This paper investigates the effect of earnings and employment opportunities on pre-marital fertility. Using data from a sample of British women born in 1970, we estimate an independent competing risks hazard model of fertility and cohabitation decisions. Our results show that individual earnings opportunities are negatively related to pre-marital fertility but do not affect union formation. Local male unemployment, on the contrary, is a positive determinant of single motherhood and a negative factor in cohabitation decisions. The latter result is consistent with the Wilson hypothesis as it shows the existence of a direct effect of male joblessness on co-residential relationships.


Convergence by loss is a concept that is often adduced to characterize the Balkans as a linguistic area and to substantiate the areality of particular linguistic features, developments and varieties. Time and again, it has been pointed out that however useful this concept may be for certain purposes, e.g., when descriptively stating differences between historical stages of one specific variety, it is problematic for others, in particular for comparing languages and assessing areality. In addition to implying the undisputed existence of categorial distinctions, applying this concept indiscriminately obscures the fact that its manifestations may differ substantially across features and languages. Furthermore, focusing on "loss" impedes insight into both more general and more specific processes. On the examples of case and infinitive in the standard norms of Albanian and Macedonian this article acts on these intuitions and elaborates a finer-grained approach that avoids the assumption of generally applicable categorial distinctions and the ignoring of differences below seemingly identical surface phenomena. By the decomposition of linguistic units into their constitutive morphosyntactic features it becomes possible to sketch the interaction of morphosyntactic exponents in expressing characteristic functions, such as the selection of grammatical relations or the licensing of constituency. This provides a solid empirical basis for comparing morphosyntactic patterns across languages in synchronic and diachronic respects and may be operationalized for assessing the areality of particular developments.


Reports findings on the latest survey of residential fuelwood consumption and production in the Plains States. Topics examined include the geographic distribution of residential fuelwood consumption and production within the state; the species of trees used for residential fuelwood; the types of wood-burning facilities used; the reasons for burning fuelwood; and the land, ownership, and tree classes from which fuelwood was produced.


Industrial heritage reflects the traces of an industrial past that have contributed to the economic development of a country. This heritage should be included within the scope of preservation to remind of and to connect the city and its inhabitants to the past. Through adaptive conservation, industrial heritage can be reintroduced into contemporary urban life, with suitable functions and unique identities sustained. The conservation of industrial heritage should protect the material fabric of such heritage and maintain its cultural significance. Emphasising the historical and cultural significance of industrial areas, this research argues that industrial heritage is primarily impacted by political and economic thinking rather than by informed heritage and conservation issues. Waterfront redevelopment projects create similar landscapes around the world, transforming industrial identities and cultural significances. In the case of The Rocks and Darling Harbour, the goal of redevelopment was the creation of employment opportunities, and the provision of places to work, live and shop, through tourism promoted by the NSW State Government. The two case study areas were pivotal to the European industrial development of Sydney. Sydney Cove was one of the largest commercial wharves used to handle cargo in Australia. This paper argues, together with many historians, planners and heritage experts, that these areas have not received the due diligence deserved in regards to their significance to the industrial history of Sydney and modern Australia. Keywords—Industrial heritage, post-industrial city, transformation of waterfronts, tourism, consumption.


The denudational history along a transect across the western margin of the Lambert Graben, northern Prince Charles Mountains, East Antarctica, is quantified on the basis of thermal history modeling of apatite fission track data from four vertical profiles. Early Cretaceous paleogeothermal gradients estimated from the fission track data increase from ∼19°C km−1 ∼50 km west of the rift margin to ∼29°C km−1 within the immediate vicinity of the western master fault. Two discrete phases of enhanced denudation during the Phanerozoic are inferred for the western rift margin. The first occurred during the early Paleozoic, with minimum denudation of between 1.6 and 5.0 km, which is broadly coeval with initial rifting and the major period of Permo‐Triassic sedimentation within the Lambert Graben. The formation of the graben was related to the formation of the ancestral Gamburtsev Mountains due to Variscan compression and substantial crustal thickening of the East Antarctic Craton. The second phase of denudation commenced in the Early Cretaceous, with estimated amounts ranging between 1.0 and 4.5 km, generally increasing toward the rift margin, with the maximum total denudation occurring ∼20 km west of the western master fault of the graben. The Early Cretaceous phase of denudation was probably related to tectonic reactivation of the earlier Permo‐Triassic rift during the initial separation of the Indian and Antarctic sector of Gondwana.


The natural cell environment provides a variety of chemical, topographical and mechanical stimuli that contribute in regulating cell behavior and function. If considerable effort has been traditionally dedicated to exploring the chemical side of cell regulation, it was more recently demonstrated that topographic cues might be equally important. Cell substratum interactions are particularly crucial in determining the reaction of cells to biomaterials, which was also shown to be strongly determined by topographical cues. A significant acceleration in investigating this aspect came from the availability of techniques for microstructured surfaces, and is now well known that cells can react to topographical features at their own scale (1-100 micron). Nevertheless, cells possess many nanoscaled features such as filopodia and a cytoskeleton, and the extracellular matrix (ECM) itself possess quite a few nanoscale details. Therefore, the capability of controlling the surface structure of materials in the nanoscale has offered the possibility of adding another level in the hierarchical understanding of cell/biomaterial interactions. Nanofabrication methods, mainly developed out of the semiconductor industries, are a technological driver for addressing the nanotopography related aspects of cell behavior. General concepts regarding some of the more widely utilized techniques that enable the achievement of ordered and well-defined nanoscale features for the investigation of cell reaction to topography are presented together with a few examples of the practical applications available in the literature.


Adaptive randomly reinforced urn (ARRU) is a two-color urn model where the updating process is defined by a sequence of non-negative random vectors $\{(D_{1,n}, D_{2,n});n\geq1\}$ and randomly evolving thresholds which utilize accruing statistical information for the updates. Let $m_1=E[D_{1,n}]$ and $m_2=E[D_{2,n}]$. Motivated by applications, in this paper we undertake a detailed study of the dynamics of the ARRU model. First, for the case $m_1 \neq m_2$, we establish $L_1$ bounds on the increments of the urn proportion at fixed and increasing times under very weak assumptions on the random threshold sequence. As a consequence, we deduce weak consistency of the evolving urn proportions. Second, under slightly stronger conditions, we establish the strong consistency of the urn proportions for all finite values of $m_1$ and $m_2$. Specifically, we show that when $m_1=m_2$ the proportion converges to a non-degenerate random variable. Third, we establish the asymptotic distribution, after appropriate centering and scaling, of the proportion of sampled balls in the case $m_1=m_2$. In the process, we settle the issue of asymptotic distribution of the number of sampled balls for a randomly reinforced urn (RRU). To address the technical issues, we establish results on the harmonic moments of the total number of balls in the urn at different times under very weak conditions, which is of independent interest.


