In cloud storage services, a wide range of sensitive information may be leaked to the host server via the exposure of access pattern albeit data is encrypted. Many security-provable schemes have been proposed to preserve the access pattern privacy; however, they may be vulnerable to attacks towards data integrity or availability from malicious users. This is due to the fact that, preserving access pattern privacy requires data to be frequently re-encrypted and re-positioned at the storage server, which can easily conceal the traces that are needed for accountability support to detect misbehaviors and identify attackers. To address this issue, this paper proposes a scheme that integrates accountability support into hash-based ORAMs. Security analysis shows that the proposed scheme can detect misconduct committed by malicious users and identify the attackers, while preserving the access pattern privacy. Overhead analysis shows that the proposed accountability support incurs only slightly increased storage, communication, and computational overheads.


Human-related issues play an important role in accidents and causalities in demanding maritime operations. The industry lacks an approach capable of preventively assessing maritime operators' mental fatigue and awareness levels before accidents happen. Aiming to reduce intrusiveness, we focused on improving the mental fatigue assessment capabilities of a combination of electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram sensors by investigating the optimization of convolutional neural networks by Bayesian optimization with Gaussian process. We proposed a mapping function to optimize the network structure without the need for a tree-like structure to define the domain of variables for the optimization process. We applied the proposed approach in a simulated vessel piloting task. Even though the mental fatigue assessment for the cross-subject case is a complex classification task, the trained convolutional neural network could achieve good generalization performance (97.6% test accuracy). Finally, we also proposed a method to improve the depiction of the mental fatigue build up process. The framework presented in this work can contribute for reducing accident risk in maritime operations by improving the accuracy and assessment quality of neural network-based mental fatigue assessment tools.


Public transport systems (PTSs) play an important role in modern cities. From the perspective of commuters, PTS provides shared and rapid transport services that are essential for the general public in a city. From the perspective of city management and urban planning, PTS has significant economical, social and environmental impacts to an entire city. Hence, studying PTS is highly beneficial to both individuals as well as a city as a whole, and it has long been a hot topic in transport research. However, many conventional transport researches have long been relying on simulation and survey data, making the results less of conviction. Thanks to recent advances in sensing technologies, such as RFID cards, laser scanners and GPS devices, movements acquisition has become convenient. Vast amount of urban public transport data has been collected automatically and pervasively, promoting more research focus on analyzing and exploring public transport data when studying PTS. However, analyzing massive urban public transport data is a challenging task due to its high-complex, large-size, multi-mode and spatio-temporal characteristics. To get over these challenges, visual analytics show great potential as they can make the way of processing public transport data transparent: Visual analytics can provide interactive means for transport researchers to examine the actual processes of analyzing data instead of just the results. This thesis investigates advanced visualization technologies for analyzing and exploring massive urban public transport data that consists of commuter RFID card data, transport network and transit schedule in Singapore. To address various analytical tasks raised by transport researchers, a family of novel visual analytics systems have been developed. Specifically, three aspects of high-level information, which are essential in transport modeling and analysis processes, have been extracted from the input dataset for visualization and exploration: ii • Interchange Pattern, which describes how moving objects redistribute when entering and passing through a junction node in a traffic network. A novel visual representation, namely the interchange circos diagram, has been proposed to present interchange pattern emerged from the public transport data. • Waypoints-Constrained OD Pattern, which restricts origin-destination (OD) pattern with commuter trajectories passing through user-specified entry and exit waypoints in a transport network. A novel unified visual representation, namely the waypoints-constrained OD view, has been proposed to explore waypoints-constrained OD pattern. • Mobility, which can be considered as the travel efficiencies of commuters through PTS. An integrated visualization with three modules: isochrone map view, isotime flow map view and OD-pair journey view, has been proposed to address a family of analytical tasks based on inputs from transport researchers.


The main driver of the industrial real estate markets over the next decade will be change in almost everything. Infrastructure changes will alter the relative desirability of locations and facilitate distribution; high labour costs will see a redistribution of production; policy may add to the cost of construction or the operational structure of demand; changes in technology will alter the way buildings are used and where they are best located. All these have a direct impact upon demand for the industrial property product set. This paper examines European industrial markets over a ten year horizon identifying these changes and setting out the opportunities that accrue and threats that may emerge for industrial investors over the period.


We introduce the features of Common Agriculture Vocabulary (CAVOC) and CAVOC-based services, review other resources for standards in the domains of agriculture and food, and briefly discuss the future direction of agricultural semantics standards in Japan based on reviews. CAVOC has been developed as a core vocabulary for enhancing semantics-level interoperability. It specifies concepts that are frequently used to annotate agricultural data on agricultural activities and crops in Japan. The CAVOC website provides uniform resource identifiers by which the concepts in CAVOC are given. The data in CAVOC can be downloaded from the website. The extension of CAVOC coverage is important to unambiguously define objects and their relationships in the domains of agriculture and food. International collaborative efforts to create standards in agricultural semantics are underway through mapping among semantic resources within international projects and by holding meetings among stakeholders. We need to join the international community in creating agricultural semantics standards so as to extend CAVOC coverage through the utilization of foreign resources.


This thesis explores how augmented reality and near field communication can be used as means of interaction in mobile gaming. In specific three prototype games have been developed and are analysed to find new design patterns which are supported by augmented reality and near field communication. The methods and the process of the development are described and analysed.
Four interaction design patterns were discovered during the course of the project which helped to show that augmented reality and near field communication can be used for new forms of interaction in mobile games.


Abstract Low-frequency quasi-2D plasma convection and the resultant nondiffusive cross-field plasma transport in mirror-based systems are studied by means of direct computer simulations of nonlinear plasma dynamics in a frame of adiabatically reduced one-fluid MHD model. The simulations were performed for axisymmetric or effectively symmetrized paraxial mirror-based systems such as tandem mirror and gas dynamic traps. Various regimes of plasma confinement with sheared plasma rotation were modeled and analyzed. Simulations have shown formation of large-scale flute-like stochastic vortex structures, which are similar to the vortex-like structures observed in GAMMA 10 and GDT experiments. It was shown that a controlled formation of high-vorticity layers allows one to prevent fast plasma degradation and to reduce considerably the nondiffusive cross-field plasma transport even in a presence of unstable pressure driven modes with a weak MHD drive. The effect results from an appreciable nonlinear modification of dominant vortex-like structures due to a competition between pressure driven and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities.


This paper examines the role of coherence of evidence in what I call the non-dynamic model of confirmation. It appears that other things being equal, a higher degree of coherence among pieces of evidence raises to a higher degree the probability of the proposition they support. I argue against this view on the basis of three related observations. First, we should be able to assess the impact of coherence on any hypothesis of interest the evidence supports. Second, the impact of coherence among the pieces of evidence can be different on different hypotheses of interest they support. Third, when we assess the impact of coherence on a hypothesis of interest, other conditions that should be held equal for a fair assessment include the degrees of individual support which the propositions directly supported by the respective pieces of evidence provide for the hypothesis. Once we take these points into consideration, the impression that coherence of evidence plays a positive role in confirmation dissipates. In some cases it can be shown that other things being equal, a higher degree of coherence among the pieces of evidence reduces the degree of confirmation for the hypothesis they support.


From 1982 to October 1990, 284 patients with duodenal ulcer were surgically treated. Partial gastrectomy and Billroth anastomosis (PGB) were performed in 92 patients, selective vagotomy plus antrectomy and Billroth anastomosis (VAB) in 92, and selective vagotomy plus antrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastrojejunostomy (VARY) in 98. Follow-up showed that VARY was superior in many respects to PGB and VAB such as in decreasing gastric acidity, long-term complications and Visick grading of I and II (P < 0.05). We conclude that VARY can be used in the treatment of duodenal ulcer.


Much of the existing research on Big Data has largely concentrated on the technical challenges related with gathering and analysis of Big Data. These studies have seldom discussed the role of organizational culture in Big Data initiatives. Thus, relatively little is known about how organizational culture may impede or enhance an organization's ability to gain advantage from these data. Given that the notion of Big Data has been defined in terms of three key (or V's) attributes (i.e., volume, variety, and velocity), it is important to examine how organizational culture influences Big Data attributes. Therefore, to establish a clear understanding between culture and Big Data attributes, this study presents a framework that links organizational culture to the three V's of Big Data. This study argues that not all organizations, due to their varying cultural orientation, emphasize the importance of data volume, data variety, and data velocity. Further, the proposed framework suggests that organizations with a flexible structure and an external focus are likely to have a positive impact on the three V's of Big Data thereby increasing their chances of deriving maximum benefits from Big Data projects.


ABSTRACT Montreuil, A-L.; Elyahyioui, J., and Chen, M., 2016. Impact of local wind and atmospheric circulation patterns on coastal morphological changes along the Belgian coast. In: Vila-Concejo, A.; Bruce, E.; Kennedy, D.M., and McCarroll, R.J. (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Coastal Symposium (Sydney, Australia). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue, No. 75, pp. 755–759. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Large scale atmospheric circulation is an important component of wind forcing which in turn control strom surge generation. The study aim is to evaluate the impact of large-scale atmospheric flow and wind on the occurrence of storm surges causing significant morphological impacts along the Belgian coast. An objective classification scheme of the atmospheric circulation affecting the North Sea basin is used for almost 150-years (1871–2014). The observed storm surge events associated with erosion are examined with respect to the circulation weather types (CWTs) and the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phases under which they occur. It is shown that although the Anticyclonic (A) type being the most frequent in winter (27%) and also over the entire year (28%) gives less than 1–10% of contribution to the occurrence of observed storm surges. However, the Cyclonic (C), Northerly (N), Northwesterly (NW), Westerly (W) and Southwesterly (SW) types happen less often, they account together for more than 82% of the observed storm surges. Also, the observed storm surges primarily occurred during a moderately positive winter NAO index while strong winter NAO index rarely accounted for the storm surge events. Results highlight the inter-connections between the occurrence of observed storm surges, interannual variability of CWTs and winter NAO index. These data are also investigated to examine their evolutionary trends in order to detect any ongoing trends of climate change. Identify any link and trend between storminess and atmospheric circulation pattern could help to better prepare coastal communities and coastal managers for future storm surges.


