‐18 Sample A and HW02‐18 Sample B were successfully prepared by coupling an amine functionalized DTPA with HA via EDC/NHS coupling methods. These produced the highest relaxation rates and relaxivities at 10.72 MHz compared to the other preparation methods. Twenty four hours post‐injection, Gadodiamide showed a signal to noise ratio of unity, while HW‐147 continued to retain some degree of contrast relative to the background. The slope of the logarithmic fit corresponding to HW01‐147 was estimated at −0.006 compared to −0.01 of Gadodiamide, a much steeper drop indicating smaller molecular size and faster perfusion rate across the dialysis membranes. This is demonstrative of the Gd ion's relative freedom to influence the R1 of extracellular water molecules, while the molecular size of the Gd‐polymer complex has a molecular radius that is sufficiently large to prevent vascular‐like perfusion. This is a necessary prerequisite for HA bound Gd as a contrast agent for first‐pass myocardial perfusion imaging.


Cultural and political changes in the last century have made it largely socially unacceptable to overtly discriminate against women. Such pressures may have forced sexist beliefs to be expressed in more covert forms. This study aimed to develop a psychometric scale that assesses such covert, or neosexist, beliefs in college student populations and to analyze the relationship between neosexism and gender egalitarian beliefs, feminist awareness, social desirability, and an existing scale of neosexism. Similar to previous research, a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses yielded a one-factor model of neosexism. This model was invariant across gender and race. Scores on the old neosexism scale, gender egalitarianism, and feminist revelation were all significant predictors of scores on the new neosexism scale. This new scale may prove useful in assessing the anatomical and neurological correlates of contemporary attitudes toward women. Document Type Thesis Distinguished Thesis Yes Degree Name Bachelor of Arts (BA) Department or Program Neuroscience First Advisor Susan M. Long Second Advisor Kent R. Grote Third Advisor Douglas B. Light


Living systems are fascinating sensing machines that outmatch all artificial machines. Our aim is to put a focus on the dynamics of mechanosensing in cellular systems through concepts and experimental approaches that have been developed during the past decades. By recognizing that a cellular system is not simply the intricate assembly of active and passive macromolecular actors but that it can also manifest scaleinvariant and/or highly nonlinear global dynamics, biophysicists have opened a new domain of investigation of living systems. In this chapter, we review methods and techniques that have been implemented to decipher the cascade of temporal events which enable a cell to sense a mechanical stimulus and to elaborate a response to adapt or to counteract this perturbation. We mainly describe intrusive (mechanical probes) and nonintrusive (optical devices) experimental methods that have proved to be efficient for real-time characterization of stationary and nonstationary cellular dynamics. Finally, we discuss whether thermal fluctuations, which are inherent to living systems, are a source of coordination (e.g., synchronization) or randomization of the global dynamics of a cell.


Multilayer thin films of anionic gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and cationic phosphorus dendrimers were deposited on 3-(diethoxymethyl-silyl)propylamine (3-APDMES)-coated substrates using layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly driven by electrostatic interactions. The growth of Au/dendrimer multilayers composed of AuNPs with diameters of ∼3 nm and ∼16 nm and dendrimer with ∼2 nm diameter was monitored by UV-vis spectroscopy. The relative amounts of AuNPs and dendrimers in the multilayer films were calculated using a quartz crystal microbalance. The Au-containing multilayers have two surface plasmon bands at ∼530 nm and ∼600 nm, where the latter exhibits a red shift upon increasing the areal density of AuNPs as well as increasing the layer number. The localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) band of the hybrid films can be tuned by adding NaCl to the dendrimer solution or by removing the organic matrix. These results demonstrate that the near-field coupling between the LSPR bands of neighboring Au layers is responsible for the controlled absorption behavior. Au mesoporous films after removing dendrimers show LSPR sensing properties for alcohols with different refractive indices in the range 1.33–1.41. A linear relationship was obtained between the LSPR peak wavelength and the refractive index of the surrounding medium.