This study was undertaken to determine whether the treatment benefit reported in randomized trials for patients with extrafoveal choroidal neovascular membranes (NVMs) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) or the ocular histoplasmosis syndrome (OHS) can be duplicated in other clinical settings. The visual results and recurrence rates in treated extrafoveal NVMs of 70 patients with AMD and 21 patients with OHS were similar to those reported by the Macular Photocoagulation Study Group, in which all treated patients received argon blue-green laser photocoagulation after the administration of retrobulbar anesthesia. In this study, 78% (71/90) of the patients were treated with krypton laser and only 35% (32/90) had retrobulbar anesthesia. These results suggest, but do not prove, that the wavelength of the laser used or the administration of retrobulbar anesthesia may not be critical variables in determining the success of treatment in patients with extra-foveal NVMs.


By a large margin, Californians passed the English Proficiency, Multilingual Education Initiativein November 2016, despite the fact that Proposition 58 gutted Proposition 227, which effectivelyended bilingual education in 1998. We conclude that it would be simplistic to call thismassive change in policy a result that the "times had changed," either demographically or evenin terms of underlying attitudes toward language. Instead, the victory of Prop 58 seems due inlarge part to political strategy rather than a radical shift in the electorate. The proportions of Latinoand Asian registered voters have certainly increased over the last decade and a half, as hasthe proportion of liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, there is a limit to what these demography-asdestinyaccounts can explain. Instead, using survey experiments in three California-wide surveys,we show that underlying attitudes about teaching the English language have been relatively stable,and that many voters supported Prop 58 without being aware that it reinstated bilingual education.When this was made clear, voters changed their positions, particularly among whites andconservatives. What was salient were the first two words on the ballot label, "English Proficiency"and this is an almost universally accepted goal.


In order to improve mutton production, Dorset x Mandya and Dorset x Nellore halfbred rams were mated with Mecheri ewes to produce Dorset x Mecheri x Mandya and Dorset x Mecheri x Nellore quarterbreds. Least-squares analyses of the body weight of crossbred (n = 541) and purebred (n = 959) Mecheri sheep were made. The overall means for bodyweight of crossbred Mecheri sheep at birth, three, six, nine and 12 months of age were 2.27 ± 0.05, 7.97 ± 0.24, 11.84 ± 0.38, 14.73 ± 0.48 and 17.55 ± 0.56 kg, respectively and for purebred Mecheri sheep the values were 2.27 ± 0.02, 7.80 ± 0.10, 11.48 ± 0.15, 14.04 ± 0.17 and 16.23 ± 0.18 kg, respectively. Crossbreds had higher body weight than purebred Mecheri sheep at all age groups. However, it was not significant up to nine months of age. In general, period of lambing and sex of the lambs had significant effects on body weight of both genetic groups at different ages. The estimates of heritability for body weight ranged from 0.177 ± 0.129 to 0.338 ± 0.176 among different age groups. Highest heritability estimates were obtained for body weight at three and six months of age, hence these traits may be considered as selection criteria for improving the body weight of Mecheri sheep at different age groups.


The existing research of the acceleration control mainly focuses on an optimization of the velocity trajectory with respect to a criterion formulation that weights acceleration time and fuel consumption. The minimum-fuel acceleration problem in conventional vehicle has been solved by Pontryagin's maximum principle and dynamic programming algorithm, respectively. The acceleration control with minimum energy consumption for battery electric vehicle(EV) has not been reported. In this paper, the permanent magnet synchronous motor(PMSM) is controlled by the field oriented control(FOC) method and the electric drive system for the EV(including the PMSM, the inverter and the battery) is modeled to favor over a detailed consumption map. The analytical algorithm is proposed to analyze the optimal acceleration control and the optimal torque versus speed curve in the acceleration process is obtained. Considering the acceleration time, a penalty function is introduced to realize a fast vehicle speed tracking. The optimal acceleration control is also addressed with dynamic programming(DP). This method can solve the optimal acceleration problem with precise time constraint, but it consumes a large amount of computation time. The EV used in simulation and experiment is a four-wheel hub motor drive electric vehicle. The simulation and experimental results show that the required battery energy has little difference between the acceleration control solved by analytical algorithm and that solved by DP, and is greatly reduced comparing with the constant pedal opening acceleration. The proposed analytical and DP algorithms can minimize the energy consumption in EV's acceleration process and the analytical algorithm is easy to be implemented in real-time control.


Parallel sentences provide semantically similar information which can vary on a given dimension, such as language or register. Parallel sentences with register variation (like expert and non-expert documents) can be exploited for the automatic text simplification. The aim of automatic text simplification is to better access and understand a given information. In the biomedical field, simplification may permit patients to understand medical and health texts. Yet, there is currently no such available resources. We propose to exploit comparable corpora which are distinguished by their registers (specialized and simplified versions) to detect and align parallel sentences. These corpora are in French and are related to the biomedical area. Manually created reference data show 0.76 inter-annotator agreement. Our purpose is to state whether a given pair of specialized and simplified sentences is parallel and can be aligned or not. We treat this task as binary classification (alignment/non-alignment). We perform experiments with a controlled ratio of imbalance and on the highly unbalanced real data. Our results show that the method we present here can be used to automatically generate a corpus of parallel sentences from our comparable corpus.


: Treatment guidelines from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Academy of Pediatrics state that stimulant medications have the most evidence for safety and efficacy in the treatment of childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Longer-acting stimulants are thus considered as first-line for management of ADHD symptoms. Over the years, concerns about the abuse potential of stimulants have led to the development of alternative formulations of these agents. One such recent development, lisdexamfetamine (LDX) was FDA approved for treating ADHD in children in early 2007 and in adults in early 2008. LDX is a prodrug, which when orally ingested, is converted to l-lysine and active d-amphetamine, which is responsible for its therapeutic activity. This unique formulation may lead to a possible reduction of the abuse potential, by bypassing the first-pass metabolism. In fact, a statistically significant difference for the 'liking' effects on the Drug Questionnaire Response has been reported with intravenous LDX compared to d-amphetamine. LDX appears to have an efficacy and tolerability profile comparable to other extended-release stimulant formulations used to treat ADHD, but reduced potential for abuse-related liking effects when compared to equivalent amounts of immediate-release d-amphetamine. The most common adverse events


Axitinib is a medication that stops cancer cell growth by depriving the cancer cell of the nutrients and oxygen that it needs. Axitinib is used to treat advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which is a type of kidney cancer that has spread within or beyond the kidney. Axitinib has been approved for the treatment of RCC as either a first treatment option or a second treatment option. It is used as a first treatment option for RCC when combined with a medication that reactivates the immune system (immunotherapy), either avelumab or pembrolizumab. If the advanced RCC starts growing again it can be used as a second treatment option where it is taken by itself. It is essential to conduct studies to assess how well the drug works and whether it has any side effects in order to understand whether it is safe to give to people. This summary reports the combined results of 5 studies and looks at how long side effects last after treatment is temporarily stopped. Researchers found that side effects generally got better in 3 days or less after people stopped taking axitinib on its own. The time it took for side effects to get better was generally shorter than for other similar drugs or combinations of axitinib and immunotherapy. The results of individual studies may vary from these 5 combined study results. Three of the 5 studies were ongoing at the time of this analysis and the final outcomes of those studies may differ from those described in this summary. The purpose of this plain language summary is to help you understand the findings from recent research. Health professionals should make treatment decisions based on all available evidence. Clinical Trial Registration: NCT00678392, NCT00920816, NCT02493751, NCT02684006, NCT02853331 (ClinicalTrials.gov).