Teratoma is a germ cell tumor and usually consists of three germ layers. Teratomas are mostly located in the gonads and occurrence of teratoma in extragonadal sites israre. Gastrointestinal tract, particularly colon, is an unusual extragonadal site for teratomas. Extragonadal teratomas arise from totipotent cells in sequestered primitive cell rests. Teratoma cannot be diagnosed on the basis of clinical findings alone, since the histopathologic confirmation is necessary. Cystic teratomas, located in the wall of colon can easily mimic ovarian lesions on radiologic examination. In this case report, we aimed to describe the histopathological findings of an unusual case of mature teratoma in the wall of sigmoid colon which was mimicking an ovarian cystic lesion on radiologic examination.


A total of 39,201 men and 88,012 women aged 40–79 years who underwent health checkups in 1993 and who were free of diabetes were followed until the end of 2004 to examine an association between underweight and risk of diabetes. Incident diabetes was defined by a fasting blood glucose concentration ≥7.0 mmol/l or nonfasting glucose ≥11.1 mmol/l and/or diabetes treatment. The multivariable hazard ratio of diabetes adjusted for age, baseline blood glucose level, fasting status, and other confounding variables among subjects who had a BMI <18.5 kg/m2 compared with those with a BMI 18.5–24.9 kg/m2 was 1.32 (95% CI 1.12–1.56) in men aged 60–79 years and 1.31 (1.07–1.60) in women aged 60–79 years. Underweight may be associated with risk of diabetes among older adults.

In the present study, we enrolled 181,863 nondiabetic Japanese subjects (58,402 men and 123,461 women) from community residents aged 40–79 years who underwent health checkups in 1993 conducted by the local governments under the Japan Health Laws. We excluded 19,201 men and 35,449 women who did not participate in the 1994 survey, thereby ensuring that the subjects were followed up for at least 1 year. A total of 39,201 men and …


The relation between the radiation output of an X-ray applicator and the performance of the X-ray unit is demonstrated. The method of monitoring the compliance of the performance with the radiation output is proposed thereby permitting the standardization of X-ray examinations in various medical institutions.


We present a new approach to the modelling of stress propagation in static granular media, focussing on the conical sandpile constructed from a point source. We view the medium as consisting of cohesionless hard particles held up by static frictional forces; these are subject to microscopic indeterminacy which corresponds macroscopically to the fact that the equations of stress continuity are incomplete no strain variable can be defined. We propose that in general the continuity equations should be closed by means of a constitutive relation (or relations) between different components of the (mesoscopically averaged) stress tensor. The primary constitutive relation relates radial and vertical shear and normal stresses (in two dimensions, this is all one needs). We argue that the constitutive relation(s) should be local, and should encode the construction h~story of the p~te: this history determines the organization of the grains at a mesoscopic scale, and thereby the local relationship between stresses. To the accuracy of published experiments, the pattern of stresses beneath a pile shows a scaling between piles of different heights (RSF scalingj which severely limits the form the constitutive relation can take; various asymptotic features of the stress patterns can be predicted on the basis of this scaling alone. To proceed further, one requires an explicit choice of constitutive relation; we review sonie from the literature and present two new proposals. The first, the FPA (fixed principal axes) model, assumes that the eigendirections (but not the eigenvalues) of the stress tensor are determined forever when a material element is first buried. (This assumes. among other things, that subsequent loadings are not so large as to produce slip deep inside the pile.) A macroscopic consequence of this mesoscopic assumption is that the principal axes have fixed orientation in space: the major axis everywhere bisects the vertical and the free surface. As a result of this, stresses propagate along a nested set of archlike structures within the pile, resulting in a m~T~imum of the vertical normal stress beneath the apex of the pile, as seen experimentally ("the dip"). This experiment has not been explained within previous continuum approaches; the appearance of arches within our model corroborates earlier physical arguments (of S-FEdwards and others) as to the origin of the dip, and places them on a more secure mathematical footing. The second model is that of "oriented stress linearity" (OSL) which contains an adjustable parameter lone value of which corresponds to FPA). For the general OSL case, the simple interpretation in terms of nested arches does not apply, though a dip is again found over a finite parameter range. In three dimensions, the choice for the primary constitutive relation must be supplemented by a secondary one; we have tried several, and find that the results for (*) Author for correspondence (e-mail: wittmer@ph,ed.ac.uk) (**) Present address: Service de Physique de l'Etat Condensd, CEA, Ormes des Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France Q Les (ditions de Physique 1997 40 JOURNAL DE PHYSIQUE I N°1 the stresses in a three-dimensional (conical) pile do not depend much on which secondary closure is chosen. Three-dimensional results for the FPA model are in good semiquantitative agreement with published experimental data on conical piles (including the dip); the data does not exclude, but nor does it support, OSL parameters somewhat different from FPA. The modelling strategy we adopt, based on local, history-dependent constitutive relations among stresses, leads to nontrivial predictions for piles which are prepared with a different construction history from the normal one. We consider several such histories in which a pile is prepared and parts of it then removed and for tilted. Experiments along these lines could provide a searching test of the theory.


An interval temporal logic is a propositional, multi-modal logic interpreted over interval structures of partial orders. The semantics of each modal operator are given in the standard way with respect to one of the natural accessibility relations defined on such interval structures. In this paper, we consider the modal operators based on the (reflexive) sub-interval relation and the (reflexive) super-interval relation. We show that the satisfiability problems for the interval temporal logics featuring either or both of these modalities, interpreted over interval structures of finite linear orders, are all PSPACE-complete. These results fill a gap in the known complexity results for interval temporal logics.


Why are women still relatively scarce in the international studies profession? Although women have entered careers in international studies in increasing numbers, they represent increasingly smaller percentages as they move from PhD student to full professor. Our survey investigates why this is so, focusing on the assistant professor years, which are crucial to succeeding in the profession. We found that there are significant differences in publication rates, as well as differences in research focus (traditional subjects vs. newer subfields) and methodologies (quantitative vs. qualitative). Further, women and men have different perceptions of official and unwritten expectations for research, and policies regarding faculty with children may affect how successful women are in moving up the ladder. Taken together, these findings suggest reasons for the continued "leakiness" of the career pipeline for women and some potential solutions.


[1] Multichannel seismic (MCS) reflection profiling can provide high lateral resolution images of deep ocean thermohaline fine structure. However, the shallowest layers of the water column (z < 150 m) have remained unexplored by this technique until recently. In order to explore the feasibility of shallow seismic oceanography (SO), we reprocessed and analyzed four multichannel seismic reflection sections featuring reflectors at depths between 10 and 150 m. The influence of the acquisition parameters was quantified. Seismic data processing dedicated to SO was also investigated. Conventional seismic acquisition systems were found to be ill-suited to the imaging of shallow oceanographic structures, because of a high antenna filter effect induced by large offsets and seismic trace lengths, and sources that typically cannot provide both a high level of emission and fine vertical resolution. We considered a test case, the imagery of the seasonal thermocline on the western Brittany continental shelf. New oceanographic data acquired in this area allowed simulation of the seismic acquisition. Sea trials of a specifically designed system were performed during the ASPEX survey, conducted in early summer 2012. The seismic device featured: (i) four seismic streamers, each consisting of six traces of 1.80 m; (ii) a 1000 J SIG sparker source, providing a 400 Hz signal with a level of emission of 205 dB re 1 μPa @ 1 m. This survey captured the 15 m thick, 30 m deep seasonal thermocline in unprecedented detail, showing images of vertical displacements most probably induced by internal waves.


Free radicals are chemicals that play a role in the etiopathogenesis of ischemia–reperfusion injury. To prevent or reduce this damage, many protective or therapeutic antioxidants are used effectively in alternative medicine. These antioxidants include immunological or pharmacological agents, vitamins, food and herbal products, and spices. Herbs and spices have been used for a long time as coloring or preservative agents by adding to the content of foods, and at the same time to increase the nutritional value of foods. More recently, the nutritional effects of herbs and spices have become more perceived and the area of interest for these products has increased. Concordantly, the biological contents of herbs and spices have begun to be studied in more detailed way at the cellular and molecular level. Sample plants are classified according to different chemical families, with the diet. Therefore, they have different levels of antioxidant capacity. These products also have potent anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, glucoregulatory, antithrombotic, anticarcinogenic and so forth effects. These properties are used in the treatment of some chronic diseases. In this review, the antioxidant properties of various herbs and spices used to add flavor to foods or to extend their shelf life have been examined in the light of large-scale nutritional epidemiological studies, in vitro cellular/animal studies and clinical trials.


Instagram is one of the most common used social media platforms among teenagers today. It is not only one of the most common used social media platforms, but as well one of the most common places where cyber bullying takes action. By using focus groups, netnographic studies and a questionnary we investigate the meaning of technology regarding how the bullying on Instagram takes shape and the strategies used by teenagers to handle cyber bullying.Our research shows five different ways that cyber bullying takes shape and ten different strategies implemented to handle those. The findings are compared with previous research. The ten different strategies are then discussed from aspects that are found to have a big influence on how those are implemented: gender, knowledge, experience and awareness, presence of parents and other relatives, personal experience, trust in the technical solutions and the weaknesses of those.