We provide a Bayes–Nash equilibrium analysis of the simultaneous ascending auction (SAA) when local bidders interested in a single item compete against global bidders interested in aggregating many items. We first assume that each local bidder values only a specific item, e.g. the license for the region where it has monopoly power, and that global bidders' valuation functions are convex. For this environment we show that a global bidder faces an exposure problem with adverse consequences for revenue and efficiency. In the limit when the number of items grows large, the SAA is revenue and efficiency equivalent to the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves (VCG) mechanism. We extend our analysis to include the case where items are substitutes for local bidders, so that price arbitrage will occur as observed in many spectrum auctions. This environment, which combines substitutes and complements, results in an aggravated exposure problem. Consequently, the SAA is no longer efficient and may yield dramatically lower revenues than the VCG mechanism. Finally, we relax the assumption that global bidders' valuation functions are convex by considering an environment with medium-sized global bidders who demand fewer than all items. We show that global bidders divide the market at low prices when market sharing is feasible while they engage in mutually destructive bidding when there is a fitting problem. In both cases, the SAA again underperforms relative to the VCG mechanism.


Piscivorous fishes tend to be able to consume other fishes early in development and generally experience a dramatic increase in growth after the ontogenetic diet shift to piscine prey. Hence, an acceleration of the onset of piscivory may be favoured strongly by natural selection. Temperate freshwater piscivores, for example, becomes piscivorous at a relatively young age by spawning in advance of, and thereby achieving a size advantage over, the young of their piscine prey. Research in various North American estuaries suggests that young-of-the-year (YOY) bluefish Pomatomus saltatrix, an offshore-spawning estuarine-dependent marine fish, may accelerate the onset of piscivory by being advected to higher latitudes and timing their estuarine entry with the appearance of small coastal fishes. This hypothesis was tested by: (i) determining the annual recruitment date of YOY bluefish and their prey; and (ii) examining the diet and prey size preferences, and predator size-prey size relationships, of YOY bluefish in two different estuarine systems: Great South Bay, and the lower Hudson River. Results suggest that the relationships between bluefish and their prey are determined by a complex interplay between recruitment timing of both predator and prey, prey size availability, predator selectivities, and the timing of vernal warming. It is concluded that YOY bluefish migration into northern estuaries at an advanced size provides them with a predatory size advantage over their principal piscine prey thereby facilitating an early diet shift to piscivory white minimizing the time spent as planktivores.


Event time models predict occurrence times of an event of interest based on known features. Recent work has demonstrated that neural networks achieve state-of-the-art event time predictions in a variety of settings. However, standard event time models suppose that the event occurs, eventually, in all cases. Consequently, no distinction is made between a) the probability of event occurrence, and b) the predicted time of occurrence. This distinction is critical when predicting medical diagnoses, equipment defects, social media posts, and other events that or may not occur, and for which the features affecting a) may be different from those affecting b). In this work, we develop a conditional event time model that distinguishes between these components, implement it as a neural network with a binary stochastic layer representing finite event occurrence, and show how it may be learned from right-censored event times via maximum likelihood estimation. Results demonstrate superior event occurrence and event time predictions on synthetic data, medical events (MIMIC-III), and social media posts (Reddit), comprising 21 total prediction tasks.


The effect of solar radiation on dissolved organic matter (DOM) utilization was studied in 2 contrasting streams in Arkansas, USA, from June 2002 through July 2003. Moores Creek is an agricultural stream with elevated nutrient and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. Huey Hollow is a forest stream with low nutrient and DOC concentrations. A series of in situ experiments were conducted seasonally in both streams to assess how exposure of DOM to solar radiation impacted its utilization, measured as bacterial production following exposure and subsequent inocu- lation with whole stream water. Exposure of DOM to solar radiation significantly decreased its uti- lization during most seasons in both streams. Both streams experienced one period when exposure of DOM significantly increased bacterial production; during these periods, DOM appeared to be the least bioavailable and most photochemically reactive. In spring, ultraviolet absorption coefficients, normalized to DOC concentration, suggested a greater proportion of photoreactive DOM in Huey Hollow. Additionally the δ 13 C signature of DOM (δ 13 CDOM) suggested the largest terrestrial input occurred in spring when exposure of DOM significantly increased bacterial production. Both the proportion of photoreactive DOM and δ 13 CDOM exhibited little seasonal variation in Moores Creek; however, the relative bioavailability of DOM did vary, suggesting some change in DOM composition. In spring the relative bioavailability of DOM was lowest in Moores Creek, and DOM exposure appeared to have further reduced its bioavailability. Elevated ammonium concentrations at this time suggest photochemically enhanced humification may be an important mechanism influencing DOM cycling, and warrants study in streams impacted by agricultural land use.


Gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) in the atmosphere was measured during an oceanographic cruise in coastal waters between San Diego and San Francisco, California during the CalNex 2010 campaign. The goal of the measurements was to quantify GEM in the various environments that the ship encountered, from urban outflow, the Port of Long Beach and associated shipping lanes, coastal waters affected by upwelling, the San Francisco Bay, and the Sacramento ship channel. Mean GEM for the whole cruise was 1.41 ± 0.20 ng m–3, indicating that background concentrations were predominantly observed. The ship's position was most often in waters off the coast of Los Angeles (74% of time with latitude < 34.3°N) and mean GEM for this section was not significantly (P > 0.05) higher than the whole cruise mean. South of 34.3°N, GEM was observed to vary diurnally and as a function of wind direction, displaying significantly higher concentrations at night and in the morning associated with general transport from the land to the sea. GEM and CO concentrations were positively correlated with a slope of 0.0011 ng m–3 ppbv–1 (1.23 × 10–7 mol mol–1) during periods identified as "Los Angeles urban outflow", which given the inventoried CO emissions for the region, suggests a larger source of GEM than is accounted for by the inventory. The timing of the diel maximum in GEM (9:00 local time) was intermediate between the maxima of CO and NO2 (6:00) and that of NO and SO2 (10:00–12:00), suggesting that a mixture of urban and industrial sources were contributing to GEM. There was no observable postsunrise dip in GEM concentrations due to reaction with atomic chlorine in the polluted coastal atmosphere. On three occasions, significantly higher GEM concentrations were observed while in the Port of Long Beach (~ 7 ng m–3), and analyses of wind directions, ratios of GEM with other copollutants, and the composition of single particles, suggest that these plumes originated from the local waste incinerator in the Port area. A plume encounter from a large cargo ship allowed for the estimation of a mass‐based emission factor for GEM (0.05 ± 0.01 mg kg–1 fuel burned). GEM enhancements observed in the Carquinez Straits, were lower than expected based on the observed NOx/SO2 ratios in the plumes and emissions inventories of the nearest oil refineries. In a region north of Monterey Bay known for upwelling, GEM in the air was positively correlated with dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in seawater and in the air. Using the observed GEM/DMS(g) relationship and the calculated mean DMS ocean‐atmosphere flux for the cruise, an ocean‐atmosphere flux of GEM of 0.017 ± 0.009 µmol m–2 d–1 was estimated. This flux was on the upper end of previously reported GEM ocean‐atmosphere fluxes and should be verified with further measurements of Hg species in seawater and air.


Background and Aim: The gradual loss of efficacy of conventional antibiotics is a global issue. Plant material extracts and green-synthesized nanoparticles are among the most promising options to address this problem. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the antibacterial properties of aqueous and hydroalcoholic extracts of grapefruit peels as well as their inclusion in green-synthesized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Materials and Methods: Aqueous and hydroalcoholic extracts (80% v/v) were prepared, and the volume and mass yields were determined. The synthesis of AgNPs was done in an eco-friendly manner using AgNO3 as a precursor. The nanoparticles were characterized by ultraviolet–vis spectrometry and photon cross-correlation spectroscopy. The antibacterial activity of the extracts was tested on three Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, clinical Enterococcus faecalis, and S. aureus) and two Gram-negative bacteria (two clinical Escherichia coli) using various concentrations of extracts (100, 50, 25, 12, and 5 mg/mL and 5% dimethyl sulfoxide as negative control). Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) were determined using the microdilution method. Modulation of cefazoline and ampicillin on resistant E. coli and S. aureus strains was added to the mixture design response surface methodology with extreme vertices design, with the diameters of inhibition and the fractional inhibitory concentration index as responses and factors, respectively. The antibiotic, the ethanolic extract, and water varied from 0.1 MIC to 0.9 MIC for the first two and from 0 to 0.8 in proportion for the third. Validating the models was done by calculating the absolute average deviation, bias factor, and accuracy factor. Results: The volume yield of the EE and aqueous extract (AE) was 96.2% and 93.8% (v/v), respectively, whereas their mass yields were 7.84% and 9.41% (m/m), respectively. The synthesized AgNPs were very uniform and homogeneous, and their size was dependent on the concentration of AgNO3. The antibacterial activity of the two extracts was dose-dependent, and the largest inhibition diameter was observed for the Gram-positive bacteria (S. aureus ATCC 6538; AE, 12; EE, 16), whereas AgNPs had a greater effect on Gram-negative bacteria. The MICs (mg/mL) of the AEs varied from 3.125 (S. aureus ATCC 6538) to 12.5 (E. coli 1 and E. coli 2), whereas the MICs of the EEs varied from 1.5625 (S. aureus 1, S. aureus ATCC 6538, and E. faecalis) to 6.25 (E. coli 1). There was a significant difference between the MICs of AEs and EEs (p=0.014). The MBCs (mg/mL) of the AEs varied from 12.5 (S. aureus ATCC 6538) to 50 (S. aureus 1), whereas those of the EEs varied from 6.25 (S. aureus 1) to 25 (E. coli 1 and E. faecalis). Ethanolic grapefruit extracts demonstrated an ability to modulate cefazolin on E. coli and S. aureus but were completely indifferent to ampicillin on E. coli. Conclusion: Grapefruit peel extracts and their AgNPs exhibit antibacterial properties that can be exploited for the synthesis of new antimicrobials and their EEs may be efficiently used synergistically with other antibiotics against bacteria with intermediate susceptibility.


Two experiments were conducted to investigate the roles of covariation and of causality in people's readiness to believe a conditional. The experiments used a probabilistic truth-table task (Oberauer & Wilhelm, 2003) in which people estimated the probability of a conditional given information about the frequency distribution of truth-table cases. For one group of people, belief in the conditional was determined by the conditional probability of the consequent, given the antecedent, whereas for another group it depended on the probability of the conjunction of antecedent and consequent. There was little evidence that covariation, expressed as the probabilistic contrast or as the pCI rule (White, 2003), influences belief in the conditional. The explicit presence of a causal link between antecedent and consequent in a context story had a weak positive effect on belief in a conditional when the frequency distribution of relevant cases was held constant.


Background Fatty acids are important dietary factors that have been extensively studied for their implication in health and disease. Evidence from epidemiological studies and randomised controlled trials on their role in cardiovascular, inflammatory, and other diseases remains inconsistent. The objective of this study was to assess whether genetically predicted fatty acid concentrations affect the risk of disease across a wide variety of clinical health outcomes. Methods and findings The UK Biobank (UKB) is a large study involving over 500,000 participants aged 40 to 69 years at recruitment from 2006 to 2010. We used summary-level data for 117,143 UKB samples (base dataset), to extract genetic associations of fatty acids, and individual-level data for 322,232 UKB participants (target dataset) to conduct our discovery analysis. We studied potentially causal relationships of circulating fatty acids with 845 clinical diagnoses, using mendelian randomisation (MR) approach, within a phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) framework. Regression models in PheWAS were adjusted for sex, age, and the first 10 genetic principal components. External summary statistics were used for replication. When several fatty acids were associated with a health outcome, multivariable MR and MR-Bayesian method averaging (MR-BMA) was applied to disentangle their causal role. Genetic predisposition to higher docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) was associated with cholelithiasis and cholecystitis (odds ratio per mmol/L: 0.76, 95% confidence interval: 0.66 to 0.87). This was supported in replication analysis (FinnGen study) and by the genetically predicted omega-3 fatty acids analyses. Genetically predicted linoleic acid (LA), omega-6, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and total fatty acids (total FAs) showed positive associations with cardiovascular outcomes with support from replication analysis. Finally, higher genetically predicted levels of DHA (0.83, 0.73 to 0.95) and omega-3 (0.83, 0.75 to 0.92) were found to have a protective effect on obesity, which was supported using body mass index (BMI) in the GIANT consortium as replication analysis. Multivariable MR analysis suggested a direct detrimental effect of LA (1.64, 1.07 to 2.50) and omega-6 fatty acids (1.81, 1.06 to 3.09) on coronary heart disease (CHD). MR-BMA prioritised LA and omega-6 fatty acids as the top risk factors for CHD. Although we present a range of sensitivity analyses to the address MR assumptions, horizontal pleiotropy may still bias the reported associations and further evaluation in clinical trials is needed. Conclusions Our study suggests potentially protective effects of circulating DHA and omega-3 concentrations on cholelithiasis and cholecystitis and on obesity, highlighting the need to further assess them as prevention treatments in clinical trials. Moreover, our findings do not support the supplementation of unsaturated fatty acids for cardiovascular disease prevention.