Abstract The crystal structure of synthetic shannonite, Pb2O(CO3), orthorhombic, P212121, a = 5.1465(7), b = 9.014(1), c = 9.315(1) Å, V = 432.12(10) Å3, Z = 4, has been solved by direct methods and refined to R = 0.054. There are two symmetrically distinct Pb2+ cations in irregular coordination polyhedra due to the effect of stereoactive s2 lone-electron pairs. The structure can be described as composed of chains of [OPb2] composition running parallel to [100] that are built by corner-sharing of OPb3 oxocentred triangles. The [OPb2] chains are surrounded by CO3 groups to form complex [OPb2](CO3) chains that are linked into a 3-dimensional framework by additional Pb-O bonds. The structure has channels that are parallel to [100] in which the lone-electron pairs of the Pb2+ cations are probably located.


To understand the impact of spatial heterogeneity of environment and movement
 of individuals on the persistence and extinction of a disease, a spatial SIS
 reaction-diffusion model is studied, with the focus on the existence,
 uniqueness and particularly the asymptotic profile of the steady-states. First,
 the basic reproduction number $\R_{0}$ is defined for this SIS PDE model. It is
 shown that if $\R_{0} < 1$, the unique disease-free equilibrium is globally
 asymptotic stable and there is no endemic equilibrium. If $\R_{0} > 1$, the
 disease-free equilibrium is unstable and there is a unique endemic equilibrium.
 A domain is called high (low) risk if the average of the transmission rates is
 greater (less) than the average of the recovery rates. It is shown that the
 disease-free equilibrium is always unstable $(\R_{0} > 1)$ for high-risk
 domains. For low-risk domains, the disease-free equilibrium is stable $(\R_{0}
 < 1)$ if and only if infected individuals have mobility above a threshold
 value. The endemic equilibrium tends to a spatially inhomogeneous disease-free
 equilibrium as the mobility of susceptible individuals tends to zero.
 Surprisingly, the density of susceptibles for this limiting disease-free
 equilibrium, which is always positive on the subdomain where the transmission
 rate is less than the recovery rate, must also be positive at some (but not
 all) places where the transmission rates exceed the recovery rates.


Although neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment, a review of the literature since 1980 reveals a lack of controlled child neglect intervention programs. The aim of this study is to assess a new intervention program to improve the classroom behavior of children exposed to neglect only, by reducing disruptive conduct and promoting adaptive conduct. Two matched groups were selected with children of the same ages, sex, and social class (cultural and economic level) and with mothers of similar ages. The experimental group comprised of five children suffering from neglect and no other type of maltreatment. The control group had five children not abused or neglected. All the children were in the same class at school. The percentage of time per session that each child spent engaged in disruptive behavior was measured (baseline) and was found significantly higher among neglected children. Say-Do-Say Correspondence Training was applied with the neglected children and a rapid, significant reduction in their disruptive behavior was observed (and statistically confirmed), bringing such behavior down to the level of the control (i.e., non-neglected) children. These results were maintained when the intervention was halted. We concluded that the adaptive and classroom behavior of neglected children can be improved with this non-intrusive intervention.


The purpose of this study is to design and develop a multimedia web-based constructivist learning application known as WebOPAC Self Training Tool with Guided Exploration (WSTTG) which is expected to train and access individual's information literacy skills. This tool has been designed and developed according to the constructivist instructional design theories and constructivist instructional development model. The process design consists of four level processes which were component design, single path prototype, alpha version and beta version. The development process ended with four activities which were summative evaluation, final packaging, diffusion and adoption. Throughout the design and development process, there were two instructional designers and two subject matter experts were participated to review and evaluate the design components of the WSTTG. Three potential learners were also participated to evaluate the beta version prototype whether it is appropriately apply to their learning context. The repetition of reviewing the alpha and beta version prototypes lasted when there were no comments found during the final evaluation. Overall, all experts and learners were satisfied with the interface, surface characteristics, scenario, and instructional strategies used in the prototype after consideration on comments and suggestions have been made accordingly. This tool was recommended to be commercialized as an instructional strategy for library orientation program and to be used by both the librarians and library users for WebOPAC teaching and learning purposes. The design and development of this tool could be a guideline to future instructional designers, web developers and e-learning content specialist in developing a multimedia web-based constructivist application in various fields.


Viral infection may trigger islet autoimmunity, type 1diabetes (T1D), or both. Fluctuating population density of bank voles as a putative reservoir of Ljungan virus has been claimed to be associated with variations in T1D incidence rate (IR). We tested the hypothesis that Ljungan virus antibodies reflecting prior exposure(s) to the virus may be associated with islet autoimmunity, childhood diabetes or both. Incident, 0-18y, T1D patients (n = 63) were studied along with age and sample time matched controls (n = 126). The younger children (< 9 years) tended to have a higher incidence rate during winter (IR = 67.6, 95%CI 41.9-103.5) compared to summer (IR = 33.6, 95%CI 15.3-63.9) months. The proportion of children with high level antibodies against Ljungan virus (LVAb) were both younger compared to the rest of the children (p < 0.002) and correlated with half yearly T1D IR (r = 0.78, p = 0.005). High level LVAb fluctuating with season and correlating with T1D IR indicates that past exposure to Ljungan virus may be associated with T1D.


Background: Data on rheumatological disorders in children from developing countries like India are scarce. Hence, this study aimed to understand the clinical and epidemiological profile of rheumatological disorders in children as this can help organize comprehensive evidence-based health care services. Methodology: A retrospective hospital-based study was designed in pediatric rheumatology clinic of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, India, from January 2015 to December 2016. Clinical and laboratory findings and response to therapy of all children with rheumatological disorders were evaluated. Results: A total of 60 children with various rheumatological disorders were included in the study. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) was the most common pediatric rheumatology disorder observed, and polyarticular JIA was the predominate subtype observed in our patients. The mean age of disease onset was 9.1 ± 3.6 years (age range: 1–16 years). Methotrexate was the most common disease modifying antirheumatic drug used. None of the children received newer biological agents due to financial constraints. The use of alternative medicine was observed in 10% of cases. Conclusion: The clinical and epidemiological profile of children with rheumatological disorders in our patient group was different from the European countries and Western world. There is a need for introspecting the lack of using biological agents and its potential impact in managing JIA in our patient group.


The inherent noise in the observed (e.g., scanned) binary document image degrades the image quality and harms the compression ratio through breaking the pattern repentance and adding entropy to the document images. In this paper, we design a cost function in Bayesian framework with dictionary learning. Minimizing our cost function produces a restored image which has better quality than that of the observed noisy image, and a dictionary for representing and encoding the image. After the restoration, we use this dictionary (from the same cost function) to encode the restored image following the symbol-dictionary framework by JBIG2 standard with the lossless mode. Experimental results with a variety of document images demonstrate that our method improves the image quality compared with the observed image, and simultaneously improves the compression ratio. For the test images with synthetic noise, our method reduces the number of flipped pixels by 48.2% and improves the compression ratio by 36.36% as compared with the best encoding methods. For the test images with real noise, our method visually improves the image quality, and outperforms the cutting-edge method by 28.27% in terms of the compression ratio.


We report the draft genome sequence of Bacillus thuringiensis DPC6431, a producer of the anticlostridial bacteriocin thuricin CD and isolated from a human fecal sample. The assembly comprises 96 contigs for a total of 5,581,839 bp, with


This is the second of three articles outlining the diagnoses to be considered when vesiculo-bullous lesions are identified in the neonate, children, and adults. This paper deals with a number of blistering disorders which can arise throughout infancy and childhood. Both inherited and acquired diseases are considered, and general guidelines for diagnosis and management are discussed. (Can Fam Physician 1987; 33:2593-2597.) RESUME


Craniopharyngiomas are the most common pediatric suprasellar tumor. While they are benign by histology, their location in the brain predisposes craniopharyngiomas to be associated with both acute and chronic neurologic, endocrine, visual, neuropsychologic and psychosocial problems. Because of the complexity of problems it is difficult to really prepare a patient and family for every complication or late effect that may occur with a craniopharyngioma diagnosis. Patient/family preparation for potential complications and late sequelae is an ongoing and labor-intensive process for all members of the multidisciplinary health care team. This paper will discuss this process and identify strategies for effective patient/family education for children with the diagnosis of craniopharyngioma.


Depending on the excitability of the medium, a propagating wave segment will either contract or expand to fill the medium with spiral waves. This paper aims to introduce a simple mechanism of feedback control to stabilize such an expansion or contraction. To do this, we lay out a feedback control system in a block diagram and reduce it into a bare, universal formula. Analytical and experimental findings are compared through a series of numerical simulations of the Barkley model.