Detailed postmortem examination was conducted on eleven emu chicks presented to the Department of Veterinary Pathology, College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Mhow, MP, India from local emu farm in Indore. Birds had died with history of respiratory signs and mild nervous signs. On gross examination, numerous small grayish white nodules were seen in many organs particularly in the lungs. Histopathologically nodules on the lungs were characterized by granulomatous necrotic areas infiltrated with monocytes, lymphocytes and plasma cells. Numerous thin, tubular septate branching fungal hyphae with parallel-sided walls were seen in the parenchymatous tissue along with mononuclear cell infiltration. Liver of the affected birds revealed severe subcapsular and sinusoidal congestion. Diffuse areas of necrosis and severe congestion were noticed in the spleen. The disease was diagnosed as aspergillosis by correlating clinical signs with postmortem findings (Gross lesions and histopathology) and microscopic detection of fungus in the lung tissue followed by isolation and identification of the fungus. As the disease may take a very fatal course and no effective treatment has been established yet, so effective preventive measures should be taken to reduce the ensuing economic losses.


It is puzzling that American criminal law recognizes self-defense while rejecting the conceptually similar defense of necessity. Necessity applies where pressing circumstances provoke the defendant to commit an otherwise unlawful act, while self-defense applies where an assailing person does so. Different treatment would make sense if the two defenses were morally distinguishable. But they are morally equivalent, whether considered from the perspective of natural law, social contract theory, or utilitarianism. Rather, the motivation appears to be that the necessity defense, unlike self-defense, implies biological determinism, calling into question the criminal law's traditional assumption that human beings exercise free will in choosing their actions. And, as its treatment of the necessity defense indicates, American criminal law does not simply proceed from an assumption of free will but silences any contradiction. Such a stance means not only that the necessity defense cannot be accommodated, but also that the legal system cannot make use of the insights of the sciences and social sciences to the extent that they describe human behavior deterministically. However, it may be better for the law to embrace a more salutary kind of inconsistency, one that entertains the possibility that the law is capable of moral improvement and self-correction.


The researchers place a great deal of emphasis on the Group Discussion Method since it is necessary for students towards their communication proficiency. Communication is an important element to achieve better understanding among communicators. Therefore, this present study aims to discover students' perception of using the Group Discussion Method towards their proficiency in English speaking. This research relays on a quantitative descriptive research design using a questionnaire to collect data. The questionnaire was distributed online to thirty-four respondents. The respondents are fifth-semester students of the English Language Education Department of Universitas Teknologi Yogyakarta who has learned English speaking using the Group Discussion Method. Data were analyzed using quantitative descriptive perceptions presentation. The research findings indicate that 80% of respondents state that Group Discussions Method is an interactive, friendly, innovative, and interaction-built approach between teacher and students. Besides, it also increases their English speaking proficiency since they are learning in a group where they are required to talk and discuss in English. This research is limited to small-scale respondents; thus, further researchers are recommended to conduct research with wide-scale respondents.


Purpose: Informed decision making now is considered the underpinning of ethical medical practice. We aimed to determine the extent to which patients with incurable cancer are adequately informed of their prognosis and treatment options and encouraged to participate in treatment decisions. Patients and Methods: One hundred eighteen cancer patients with incurable disease presenting for an initial consultation with one of nine oncologists at two Sydney tertiary referral hospitals participated in the study. Consultations were recorded on audiotape to permit a content analysis of doctor-patient interactions. We devised a coding system to assess disclosure of information and to evaluate doctor encouragement of patient participation in treatment decision making. Patient recall, satisfaction, anxiety, and perceptions of the decision-making process were assessed to determine the effects of informed decision making on patient outcomes. Results: Most patients were informed about the aim of anticancer treatment (84.7%), that their disease was incurable (74.6%), and about life expectancy (57.6%). An alternative to anticancer treatments was presented to 44.1%, 36.4% were informed about how anticancer treatment would affect quality of life, and 29.7% were offered a management choice. Oncologists checked patient understanding in only 10.2% of consultations. Although greater information disclosure did not seem to elevate anxiety levels, greater patient participation in the decision-making process was associated with increased anxiety levels (P .0005), which persisted over a 2-week time span. Conclusion: Most patients were well informed, but important gaps remain, especially concerning information about prognosis and alternatives to anticancer treatment. These gaps invite the question concerning whether patients are led toward anticancer treatment. J Clin Oncol 20:503-513. © 2002 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.


Apart from classical actions of vitamin D on bone and mineral metabolism, it exerts diverse protective biological effects against carcinogenesis. Vitamin D may play role in controlling growth of normal breast cells and may help in prevention of growth of malignant mammary cells. Hypovitaminosis D is gaining attention as an emerging risk factor of breast cancer. Some ecological studies suggest association of high levels of sunlight exposure with low prevalence of breast cancer and mortality rates. Hence interest arose among researchers with the hypothesis that high levels of vitamin D might help to reduce the risk of breast cancer. Several mechanisms proposed to link deficiency of vitamin D with breast cancer. Numerous epidemiological, laboratory and observational studies demonstrated evidence linking higher vitamin D exposures to reduce prevalence of breast cancer. Vitamin D deficiency is potentially modifiable risk factor for breast cancer that can be targeted for prevention of the disease. But its safety, feasibility, effect on biomarkers and long term follow up after supplementation is the chief concerns for its use in chemoprevention of breast cancer. Definite conclusive data from randomized controlled trials about beneficial effect of vitamin D supplementation in prevention of breast cancer is lacking. Serum 25(OH) D is the chief form of circulating vitamin D and most accepted marker of vitamin D status. It is widely used clinical laboratory test to evaluate vitamin D deficiency. In the present review, we attempted to address the issue of vitamin D status as a risk factor for breast cancer and its potential use as chemopreventive therapeutic agent.


Temperature effect due to varying die opening shapes in the direct extrusion of lead have been numerically simulated and presented. Using upper bound method of analysis the internal heat generation due to plastic deformation and frictional heat at various stages of the extrusion process for different die opening geometry are simulated. A C++ program simulates the deformation and frictional power at die land region which is converted to temperature change using finite difference program. At the extrusion die land region, temperature rises with increasing complexity of die openings geometry with I-shaped section, giving the highest temperature rise, followed by T-shaped section, rectangular, circular shaped die openings with square section die opening, giving the least temperature rise for any given extrusion parameter. The die land zone shows increasing temperature rise with increasing friction coefficient, while increasing friction coefficient has no overall effect on the dead metal zone temperature rise. The proper choice of die land is, therefore, imperative if excessive generation of heat at the emergent section is to be avoided to maintain good quality and metallurgical structure of the product.


Entrepreneurship plays a paramount role in the magnification and development of the economy of any country. Entrepreneurship acts as a vaccine for a nation's economic prosperity, leading to the generation of employment opportunities, national income, rural development, technological development, industrialization, export promotion, etc. Many institutes and companies are involved in entrepreneurship development activities, and some join these programs as a stepping stone to becoming an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs convert conceptions into economic opportunities through innovations considered a significant source of competitiveness in an increasingly globalizing world economy. Ergo, most regimes strive to augment the supply of competent and ecumenically competitive entrepreneurs in their respective countries. The primary purport of this research is to understand the paramountcy of entrepreneurship in India. Numerous factors need to be considered while expertise the significance of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs experience several opportunities and challenges inside the direction of pursuance in their goals and targets.