Purpose of review The development of hepatorenal syndrome in liver cirrhosis leads to an increased morbidity and mortality in patients with cirrhosis. Currently, there are no proven methods for the treatment or prevention of hepatorenal syndrome except to maintain adequate hemodynamics and intravascular volume in this patient population. These patients will frequently require renal replacement therapy when presenting for hepatic transplantation. Recent findings New consensus definitions have been published in order to create uniform standards for classifying and diagnosing acute kidney injury. Two such groups are the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI) and the Acute Kidney Injury Network (AKIN), which have proposed approaches to defining criteria for acute kidney injury. Recent literature supports not only the role of splanchnic vasodilation and systemic vasoconstriction but also heart failure in the pathogenesis of hepatorenal syndrome. The practice of using vasoconstrictor and intravenous albumin therapy for the treatment of hepatorenal syndrome is ongoing with a growing body of recent data supporting the use of vasopressin analogs as the first-line therapy in the ICU setting with knowledge of the possible cardiovascular side-effects. Summary Hepatorenal syndrome, HRS, is a diagnosis of exclusion. There are two forms of hepatorenal syndrome: type 1 hepatorenal syndrome and type 2 hepatorenal syndrome. Type 1 HRS is rapidly progressive and portends a very poor prognosis and has a high mortality rate. Type 2 is more indolent while still associated with an overall poor prognosis. Treatment of HRS is largely still supportive. It is imperative to maintain euvolemia and hemodynamics in this patient population to optimize renal perfusion and preserve renal function. Renal replacement therapy may be necessary in this chronically ill patient population, if renal function deteriorates such that the kidneys cannot maintain metabolic and volume homeostasis. Further research is still necessary as to the prevention and effective treatment for hepatorenal syndrome.


Many healthcare problems are life threatening and need real-time detection to improve patient safety. Heart attack or ventricular fibrillation (VF) is a common problem worldwide. Most previous research on VF detection has used ECG devices to capture data and sent to other higher performance units for processing and has relied on domain experts and/or sophisticated algorithms for detection. In this case, it delayed the response time and consumed much more energy of the ECG module. In this study, we propose a prototype that an embedded microcontroller where an ECG sensor is used to capture, filter and process data, run VF detection algorithms, and only transmit the detected event to the smartphone for alert and call for services. We discuss how to adapt a common filtering and scale process and five light-weighted algorithms from open literature to realize the idea. We also develop an integrated prototype, which emulates the VF process from existing data sets, to evaluate the detection capability of the framework and algorithms. Our results show that (1) TD outperforms the other four algorithms considered with sensitivity reaching 96.56% and specificity reaching 81.53% in the MIT-BIH dataset. Our evaluations confirm that with some adaptation the conventional filtering process and detection algorithms can be efficiently deployed in a microcontroller with good detection accuracy while saving battery power, shortening response time, and conserving the network bandwidth.


In this paper, we present a unified approach to an energy-efficient variation-tolerant design of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) in the context of image processing applications. It is to be noted that it is not necessary to produce exactly correct numerical outputs in most image processing applications. We exploit this important feature and propose a design methodology for DWT which shows energy quality tradeoffs at each level of design hierarchy starting from the algorithm level down to the architecture and circuit levels by taking advantage of the limited perceptual ability of the Human Visual System. A unique feature of this design methodology is that it guarantees robustness under process variability and facilitates aggressive voltage over-scaling. Simulation results show significant energy savings (74% – 83%) with minor degradations in output image quality and avert catastrophic failures under process variations compared to a conventional design.


In this paper, we address the problem of energy-efficient power allocation in MIMO systems. In fact, the widely adopted water-filling power allocation does not ensure the maximization of the energy efficiency (EE). Since the EE maximization is a non-convex problem, numerical methods based on fractional programming were introduced to find the optimal power solutions. In this paper, we present a novel and simple power allocation scheme based on the explicit expressions of the optimal power. We also present a low-complexity algorithm that complements the proposed scheme for low circuit-power regime. Furthermore, we analyze power-constrained and rate-constrained systems and present the corresponding optimal power control. In the numerical results, we show that the presented analytical expressions are accurate and that the algorithm converges within two iterations. We also show that as the number of antennas increases, the system becomes more energy-efficient. Also, a saturation of the EE is observed at high-power budget and low minimal rate regimes.


Introduction: We occasionally experience cases of pseudomesotheliomatous carcinoma in daily clinical practice. We report an extremely rare case of a young woman with pseudomesotheliomatous tuberculous pleurisy. CASE PRESENTATION: An asymptomatic 26-year-old woman with no medical history was referred for chest X-ray abnormality. Chest computed tomography (CT) showed diffuse irregular left pleural thickening with left-sided mediastinal and hilar low attenuation lymphadenopathy. 18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) scan revealed increased uptake in these lesions and the ileocecal area. Mesothelioma or pseudomesotheliomatous carcinoma was suspected. Ultrasonography-guided transthoracic needle biopsy of the left pleural lesions revealed epithelioid cell granuloma, and was positive for both acid-fast bacteria staining and polymerase chain reaction for tuberculosis. Bronchoscopy revealed multiple white coated nodules in the left main bronchus that showed identical findings to the ultrasonography-guided biopsy. She was diagnosed with pseudomesotheliomatous tuberculous pleurisy with bronchial tuberculosis and lymphadenitis. Discussion: Reports show that the differential diagnosis of diffuse pleural thickening includes mesothelioma, pseudomesotheliomatous carcinoma, malignant lymphoma, and benign asbestos-related pleural disease. Pseudomesotheliomatous tuberculous pleurisy is extremely rare. This patient was relatively young with no history of asbestos exposure. The possibility of mesothelioma, pseudomesotheliomatous carcinoma, or benign asbestos-related pleural disease was thought to be low. Low attenuation lymphadenopathy on CT images and increased ileocecal region uptake detected by FDG-PET indicated the possibility of tuberculosis. Conclusion: Tuberculosis should be considered in individuals presenting with diffuse irregular pleural thickening mimicking mesothelioma, even in young patients without risk factors.


As an aid to evaluate an existing Staphylococcus aureus control programme implemented on an organic dairy farm, staphylococci isolates from bovine teat skin, milking gloves, milking equipment and bovine milk were identified to species level using the Staph ID 32 API system. Phenotypically and biochemically identified S.aureus isolates were analysed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and DNA sequence analysis of the X region of the protein A gene (Spa). PFGE identified two main S. aureus types with two subtypes each. Spa typing also identified two main types; one of which consisted of two subtypes. The results were used to identify possible transmission pathways of S. aureus strains and to address potential points of weakness in the S. aureus mastitis control programme.


Neospora caninum is a coccidian parasite causing abortion in cattle and neurological problems in horses. Dogs are definitive hosts of N. caninum. Polymerase chain reaction is the most specific method used for the detection of N. caninum oocytes. In the present study, a total of 100 fecal samples were collected from naturally infected dogs. Of the 100 samples analyzed, 11 of them were detected with Hammondia/Neospora-like oocytes. Genomic DNA was isolated using a commercially available DNA extraction kit. The Nc5 gene specific to N. caninum was amplified by PCR and two of the eleven samples with Hammondia/Neospora-like oocytes formed ~337 bp repeatable band. In conclusion, N. caninum, which has been shown to cause neurological disorders in dogs and to abortion in cattle, was detected in naturally infected dogs in Van Province in Polymerase chain reaction.


The following indications are well accepted for subtotal femur replacement: 1. Malignoma of the hip region. 2. Pertrochanteric fractures. 3. Loosening of hip prosthesis in case of large bony defects. The common devices are implanted by use of bone cement,--we report on three cases, treated by cementless subtotal femoral replacements with bony ingrowth surface. The surface design imitates the structure of spongious bone. The mean observation time of our three patients is more than two years, no complaints are to be observed. By intensive permeation of bone in the surface structure we achieve a more advantageous biomechanical situation.


This thesis explores the evolution of the academic discourse of Israeli historians and social scientists in the context of the peace process, which began in 1993 and ended with the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000. It outlines the dialectical relationship between the conditions of war/peace and the discursive evolution of Israel's historical past. Beyond the emergence of historical revisionism, as exemplified by the 'New Historians' in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it follows the evolution of the discursive struggle over Israeli collective identity by outlining the development and ascendancy of other paradigms contending to shape Israel's past and present. One such paradigm is termed 'post-Zionist' discourse, which emerged alongside new historiography but went beyond the initially moderate revisionism of the New Historians, by basing itself on critical-theoretical foundations that place structures of power at the centre of academic output. In parallel, a new paradigm emerged from the right of the Israeli political spectrum that re-asserted and re-appropriated Zionism in light of the new political climate of peace making. In the context of the prolonged stalemate and eventual failure of the peace process, this thesis argues that it is this paradigm of collective identity, described as 'neo-Zionism,' that has for a number of reasons, for the time being, gained greater momentum within Israeli society. This work argues that there are parallels between the peace process and the hopes pinned on the emergence of new history: the symbolic powers of both processes were conflated beyond their actual substance, which in both cases failed to institute the structural changes required to exact a real reconfiguration of Israeli society. This analysis suggests that as the peace process failed to build a sustainable peace, new history and post-Zionism failed to adjust Israeli identity in line with the apparently changing political climate.


This paper presents a novel design of bidirectional torsional micromirror utilizing vertically driven electrothermal electromagnetic silicon beam actuators to generate large static angular motion. The microactuators are fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer using three photo masks in order to form two different thicknesses of single crystal silicon (SCS) device layer and backside cavities. When the driving bias is applied to the device, four buckle beams placed alongside of the torsion bars are subjected to thermal expansion and buckle in vertical direction generating torsional displacement of the micromirror with respect to two torsion bars placed at the center. The direction of buckle is controlled by Lorentz force caused by the magnetic field applied and the amount of current flowing through the micro beam to be buckled, enabling the bidirectional motion of the torsional micromirror. The maximum static angular displacement of the torsional actuator is up to 14.35° (28.7°, optical angle) under driving DC voltage of 7.5V. For resonance mode operation, the measured angular displacement is 8.46° (16.92°, optical angle) at 10.94 kHz under sinusoidal driving voltage of 0 to 3V.