Subcarrier based space processing was conventionally employed in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems under Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) channels to achieve optimal performance. At the receiver of such systems, multiple Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) blocks, each corresponding to one receive antenna, are required to be used. This induces considerable complexity. In this paper, we propose a pre-DFT processing scheme for the receiver of MIMO-OFDM systems with space-timefrequency coding. With the proposed scheme, the number of DFT blocks at the receiver can be any number from one to the number of receives antennas, thus enabling effective complexity and performance tradeoff. Using the pre-DFT processing scheme, the number of input signals to the space-time-frequency decoder can be reduced compared with the subcarrier based space processing. Therefore, a high dimensional MIMO system can be shrunk into an equivalently low dimension one. Due to the dimension reduction, both the complexity of the decoder and the complexity of channel estimation can be reduced. In general, the weighting coefficients calculation for the pre-DFT processing scheme should be relevant to the specific space-time-frequency code employed. In this paper, we propose a simple universal weighting coefficients calculation algorithm that can be used to achieve excellent performance for most practical space-time-frequency coding schemes. This makes the design of the pre-DFT processing scheme independent of the optimization of the space-time-frequency coding, which is desirable for multiplatform systems.


Methylene diphosphonate is taken up in Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae by fluid-phase pinocytosis, and it inhibits growth through the production of methylene analogs of adenosine triphosphate and diadenosine tetraphosphate. Methylene diphosphonate resistance was thus used as the basis of a screening strategy for the isolation of endocytosis mutants. Fifteen Dictyostelium mutants, whose growth was resistant to 7.5 mM methylene diphosphonate, were obtained and three of them were characterized in more detail. They were partially defective in fluid-phase pinocytosis (both the rate and extent of FITC-dextran entry were reduced to 40–50% of the parent type activity) and they had smaller amounts of several lysosomal enzymes, such as acid phosphatase, N -acetylhexosaminidase, α-mannosidase (20–60% of the parent type activities). In contrast to the lysosomal hydrolases, the mutants had unchanged activities for enzyme markers selective for other compartments. They appeared phenotypically similar to the Dictyostelium mutant HMW570, which is defective in fluid-phase pinocytosis and oversecretes lysosomal enzymes. The methylene diphosphonate-resistant mutants were found to be unable to acidify fully their endosomal compartments and they have an increased endosomal pH, as shown by the use of the pH-sensitive fluorescence of FITC-dextran. Furthermore, the hypothesis proposing a defective acidification of the endosomal pathway was supported by the measurement of ATP-dependent vesicular acidification with acridine orange, and by in vivo 31 P NMR spectroscopy with aminomethylphosphonate as a pH probe.


Study of two recognised geographic lineages within Radula novae-hollandiae sens. lat. have resulted in the detection of morphological differences between individuals from the Queensland Wet Tropics, and those from New South Wales. Individuals from the Wet Tropics have perianths that are shorter at maturity (1.6–2.0 v. 3.8–4.4 mm), leaf lobes that usually bear numerous marginal gemmae, and leaf-lobules that are smaller and more quadrate. The morphological differences, particularly in perianth length, were not fully appreciated previously and provide evidence supporting the recognition of the Queensland Wet Tropics lineage as a distinct and new species, Radula tonitrua, which is here described. The degree of phylogenetic divergence and fixed molecular difference between R. tonitrua and R. novae-hollandiae, are comparable with the separation observed between R. ocellata and R. pulchella, another species pair exhibiting the same geographic disjunction.


BACKGROUND
Loop diuretics are commonly used in patients with heart failure (HF) to remove retained fluid and improve symptoms. However, they may potentially worsen outcomes in HF. It remains unknown whether the use of loop diuretics is associated with adverse HF outcomes in routine clinical practice. We thus determined the effects of loop diuretic use at discharge on long-term mortality and rehospitalization among patients hospitalized with HF.

METHODS AND RESULTS
The Japanese Cardiac Registry of Heart Failure in Cardiology (JCARE-CARD) prospectively studied the characteristics and treatments of a broad sample of patients hospitalized with worsening HF and followed for 2.1 years. Among a total of 2,549 HF patients, loop diuretics were used by 2,015 patients (79%), but not 534 patients (21%). The mean age was 70.7 years and 60% were male. Etiology was ischemic in 32% and mean left ventricular ejection fraction was 42%. After adjustment for covariates, discharge use of loop diuretics was associated with significant adverse risks of cardiac death (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 2.348, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.246-4.423, P=0.008) and rehospitalization (adjusted HR 1.427, 95% CI 1.040-1.959, P=0.027).

CONCLUSIONS
Among patients hospitalized with worsening HF, loop diuretic use at discharge was associated with long-term adverse outcomes, which suggests that routine chronic use of loop diuretics may be harmful for patients with HF.


Gastric outlet obstruction is a clinical syndrome characterized by epigastric abdominal pain due to mechanical occlusion and postprandial vomiting. An 82-year-old male patient applied to the emergency service with nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. The patient with amylase elevation was admitted with pre-diagnosis of acute pancreatitis. However, pancreas parenchyma was normal in abdominal CT. A giant gastric polyp causing gastric outlet obstruction was detected in endoscopy which was decided after duodenal wall thickening. Tubular adenoma with high grade dysplasia was detected in biopsy. Here, we aim to present a case of gastric polyp that can rarely cause gastric outlet obstruction.


Expansion of the krill fishery in the Scotia Sea – Antarctic Peninsula region beyond the current precautionary catch limit requires the development and assessment of methods for subdividing the regional catch limit amongst smaller spatial units. This contribution compiles parameters for use in the ecosystem dynamic models that are needed to assess these methods. These parameters include life history and krill consumption parameters for the fish, whale, penguin and seal species that feed on krill in this region. Maximum krill transport rates are also derived from the OCCAM global ocean circulation model. This parameter set, like most others, is associated with considerable uncertainty, which must be taken into account when it is used. The sources, assumptions and calculations at every stage of the compilation process are therefore detailed and plausible limits for parameter values are provided where possible. The results suggest that fish are the major krill consumers in all SSMUs, with perciform fish taking as much krill as whales, penguins and fur seals combined and myctophid fish taking double that amount. However estimates of krill consumption per unit predator biomass suggest that this is an order of magnitude higher in penguins and seals than in whales and fish.


Amino acid oxidases (AAOs) are enantioselective flavoenzymes that catalyse the oxidation of amino acids into imino acids, which spontaneously hydrolyse in water to form keto acids. AAOs have several potential applications, most notably as biocatalysts in the production of enantiomerically pure amino acids and keto acids, or in enzymatic biosensors. Therefore, there is a demand for a range of AAOs with specific activity against various substrates, encouraging the characterisation of less well understood oxidases.
Seven putative oxidases were cloned into the pET-YSBLIC-3C expression vector, expressed in E. coli-DE3 expression strains and assayed for activity against all proteinogenic amino acids. Of these seven targets, the L-amino acid oxidase from Pseudomonas putida (PpLAAO) was found to be highly soluble, had detectable activity against L-aspartate and L-asparagine and had not been investigated in depth previously.
The purified PpLAAO protein showed high substrate specificity against L-aspartate and lower activity with substrate inhibition against L-asparagine. Very low activity was also detected against L-glutamate. The purified protein had optimal activity around pH 7.5 and at temperatures between 4°C and 30°C.
To investigate the role of residues in the active site area of the PpLAAO protein thirteen active site residues, determined by comparison with the structure of the L-aspartate oxidase from E. coli (L-AspO), were mutated to alanine. Eleven of these mutants were purified and assayed against L-aspartate, L-asparagine and L-glutamate. Results were largely consistent with knowledge of L-AspO.
Ingenza Ltd. has an interest in potential applications of L-tyrosine and L-alanine oxidases. Because of this iterative combinatorial active site saturation testing, using the active structure of L-AspO was performed alongside a small scale epPCR mutagenesis in an attempt to introduce activity against L-alanine and L-tyrosine. L-homoserine was also targeted as part of a substrate walking approach towards L-alanine; however no novel activity was detected in any transformants.


The Women's Refugee Commission completed a research mission to the Jijiga Somali refugee camps in Ethiopia in April 2012. The research mission was the first of three such missions which are part of a three-year global advocacy research project aimed at enhancing the safety and resilience of adolescent girls ages 10 to 16. The purpose of the three-week visit to Ethiopia was to assess Somali refugee adolescent girls' protection and empowerment needs and priorities; learn what programs and community-based strategies appear to be serving them; appraise gaps in services from girls' perspectives; and identify potential local partners that could implement an innovative pilot project focused on enhancing girls' safety. During the visit the Women's Refugee Commission first met with staff of government UN and civil society agencies working with refugees in Addis Ababa and Jijiga (the regional capital of the Somali Region State) to learn about the operational context. We then traveled to the Sheder and Aw Barre refugee camps near Jijiga where we conducted focus group discussions and individual interviews with 86 Somali refugee adolescent girls 24 refugee adolescent boys and 25 refugee women and men community leaders. We listened to Somali refugee girls boys women and men to learn what measures will enable refugee adolescent girls to safely become resilient self-reliant healthy young women and leaders in their families and communities. (Excerpt)


Radiant floor panel technology is gaining popularity as an alternative system over conventional heating, ventilation and, air conditioning system (HVAC) to maintain the room temperature for the desired comfort. This research paper aims to optimize the hydrothermal performance of a radiant system by implementing the Taguchi technique and utility concept for cooling and heating mode of operation. Five geometrical and thermal parameters such as pipe diameter, pipe spacing, concrete layer thickness, wall temperature, and inlet and outlet water temperature difference with three levels are chosen as controlling factors to perform optimization. Considering five parameters and three levels, a total of 27 trial runs (L27) are constructed and computed by mathematical calculation. Two different sets of optimum parameters are obtained for maximizing heat flux and minimizing pressure drop. Further, the utility concept is employed to get a single set of parameters to achieve maximum utilization of the radiant system. Taguchi analysis revealed that thermal parameters like temperature difference and wall temperature are the most influential parameters to reach maximum heat transfer and minimum pressure drop followed by geometrical parameters like pipe spacing and diameter for heat flux and pressure drop, respectively. Providing more weightage to heat flux than pressure drop, utility analysis showed 32% and 42% augmentation in heat flux for cooling and heating mode respectively, at the cost of an increase in pressure drop.


An experimental system was developed for a study of fuel failure detection (FFD) method for coated particle fuels (CPF's) of a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. Various performances of the FFD-system were examined using a CPF-irradiation rig in the Japan Material Testing Reactor. By experiments, it was made sure that the counting rates of fission products (FP's), released from the CPF's, change with the reactor-power and the fuel-temperature remarkably even during the normal reactor operation. Also, an ability of the selective detection of only short-life FP-nuclides was studied in relation to the travelling time of the sampling gas. The results showed that the contributions of the short-life FP-nuclides such as Kr-89 and Kr-90 are more than 80 percent to the total FP-counting rate at the shortest travelling time of 120 sec. It is concluded that the selective detection of only the short-life FP-nuclides can be realized by controlling the travelling time properly.


Probability estimation from a given set of training examples is crucial for learning Naive Bayes (NB) Classifiers. For an insufficient number of training examples, the estimation will suffer from the zero-frequency problem which does not allow NB classifiers to classify instances whose conditional probabilities are zero. Laplace-estimate and M-estimate are two common methods which alleviate the zero-frequency problem by adding some fixed terms to the probability estimation to avoid zero conditional probability. A major issue with this type of design is that the fixed terms are pre-specified without considering the uniqueness of the underlying training data. In this paper, we propose an Artificial Immune System (AIS) based self-adaptive probability estimation method, namely AISENB, which uses AIS to automatically and self-adaptively select the optimal terms and values for probability estimation. The unique immune system based evolutionary computation process, including initialization, clone, mutation, and crossover, ensure that AISENB can adjust itself to the data without explicit specification of functional or distributional forms for the underlying model. Experimental results and comparisons on 36 benchmark datasets demonstrate that AISENB significantly outperforms traditional probability estimation based Naive Bayes classification approaches.


There is hardly any doubt that most turning points in the history of small and minor literatures have been provoked from the outside, in the first place under direct influence of some new current engendered and spread from "centers", traditionally identified with major nations and linguistic communities. As compared with small nations, creative cultures of "centers" have historically enjoyed much more freedom, because (more than often) under the coverage of political-economic and military might they have been able to develop without looming existential threats from the outside.
At the same time, no culture is inherently homogeneous. Especially since the Modern Age conformist and rebellious creativity have been in a constant state of confrontation as well as mutual interactivity. Therefore, the history of cultural creativity is full of paradoxes and surprises, both in "centers" and "peripheries". Creative culture has nearly always retained at least a relative independence, in regard to the official society with its material power and business structures.
I would like to show that beyond a huge number of intertextualities extending from "centers" to "peripheries" (the physical and mental locus of small and minor cultures), easily traceable in formal and external signs of literary works, there exists in parallel a phenomenon which could be tentatively defined as "transgeniality".
I will try to reveal some of such transgenialities comparing the poetics and philosophy of (mainly) three poets, the Spaniard Antonio Gamoneda (born in 1931), the Yi-Chinese poet Jidi Majia (born in 1961) and the Estonian poet Juhan Liiv (1864–1913).