A sensitive and selective liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC–MS) method for determination of sulpiride in rabbit plasma was developed and validated. The analyte and internal standard (IS) were extracted from plasma by liquid–liquid extraction using ethyl acetate, and chromatography involved Agilent Extend-C18 column (2.1 mm x 50 mm, 3.5 μm) using 0.2 % formic acid in water and acetonitrile (60: 40, v/v) as a mobile phase. Detection involved positive ion mode electrospray ionization (ESI), and selective ion monitoring (SIM) mode was used for quantification of target fragment ions m/z 342.0 for sulpiride and m/z 294.8 for estazolam (internal standard, IS). The assay was linear over the range of 10–2000 ng/mL for sulpiride, with a lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ) of 10 ng/mL for sulpiride. Intraand inter-day precisions were less than 12 % and the accuracies were in the range of 94.1-108.7 % for sulpiride. This developed method was successfully applied for the determination of sulpiride in rabbit plasma for pharmacokinetic study.


The objective of this thesis is the derivation and implementation of a robust Finite Element formulation for the solution of solid-pore fluid coupled problems in multi-fractured porous media.
A coupled displacement-pore pressure FEM formulation for solving solid-pore fluid interaction problems is first introduced. The interaction between both components is governed by two equations: the balance of momentum for the mixture solid-fluid and the mass balance for the pore fluid.
Under nearly undrained-incompressible conditions, such formulation suffers from instability problems because of the violation of Babuska-Brezzi conditions. In order to work with elements of equal order interpolation for the displacement and pore pressure, the formulation is stabilized by means of the Finite Increment Calculus method (FIC). The FIC-stabilized formulation is tested against stable elements with a higher order interpolation for the displacement field in 2D and 3D examples.
Continuum damage mechanics is the basis of the crack growth strategy for the proposed fracture propagation technique. The strain softening models used for quasi-brittle materials favour spurious strain localization and ill-posedness of the boundary value problem if the damage variable only depends on the strain state at the point under consideration.
An integral-type non-local damage model associated to a characteristic length parameter is presented as a method to control the size of the fracture process zone and fully regularize the problem. Two examples are solved assessing the robustness of the model in front of changes in the spatial discretization.
Quasi-zero-thickness interface elements are formulated to represent discontinuities in the porous domain. A bilinear cohesive fracture model is used to describe its mechanical behaviour, and a formulation derived from the cubic law models the fluid flow through the crack.
Finally, a new methodology for the simulation of fracture propagation processes in saturated porous media is presented. The non-local damage model is used in conjunction with the interface elements to predict the degradation pattern of the domain and insert new fractures followed by remeshing. Fluid-driven fracture propagation examples in 2D and 3D are presented to illustrate the accuracy of the proposed technique.


The effect of coagulation bath concentration on the structure and properties of as-spun fibers was systematically analyzed by means of X-ray diffraction, electron microprobe analysis, and the measurement of boiling-water shrinkage, porosity, and mechanical properties analysis, etc. It showed that with the increase of the coagulation bath concentration, the degree of spin orientation and the crystallinity both increased, the microstructure became compact and homogeneous, and the cross section of as-spun fibers tended to be circular. As a result, the breaking tenacity of as-spun fibers and resultant precursors both increased. Adopting the optimizing coagulation bath technique parameters: DMSO/H2O system, coagulation bath temperature 60°C, coagulation bath concentration 65%, and the minus stretch ratio –30%, the precursors and carbon fibers with high performance were prepared.


A method for simultaneous determination of iron, cobalt and nickel, using multiwavelength linear regression spectrophotometry, is proposed. Since there were no interferences caused by cobolt and nickel complexes at the peak of iron complex compound formed with 5-Br-PADAP at 750 nm, the content of iron was determined by working-curve method at 750 nm. Cobalt and nickel were simultaneously determined by multiwavelength linear regression method over the range 550-600 nm. The method was applied to the analysis of iron, cobalt and nickel in synthetic mixtures and oil samples with satisfactory results. The recovery was 97.5%-104.3% and the RSD% was 1.4%-3.8%.


Wastewater reclamation facilities have the potential to be net energy producers if anaerobic bioreactors coupled with energy-generating technologies, such as combined heat and power (CHP), are employed. To characterize the energy-generating potential of multiple-compartment anaerobic bioreactors used for enhanced primary treatment of domestic wastewater, organic removal and observed methane (CH4) generation from two pilot-scale anaerobic baffled bioreactors operating for more than 2400 days over a range of wastewater temperatures (11 to 24 °C) were characterized. Aggregated data from both bioreactor systems were subjected to uncertainty analysis and modeling to increase confidence in results and to determine the energy-generating potential from five different CHP technologies. Results suggest that multiple-compartment anaerobic reactors converted 76% of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removed to methane-rich biogas (effective energy content of 2.0 kW h kg−1 COD removed). Observed CH4 production was most accurately modeled using total COD measurements, not biodegradable COD estimates. The use of the aerobic biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) assay underestimated the amount of anaerobically biodegradable COD. Modeled scenarios suggest that energy generated from several CHP technologies with heat recovery (i.e., effective electrical energy) can provide power equivalent to the amount used by many conventional activated sludge systems. A modeled future scenario where dissolved methane (dCH4) is recovered for energy generation also suggests that dCH4 capture provides additional energy generation and is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Based on COD, mass balances indicate that using multiple-compartment anaerobic reactors for anaerobically enhanced primary treatment increases the portion of COD in the influent wastewater going to electrical energy from ∼8.5% to 21%. Results from this study suggest that replacing conventional primary treatment with anaerobic bioreactors can enhance energy-generating potential at water resource recovery facilities.


Background: Though chemotherapy improves outcomes in many cancer patients, it has a profound impact on quality of life (QOL). Alternative medicine is set to assume an increasingly important role in the management of treatment related side effects in cancer patients. Modification of breathing pattern is an essential part of Yoga, which has been shown to improve QOL in cancer patients. Yoga needs a dedicated trainer and requires considerable time commitment. This study examines the impact of self administered breathing and relaxation exercises on patients receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer.Methods: Non metastatic breast cancer patients currently receiving chemotherapy were considered. Patients who received less than 2 cycles of chemotherapy, had hemoglobin less than 9 g/dl, psychiatric illness or poor performance status (ECOG more than 1) were excluded. The breathing and relaxation exercise was a 5 minute long process designed to be performed twice a day at home. Participants were given technique demonstrations and written instructions. A questionnaire was used to assess compliance. FACT-B (version 4) questionnaires were used to obtain objective assessment of Health Related Quality of Life (HRQL) at enrollment and after 3 weeks of exercise. Pre and post intervention scores were analyzed. Out of 15 enrolled patients, 4 had to be excluded due to one of the above reasons.Results: The participants were all women (mean age 58.6) with a diagnosis of non metastatic breast cancer within 12 months. Patient responses were used to calculate scores in the following subscales: Physical Well Being (PWB), Social Well Being (SWB), Emotional Well Being (EWB), Functional Well Being (FWB) and Breast Cancer Subscale (BCS). The subscale scores were used to calculate 3 total scores: Trial Outcome Index (TOI, sum of PWB+FWB+BCS), FACT-G (PWB+SWB+EWB+FWB) and FACT-B (FACT-G + BCS).Comparison of pre and post intervention mean scores showed trends towards improvement in four out of five sub scores and all three total scores, although only FACT-B (p=0.04), BCS (p=0.05) and SWB (p=0.05) showed statistically significant increases. Patients with good social support had higher overall scores. Patients who finished education in high school had better scores than patients who had dropped out of school or had gone to college.Conclusions: Simple, self administered breathing and relaxation exercises can play an important role in improving QOL in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 3101.


Hypercholesteremia is one of the risk factors for coronary artery disease. The present study highlights the efficacy of Ayurvedic herbal formulation Triphala (Terminalia chebula, Terminalia belerica, and Emblica officinalis) on total cholesterol, Low density lipoprotein (LDL), Very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), High density lipoprotein (HDL) and free fatty acid in experimentally induced hypercholesteremic rats. Four groups of rats were employed namely control, Triphala treated, hypercholesterolemia rats (4% Cholesterol + 1% cholic acid + egg yolk) and Triphala pre-treatment in hypercholesteremic rats. Results showed significant increase in the total cholesterol, LDL, VLDL, and free fatty acid in hypercholesteremic rats were significantly reduced in Triphala treated hypercholesteremic rats. The data demonstrated that Triphala formulation was associated with hypolipidemic effects on the experimentally induced hypercholesteremic rats.


In recent years, various chaotic equation based pseudorandom number generators have been proposed. However, the chaotic equations are all defined in the real number field. In this paper, an equation is proposed and proved to be chaotic in the imaginary axis. And a pseudorandom number generator is constructed based on the chaotic equation. The alteration of the definitional domain of the chaotic equation from the real number field to the complex one provides a new approach to the construction of chaotic equations, and a new method to generate pseudorandom number sequences accordingly. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the sequences generated by the proposed pseudorandom number generator possess many good properties.


The squaring unit is an important one for different engineering branches like Digital Signal processing, Image processing and as well as the in the communication also. The low complexity and high speed hardware solution is essential one for now a day's communication system. The literature survey reports the either any one of the thing is taken into consideration for hardware solution like either low complexity or the high speed only. The proposed one aim is both factors are implemented simultationly using Vedic Mathematics. Direct computation of square of a given binary number consumes same amount of recourses of multiplication. Mathematical multiplication is an essential operation in any DSP calculation. In this paper, we propose an hardware architecture solution for the low complexity and high speed square unit using the Vedic mathematics principles. KeywordsBinary number system, Square unit, Vedic Mathematics, VLSI architecture


To develop the recently proposed approach toward host selection for lanthanide-based emitters, four phosphine oxides PO = PO1-PO4 were investigated which are able to both increase the electron mobility and to sensitize terbium luminescence. New highly soluble and brightly luminescent terbium complexes TbCl3(PO)·H2O and Tb(pobz)3(PO)·(CH3)2CO (pobz- = phenoxybenzoate) with a quantum yield of up to 100% were synthesized and thoroughly characterized. To study the electroluminescence properties of these materials, a series of solution-processed OLED devices were fabricated and their heterostructures were selected based on the HOMO and LUMO energies of PO1-PO4, which were carefully assessed by the combination of DFT and TDDFT methods. Thus, the effectiveness of the proposed approach was proved, and the influence of the anionic ligand was shown. The maximum OLED luminance reached 75 Cd m-2, which is a high value for solution-processed OLEDs based on terbium complexes.


Models of organizational learning typically assume that organizations rely upon performance feedback and that an exogenous (uncontrollable) environment presents the problems that organizations seek to solve. By contrast, we consider how different epistemologies within organizations, or combinations of epistemologies, and the degree to which the environment is amenable to organizational control jointly affect learning over time. This study presents three different epistemologies expressed in interpersonal learning: pragmatism (learning beliefs from better performers), coherentism (learning beliefs that fit together), and conformism (adopting beliefs that are popular). We also examine the learning implications of a dominant coalition that can promulgate its preferred beliefs throughout an organization. Outcomes from our agent-based model point toward key epistemological and environmental contingencies affecting the dynamics of organizational learning. Organizations filled with pragmatists learn effectively if the environment is fixed or controllable. Coherentists and conformists advance in knowledge only to the extent that they can control the environment. Adding pragmatists to organizations with coherentists or conformists produces a nonlinear (S-shaped) effect on knowledge achieved as different proportions of pragmatists alter social networks. Models involving learning from a dominant coalition affirm March's trade-off between learning speed and eventual knowledge achieved only for organizations filled with pragmatists and operating in an uncontrollable environment.


Unsupervised domain adaptive object detection (UDAOD) aims to learn a detector by generalizing knowledge from a labeled source domain to an unlabeled target domain. Though the existing graph-based methods for UDAOD perform well in some cases, they cannot learn a proper node set for the graph. In addition, these methods build the graph solely based on the visual features and do not consider the linguistic knowledge carried by the semantic prototypes, e.g., dataset labels. To overcome these problems, we propose a cross-modality graph reasoning adaptation (CIGAR) method to take advantage of both visual and linguistic knowledge. Specifically, our method performs cross-modality graph reasoning between the linguistic modality graph and visual modality graphs to enhance their representations. We also propose a discriminative feature selector to find the most discriminative features and take them as the nodes of the visual graph for both efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, we employ the linguistic graph matching loss to regulate the update of linguistic graphs and maintain their semantic representation during the training process. Comprehensive experiments validate the effectiveness of our proposed CIGAR.


Need to Know is a series that examines the various drugs that are considered socially harmful. Each book traces the history, prevalence and consequences of misuse and offers ways of finding help to those involved in such abuse.


The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the three elements of intellectual capital, i.e. human capital, structural capital, and customer capital, and their inter‐relationships within two industry sectors in Malaysia. The study was conducted using a psychometrically validated questionnaire which was originally administered in Canada. The main conclusions from this particular study are that: human capital is important regardless of industry type; human capital has a greater influence on how a business should be structured in non‐service industries compared to service industries; customer capital has a significant influence over structural capital irrespective of industry; and finally, the development of structural capital has a positive relationship with business performance regardless of industry. The final specified models in this study show a robust explanation of business performance variance within the Malaysian context which bodes well for future research in alternative contexts.


"On"--"off" response characteristics of the afferent neurons of the sixth abdominal ganglion of the crayfish are described. They are developed in response to the stepped and sinusoidal oscillations of a receptive hair. A conclusion is made that moments of possible impulse arising in neuron response are defined by the simple input influence. Reaction variability under the action of one and the same stimulus appears due to a change of the impulse arising probability in these moments, but not because of the changes in time moments.


Introduction : Exposure of toluene can cause a decrease in glutathione concentration, increase in malondialdehyde and neurotoxic symptoms. The safe duration of toluene in hours/day for each person can vary. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between the safe duration of toluene (hours/ day) with the concentration of glutathione, malondialdehyde and neurotoxic symptoms in Osowilangun shoe home industry workers. Methods : This research was observational with quantitative approach and cross-sectional design. The sampling technique used was accidental sampling with 25 respondents. The variables studied were safe toluene duration (hours/day), glutathione concentration, malondialdehyde concentration, and neurotoxic symptoms. Data were analyzed using Pearson and Phi correlation. Result : The average of safe duration was 1,489 hours/day, glutathione concentration was 58,349 µg/L, and malondialdehyde was 7,847 MU. As many as 11 out of 14 workers experienced neurotoxic symptoms. The relationship between safe duration (hours/day) with glutathione concentration (r=0.139) and malondialdehyde (r=-0.146) was very weak. While, the relationship between safe duration (hours/day) and neurotoxic symptoms was weak (φ=-0.223). Conclusion : The relationship between safe duration in hours/day with glutathione concentration and malondialdehyde was very weak, while relationship with neurotoxic symptoms was weak.


Background The anti-influenza virus activity of green tea catechins has been demonstrated in experimental studies, but clinical evidence has been inconclusive. School-aged children play an important role in the infection and spread of influenza in the form of school-based outbreaks. Preventing influenza infection among students is essential for reducing the frequency of epidemics and pandemics. As a non-pharmaceutical intervention against infection, gargling is also commonly performed in Asian countries but has not yet been extensively studied. Methods and Findings A randomized, open label, 2-group parallel study of 757 high school students (15 to 17 years of age) was conducted for 90 days during the influenza epidemic season from December 1st, 2011 to February 28th, 2012, in 6 high schools in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. The green tea gargling group gargled 3 times a day with bottled green tea, and the water gargling group did the same with tap water. The water group was restricted from gargling with green tea. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza using immunochromatographic assay for antigen detection. 757 participants were enrolled and 747 participants completed the study (384 in the green tea group and 363 in the water group). Multivariate logistic regression indicated no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza between the green tea group (19 participants; 4.9%) and the water group (25 participants; 6.9%) (adjusted OR, 0.69; 95%CI, 0.37 to 1.28; P = 0.24). The main limitation of the study is the adherence rate among high school students was lower than expected. Conclusions Among high school students, gargling with green tea three times a day was not significantly more efficacious than gargling with water for the prevention of influenza infection. In order to adequately assess the effectiveness of such gargling, additional large-scale randomized studies are needed. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01225770


Robot swarms are generally considered to be composed of cooperative agents that, despite their limited individual capabilities, can perform difficult tasks by working together. However, in open swarms, where different robots can be added to the swarm by different parties with potentially competing interests, cooperation is but one of many strategies. We envision an information market where robots can buy and sell information through transactions stored on a distributed blockchain, and where cooperation is encouraged by the economy itself. As a proof of concept, we study a classical foraging task, where exchanging information with other robots is paramount to accomplish the task efficiently. We illustrate that even a single Byzantine robot that lies to others can heavily disrupt the swarm. Hence, we devise two protection mechanisms. Through an individual-level protection mechanism, robots are more sceptical about others' information and can detect and discard Byzantine information, at the cost of lower efficiency. Through a systemic protection mechanism based on economic rules regulating robot interactions, robots that sell honest information acquire over time more wealth than Byzantines selling false information. Our simulations show that a well-designed robot economy penalises misinformation spreading and protects the swarm from Byzantine behaviour. We believe this research can pave the way for economic-based swarm robotics exploiting the timely opportunity for decentralised economies offered by blockchain technology.


Bilingual lexicon induction is the task of inducing word translations from monolingual corpora in two languages. In this article we present the most comprehensive analysis of bilingual lexicon induction to date. We present experiments on a wide range of languages and data sizes. We examine translation into English from 25 foreign languages: Albanian, Azeri, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Nepali, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese, and Welsh. We analyze the behavior of bilingual lexicon induction on low-frequency words, rather than testing solely on high-frequency words, as previous research has done. Low-frequency words are more relevant to statistical machine translation, where systems typically lack translations of rare words that fall outside of their training data. We systematically explore a wide range of features and phenomena that affect the quality of the translations discovered by bilingual lexicon induction. We provide illustrative examples of the highest ranking translations for orthogonal signals of translation equivalence like contextual similarity and temporal similarity. We analyze the effects of frequency and burstiness, and the sizes of the seed bilingual dictionaries and the monolingual training corpora. Additionally, we introduce a novel discriminative approach to bilingual lexicon induction. Our discriminative model is capable of combining a wide variety of features that individually provide only weak indications of translation equivalence. When feature weights are discriminatively set, these signals produce dramatically higher translation quality than previous approaches that combined signals in an unsupervised fashion (e.g., using minimum reciprocal rank). We also directly compare our model's performance against a sophisticated generative approach, the matching canonical correlation analysis (MCCA) algorithm used by Haghighi et al. (2008). Our algorithm achieves an accuracy of 42% versus MCCA's 15%.


A novel marine bacterium, designated strain MKT133(T), was isolated from the foot epidermis of a nudibranch, Glossodoris cincta (Mollusca), collected in seawater off the coast of Japan at a depth of 4 m. This bacterium was Gram-negative, motile, mesophilic and strictly aerobic, with small rod-shaped cells. Colonies of the strain after 4-5 days incubation on marine agar 2216 at 30 degrees C were less than 1 mm in diameter. The strain required salt for growth and contained Q-10 as the predominant respiratory quinone, C(18 : 1) omega 7c, C(16 : 0) and C(17 : 1) as major cellular fatty acids and C(14 : 0) 3-OH as a hydroxy fatty acid. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that the isolate had highest similarity to Sneathiella chinensis, with 97.2 % sequence similarity to the type strain. Our phylogenetic analysis also revealed that this clade represents a distinct lineage and forms a deep branch with less than 90 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to the members of the eight known orders within the Alphaproteobacteria. Sufficient differences exist to distinguish this strain from Sneathiella chinensis. The name Sneathiella glossodoripedis sp. nov. is proposed, with the type strain MKT133(T) (=IAM 15419(T) =KCTC 12842(T)). The novel order Sneathiellales ord. nov. and family Sneathiellaceae fam. nov. are proposed for the distinct phyletic line represented by the genus Sneathiella.


A Service of Health Education was implemented, in a Mexican Pediatric Hospital (Hospital del Nino DIF-Hidalgo), as dependent service of the Hospital Pharmacy Services, being the main objective of the service to provide independent, up-to-date and evaluated information in a simple, clear, concise and precise format, on the Correct Use of the Medications to the parents or tutors of the patient, family and to the community in general. Comparing the patient parents 'or tutors' awareness, before and after an educational session pharmacist provided carried out the evaluation of the Service. The evaluation was made, through two interviews to 270 parents or tutors. The interview measured the patient knowledge about: 1) illness, 2) the medication definition and adverse effects, 3) pharmacological and not pharmacological treatment. The study demonstrated that the parents or tutors significantly increased the knowledge on the illness and the patients' therapy, after receiving health education (p <0.001).


The aim oft the present study was to evaluate the epidemiology, clinical diagnosis, treatment and its success of the four most frequently occuring forms of facial pain (myoarthropathy, trigeminal neuralgia, trigeminal neuropathy and persistent idiopathic facial pain) to draw action-oriented conclusions. 226 patients were analysed, that were treated conservative between 2002 and 2011. Myoarthropathic patients were preponderantly female (95%) with a median discomfort duration of 6.5 month. Most common anamnestic risk facor were psychiatric disorders (31,67%). With our conservative therapy 76,66% of the patients were successfully treated.  Patients with trigeminal neuralgia were also mainly female (65,52%) with a median discomfort duration of 24 month. There was a higher frequence of the right side of the face (62,07%) and in the area of V3 (36,21% and V2 and V3 in combination (29,31%). Common risk factors were previous operations (22,41%) and psychiatric disorders (13,79%). The conservative treatment was successfull in 91,37%. Patients with trigeminal neuropathy were also dominantly female (75%). While the median discomfort duration in this subgroup was 17 month, patients with a shorter duration of disorders had a significantly better outcome (p=0,049). It was predominant at the left side of the face (46,15%) and in the are of V2 (61,54%) and V3 (21,16%). Most frequent risk factors were previous operations (80,77%) and dental interventions (15,39%). 73,07% of the patients were treated successfully. Because patients treated with non – opioid analgetics had a significantly worse outcome (p=0,01), the use should be reassessed giving therapy to this kind of disorder. Patients with persistent idiopathic facial pain had also a higher rate of females (64,29%). The median discomfort duration was 36 month with a predominent incidence on the left side of the face (42,86%). Most common anamnestic risk factors were previous operations (58,93%) and psychiatric disorders (55,36%). With our conservatice therapy 58,93% were treated successfully. Patients with comorbidities had a significant worse outcome (p=0,01), especially psychiatric dosorders had even a more worse success rate (p=0,002). Summarizing we had a positive outcome in 75,22% with our conservatice treatment.


The estate tax treatment of publicity rights factors into the debate regarding whether such rights should be transferrable at death. Some point to the estate tax as a reason for making publicity rights non-transferrable. For if they are transferrable, estate-tax inclusion could result. And, the argument goes, the estate or the beneficiaries could well be coerced into commercializing the rights in order to raise the money to pay the tax. Making them nontransferable would eliminate this possibility. This Article considers some of the connections between the federal estate tax and the state law treatment of publicity rights. It concludes with a suggestion about the tax treatment of publicity rights at a more general level.

Part I explores the estate tax treatment of publicity rights and, in particular, the provision the celebrity Robin Williams used in his will in order to address his apparent concern about forced commercialization. While the provision appears to be based on dicta in the Ninth Circuit, its effectiveness is questionable. This Part concludes with a recommendation that legislation at the state level permit celebrities to extinguish during life their post-death publicity rights. With such legislation in place, the concern about forced commercialization would be eliminated—thus permitting the state law question of transferability to be resolved solely on the basis of non-tax considerations.
Part II considers the characterization of post-death publicity rights as an independent right under state legislation and the estate tax implications of such a characterization. An analogy is made to the estate-tax treatment of wrongful death proceeds, which are typically characterized as independent of the victim's pre-death claim and are therefore not included in the gross estate.
Part III examines two ancillary estate-tax issues that can arise where state law authorizes transferability: first, the impact of retroactive state legislation making publicity rights transferrable in the case of a decedent dying prior to enactment; and, second, the impact of a movement away from traditional choice-of-law rules in this context.
Part IV concludes with a broader suggestion: that the estate tax be made entirely inapplicable to publicity rights without regard to the state law question of transferability. Instead, the proceeds from the exploitation of these rights would be fully taxable as income to the beneficiaries when received, obviating the need to engage in a difficult, potentially protracted inquiry into the valuation of the rights at the time of death.


The basal strata of Natal as seen on the coast are shales, which are succeeded by sandstones of various kinds for from twenty to twenty-five miles into the interior, after which, about the same distance of hard shale occurs in deep beds. The valley of the Umgeni seems to have been formed by subsidence, as the sandstone hills in the neighbourhood are greatly cross-fractured, and the beds dip with an inclination nearly corresponding to the surface-curve. This also is the case with other, shallower valleys in the neighbourhood. There are also, on the upper edge of the northern side of the Umgeni valley, cliffs, from which the front has fallen away, which are without a dip, as also in several other cases in the vicinity where the original level has been maintained, the edge of which presents a perpendicular cliff. In the northern and north-western portion of Natal a white sandstone prevails, which increases in the thickness and hardness of the strata as we ascend. This part is a succession of irregular ridges and truncated cones in every variety of relative position. The present configuration seems to have arisen from denudation, as the sandstone of the remaining hills is horizontal and without cross-fracture. There is also a high plateau, known as the Biggars-Berg, about 50 miles long, which corresponds in structure and height with the highest of the remaining hills, and appears to be the only part which has been free from the denuding force which has scooped out the


Customer feedback can be an important signal for improving commercial machine translation systems. One solution for fixing specific translation errors is to remove the related erroneous training instances followed by re-training of the machine translation system, which we refer to as instance-specific data filtering. Influence functions (IF) have been shown to be effective in finding such relevant training examples for classification tasks such as image classification, toxic speech detection and entailment task. Given a probing instance, IF find influential training examples by measuring the similarity of the probing instance with a set of training examples in gradient space. In this work, we examine the use of influence functions for Neural Machine Translation (NMT). We propose two effective extensions to a state of the art influence function and demonstrate on the sub-problem of copied training examples that IF can be applied more generally than hand-crafted regular expressions.


Passive electroreception is a complex and specialised sense found in a large range of aquatic vertebrates primarily designed for the detection of weak bioelectric fields. Particular attention has traditionally focused on cartilaginous fishes, but a range of teleost and non-teleost fishes from a diversity of habitats have also been examined. As more species are investigated, it has become apparent that the role of electroreception in fishes is not restricted to locating prey, but is utilised in other complex behaviours. This paper presents the various functional roles of passive electroreception in non-electric fishes, by reviewing much of the recent research on the detection of prey in the context of differences in species' habitat (shallow water, deep-sea, freshwater and saltwater). A special case study on the distribution and neural groupings of ampullary organs in the omnihaline bull shark, Carcharhinus leucas, is also presented and reveals that prey-capture, rather than navigation, may be an important determinant of pore distribution. The discrimination between potential predators and conspecifics and the role of bioelectric stimuli in social behaviour is discussed, as is the ability to migrate over short or long distances in order to locate environmentally favourable conditions. The various theories proposed regarding the importance and mediation of geomagnetic orientation by either an electroreceptive and/or a magnetite-based sensory system receives particular attention. The importance of electroreception to many species is emphasised by highlighting what still remains to be investigated, especially with respect to the physical, biochemical and neural properties of the ampullary organs and the signals that give rise to the large range of observed behaviours.


Policymakers discuss nudges as instruments to foster individual public good contributions. Contrary to the original aim of nudges, which is to improve decision outcomes for the individual, pro-social nudges aim to improve the social outcomes of individual behavior. This can potentially result in personal costs. Because the question of responsibility to contribute to public goods on an individual level is a tricky one, it is important to investigate whether vulnerable people are more susceptible to the influence of this type of nudges. We report evidence from a laboratory public goods experiment testing whether the effects of pro-individual, resp. pro-social defaults on behavior vary based on cognitive resource availability. Findings based on 476 independent observations do not show an interaction effect. Our findings inform public policy-making by shedding light on heterogeneous impacts of behavioral policies imposing individual costs to foster social benefits. This is important for the discussion on who should contribute to public good provision and how nudges may affect this. Thus, findings add to the debate on the ethics of nudges, as well as to the scientific understanding of the various nuances of libertarian paternalistic policies.


Large amounts of natural gas have been discovered recently, both in carbonate reservoirs and in shales in the Sinian–Silurian strata of the Sichuan Basin, southern China. Although numerous studies have been conducted to learn about the accumulation of conventional and shale gas, the gas generation history, the origins of the two types of gas, and gas resources in the basin remain unclear. In this study, the hydrocarbon generation histories of Cambrian and Silurian source rocks were reconstructed on the basis of thermal history and hydrocarbon generation kinetic parameters. Intensive cracking of crude oil to generate considerable amounts of secondary cracking gas in Silurian and Cambrian formations occurred during deep burial. The high abundance of overmature pyrobitumen in carbonate reservoirs and shale demonstrates the occurrence of large-scale in situ cracking of liquid hydrocarbons. A mixing model was proposed to quantitatively determine the contribution of kerogen and oil-cracking gas in shale gas accumulations. The mixing of two thermogenic gases with different maturities resulted in a reversal and a rollover of the carbon isotope compositions of shale gas. Moreover, gas resources from the cracking of three occurrence states of liquid hydrocarbons—including dispersed residual bitumen in source rocks, dispersed oil outside the source, and accumulated oil in reservoirs—were evaluated in Sinian–Cambrian and Silurian petroleum systems in the Sichuan Basin, providing a guide for future deep gas exploration of similar formations in China and elsewhere.


Background/Aims To determine factors predictive of discordance in staging liver fibrosis using liver biopsy (LB) and acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) elastography in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Methods Consecutive patients with CHB who underwent LB and ARFI elastography on the same day from November 2010 to March 2013 were prospectively recruited from three tertiary hospitals. Results We analyzed 105 patients (median age of 47 years). The F0–1, F2, F3, and F4 fibrosis stages were identified in 27 (25.7%), 27 (25.7%), 21 (20.0%), and 30 (28.6%) patients, respectively. The areas under the receiver operating characteristics curves for ARFI elastography in assessing ≥F2, ≥F3, and F4 was 0.814, 0.848, and 0.752, respectively. The discordance of at least one stage between LB and ARFI was observed in 68 patients (64.8%) and of at least two stages in 16 patients (15.2%). In a multivariate analysis, advanced fibrosis stage (F3–4) was the only factor that was negatively correlated with one-stage discordance (p=0.042). Moreover, advanced fibrosis stage was negatively (p=0.016) correlated and body mass index (BMI) was positively (p=0.006) correlated with two-stage discordance. Conclusions Advanced fibrosis stage (F3–4) was a predictor of nondiscordance between LB and ARFI elastography; BMI also influenced the accuracy of ARFI elastography.


It is becoming clear that the project management practice must embrace sustainability in order to develop into a 'true profession' (Silvius et al., 2012). In project management, sustainability can be gained in both the product of the project and in the process of delivering the product. (Gareis et al., 2010) Nine sustainability principles have been identified that should be implemented in the project management practice. These nine principles are: (1) values and ethics; (2) holistic approach; (3) long term view; (4) large scale; (5) risk reduction; (6) participation; (7) accountability; (8) transparency; (9) stakeholder interest. In a case study it is researched which project and program management roles can exert an influence to have the sustainability principles implemented in the project management practice and how they can accomplish this implementation.


The chapter compares the liberal beliefs and sensibilities informing the question of the rise or decline of international law with the liberalism found in the way in which the concept of non-state actors has been conceptualized, theorized, and used in international legal thought and practice. It shows that the question of whether non-state actors strengthen or weaken international law prejudges its very answer and supports an image of international law on the rise. In doing so, the discussion simultaneously shows that liberal discourses are organized around liberal symbioses that are necessary to preserve international lawyers' confidence in the ability of international law to intervene in the problems of the world.


Short term rainfall characteristics of Kerayong River catchment, a tributary of Klang River were analysed in this research. As the urbanisation process and the population increased in this catchment is inevitable, therefore knowledge on rainfall characteri stics is necessary and useful in designing future drainage system. There are four rainfall and five stage monitoring stations established in this catchment. The rainfall stations are equipped with data logger of 0.5 mm tipping bucket resolution and record the data based on event mode. Time Dependent Data Analysis (TIDEDA) program is used by Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) Malaysia to read and edit the data for further analysis. The available data of Kerayong River catchment were beginning from year 2001 and 2002 which continuous data were available for all stations. The spatial and temporal distribution for Kerayong River catchment is studied by plotting the storm event at one minute interval. The analysis shows that the daily rainfall temporal pattern for the year 2001 and 2002 was found to be relatively similar to all stations. However the magnitude of rainfall intensity varies considerably at short time intervals. The result shows that there are missing data occur during the thunderstorm at Kg. Cheras Barn station from 15th January to 16th May 2003 . The missing data are related to the malfunctioning of the instruments and vandalism. Therefore, the potential of fuzzy logic modeling i.e. Fuzzy Rule Based Model (FRBM) and Normal Ratio Method (NRM) for filling the missing data at Kg. Cheras Barn was investigated. A total of 420 daily rainfall values i.e. data for year 2001 and 2002 are employed to construct the FRBM. The numbers of data sets are selected in randomly and divided into training and verification sets. The rules are adopted from the available daily rainfall record with the simple assumption.


INTRODUCTION
skin fixing devices in peripheral, central or arterial catheters have several important drawbacks: site infection, stacking of material in the anatomical area which is very annoying for the patient and medical staff risk when fixating stitches are used.

OBJECTIVE
to develop a fixing device that simplifies presently used systems, favoring asepsis and motility.

METHODS
the device herein described is composed by a mechanical fixation, a closing system and coupling for intravenous catheters. The system has a thin circular piece with at least two holes for subcutaneous fixation, one or several conducts for lumina and a hollow cylindrical part in one side, screwed exteriorly and flat inside, with an oriented protuberance. A watertight plug with one or several thin tubes that adapt to the lumina, a positional slot, a handle and a solid screwed tap for perfect closure are available for at home use. An intermediate plug with one or several lumina and a screwed hollow plug are provided for in hospital use.

RESULTS
the above described device is intended to be used in two settings: in hospital and at home. It is supposed to reduce the risk of infection and stacking of the anatomical site where cutaneo us puncture with fixation of peripheral, central or arterial catheters is performed.


In this paper a study has been presented on high speed (HS) and 79 mW low power (LP) 16/spl times/16 MAC performance of new XOR-based circuits using transmission gate logic (TG) implemented on 0.65 /spl mu/m CMOS DLP/DLM technology. It is shown that our proposed MAC results in better performance than other published MACs due to no DC leakage currents for low power and bypassing unnecessary switching activities with latches before and after the multiplier for high speed.


Objective| To compare the effectiveness and safety profile of intrauterine balloon tamponade with uterovaginal roll gauze packing among patient of primary postpartum hemorrhage after normal vaginal delivery. Duration of Study| This study was conducted in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, of a Tertiary Care Hospital, Lahore from December 2015 to November 2016. Patients and Methods| In this Randomized controlled trial,212 patients of age range 20 to 40 years who presented with postpartum hemorrhage after a normal vaginal delivery (NVD) those who did not responded to medical treatment were included. Cases of PPH due to perineal, cervical or vaginal tear, episiotomy, retained placenta, coagulation disorder, secondary PPH and PPH with normal vaginal delivery after previous cesarean section were excluded from this study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either intrauterine balloon tamponade or uterovaginal roll gauze packing. Intrauterine packing (IP) was removed after 24 hours and balloon tamponade after 24 hours of insertion. Antibiotic coverage was also given to prevent intrauterine infection. All females were kept under observation in ward. Effectiveness was labeled if bleeding was stopped within 15 minutes after uterovaginal packing or balloon tamponade (BT) and patient remain hemodynamically stable and if no complications occur after applying or removing balloon tamponade or intrauterine packing safety was labeled. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 20.2.Frequencies and percentage of complications were calculated along with rate of successful cessation of bleeding were calculated. Result| Mean age group of woman in whom balloon tamponade and intrauterine packing was used was 29.22+6.52 and 29.05+ 6.802 years. Mean gestational age of woman in BT and IP group and was 39.95+1.304 and 38.98+ 1.428 years. Mean blood loss in woman in BT and IP group was 600.28+ 25.338 and 669.21+70.176 ml. Efficacy of group BT was 78(73.6%) and in IP was 63(59.4%).Safety of BT group was 97(91.51%) and IP group was 55(51.88%). Treatment of balloon tamponade was more effective and safe than intrauterine packing in female presented with PPH after normal vaginal delivery (p < .05). Conclusion| This study concluded that balloon tamponade is an effective and safe method than intrauterine packing for the management of PPH after normal vaginal delivery.


Memory wall is an important factor that influences program performance, and its alleviation relies on memory optimization of the program. Static approaches optimize memory performance based on analytical models that are hard to achieve because of increasing architecture complexity and code structures. Execution-driven approaches like iterative compilation achieve it by executing different versions of the program on actual platforms and select the one that renders best performance, outperforming static compilation approaches significantly. But the expensive compilation cost has limited their application scope to embedded applications and a small group of math kernels. This paper proposes a different approach–Combining Model and Iterative Compilation for Effective Memory Optimization (MICEMemO). Such an approach first constructs a memory optimization model based on hardware performance counters to decide how and when to apply transformations, and then selects the optimal transformation parameters using genetic algorithms. Experimental results show that our performance counter based approach can greatly reduce programs' memory access time and influence ratio for memory reference, improve programs' memory performance, therefore, effectively alleviate the problem of memory wall.