Crude enzymatic extract obtained from five fermentations (300 g of wheat bran) was characterized by a clotting activity of 0.34 ± 0.08 UP/ml with a strength ratio of 1/1: 200. The comparative study of the summaries from 2 purification protocols showed that it is possible to recover 6% of the initial proteins with a 44.54% activity after gel filtration (protocol I), which appeared more technically sound when compared to ion-exchange (1.80% of total proteins with a 23% performance) (protocol II). The protein homogeneity (a single electrophoretic band) of the monomeric protease was confirmed by both methods after precipitation with 80% saturated ammonium sulphate. Moreover, the fractional precipitation technique with this salt (40 and 80%) was useless in the experimental conditions employed and an important loss of activity was observed (28.53%) with a 3-fold purification. In another part of the study, without ammonium sulphate precipitation, the gel filtration enabled the elimination of almost 97% of the inactive proteins and improved the activity performance by 55.13%, while multiplying the specific activity of the coagulant by a factor of 20.88 against a 6.75-fold purification with ionexchange and the appearance of a more or less 20 kDa peptide after electrophoresis. The proteolytic activity of the purified extracts had a similar appearance to a more pronounced kinetic when compared with the reference rennet. The purification protocols did not seem to have an impact on the isolated protease activity.


To explore a new phosphor, Ca19Zn2(PO4)14:Ce3+,Tb3+ and Ca19Zn2(PO4)14:Ce3+,Mn2+ phosphors are successfully synthesized with the objective of application in ultraviolet-based light-emitting diodes. X-ray diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) spectra, and lifetimes were used to characterize the samples. Under UV excitation, the energy transfer from the Ce3+ to Tb3+ ions in the Ca19Zn2(PO4)14 host occurred mainly via a dipole–quadrupole mechanism, and the critical distances of the ion pairs (RC) were calculated by the spectral overlap method. A bright red light emission was observed in the Ce3+ and Mn2+ codoped samples via the energy transfer from the sensitizer Ce3+ to Mn2+ ions. With an appropriate ratio of the active ion concentrations, the Ce3+, Tb3+ and Ce3+,Mn2+ codoped Ca19Zn2(PO4)14 phosphors can generate light from the blue to green and blue to orange regions, respectively. The emission colors of the phosphors were also clarified by CIE coordinates briefly.


Better Buy 1 is a real estate development firm that purchases prime real estate in large cities, upgrades and repositions those buildings, and then sells (not leases) spaces within the building to large, prestigious companies in the area. Even though Better Buy is growing, Roger, one of the commercial real estate developers, couldn't help but wonder if there is a more effective way to manage their sales force. Currently, "managing" the sales process is done through a mixture of loose notes, spreadsheets and inefficient meetings. Roger is also concerned with the communication (or lack thereof) that is taking place between his sales team and the clients. His team should be staying on top of these types of things, shouldn't they? After all, who knows how many customers have been neglected and lost? Finally, what about the lag time when a sales person is waiting to hear back from a client? Should that be managed differently? Something within this process needs to change quickly if Better Buy is to achieve its target sales. Roger believes he could develop a better way to manage their sales process, which would benefit not only the sales force but the customers as well. Better Buy has a pretty good sense of their sales process but no system to manage it or to evaluate its effectiveness. The problem is - where to begin.


Purpose: This study examines the three-dimensional concept of fear of crime and has three aims: 1) to investigate gender differences in the emotional, cognitive and behavioural dimensions of fear of crime ; 2) to investigate the impact of victimization on different dimensions of fear of crime in men and women ; and 3) to investigate the relation of incivilities to different dimensions of fear of crime. Design/Methods/Approach: Data for the study were gathered from the Fear of Crime Study which included participants living in the Croatian capital. The criteria variables included measures of the three dimensions of fear of crime (affective, cognitive and behavioural). Incivilities and prior victimization were predictors, while age and education were control variables. Findings: There was no difference between men and women in the perception of insecurity when walking alone in a neighbourhood after dark, either in the perceived likelihood of victimization or in perceived incivility. The findings suggest that there are some differences in the correlation pattern of the three analysed dimensions of fear of crime in the female and male samples. Hierarchical linear regressions show that in the male sample, victimization due to theft was positively related and sexual victimization was negatively related to perceived insecurity, while in women victimization added significantly only to protective strategies. In both the male and female sample, incivilities made a significant independent contribution to an explanation of the perception of endangerment, the likelihood of victimization and the seriousness of crime consequences. In addition, the contribution of some different patterns of incivilities to the dimensions of fear of crime was established for the male and female sample. Research Limitations/Implications: The research is limited to the Croatian capital. Future research should include a representative sample of the whole state. Practical Implications: The results indicate the need for gender differentiation in programs for the greater safety of citizens. Originality/Value: The article gives a valuable insight into different dimensions and gender differences related to fear of crime. It also suggests the need for further clarity of operationalization.


Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate of all gynaecologic cancers and is the fifth most common cancer in UK women. It has been dubbed "the silent killer" because of its non-specific symptoms. Amongst various imaging modalities, ultrasound is considered the main modality for ovarian cancer triage. Like other imaging modalities, the main issue is that the interpretation of the images is subjective and observer dependent. In order to overcome this problem, texture analysis was considered for this study. Advances in medical imaging, computer technology and image processing have collectively ramped up the interest of many researchers in texture analysis. While there have been a number of successful uses of texture analysis technique reported, to my knowledge, until recently it has yet to be applied to characterise an ovarian lesion from a B-mode image. The concept of applying texture analysis in the medical field would not replace the conventional method of interpreting images but is simply intended to aid clinicians in making their diagnoses.
Five categories of textural features were considered in this study: grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), Run Length Matrix (RLM), gradient, auto-regressive (AR) and wavelet. Prior to the image classification, the robustness or how well a specific textural feature can tolerate variation arises from the image acquisition and texture extraction process was first evaluated. This includes random variation caused by the ultrasound system and the operator during image acquisition. Other factors include the influence of region of interest (ROI) size, ROI depth, scanner gain setting, and "calliper line". Evaluation of scanning reliability was carried out using a tissue-equivalent phantom as well as evaluations of a clinical environment.
iii
Additionally, the reliability of the ROI delineation procedure for clinical images was also evaluated. An image enhancement technique and semi-automatic segmentation tool were employed in order to improve the ROI delineation procedure. The results of the study indicated that two out of five textural features, GLCM and wavelet, were robust. Hence, these two features were then used for image classification purposes.
To extract textural features from the clinical images, two ROI delineation approaches were introduced: (i) the textural features were extracted from the whole area of the tissue of interest, and (ii) the anechoic area within the normal and malignant tissues was excluded from features extraction. The results revealed that the second approach outperformed the first approach: there is a significant difference in the GLCM and wavelet features between the three groups: normal tissue, cysts, and malignant. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was carried out to determine the discriminatory ability of textural features, which was found to be satisfactory.
The principal conclusion was that GLCM and wavelet features can potentially be used as computer aided diagnosis (CAD) tools to help clinicians in the diagnosis of ovarian cancer.


There is a drive within the cosmetic industry towards the development of more sustainable products, supported by consumer awareness of the environmental footprint. The cosmetic industry is rising to meet consumer demand by following practices, such as the use of by-products from agro-industrial waste. Quercus suber is a tree prevalent in the Mediterranean basin. The extraction of cork is considered sustainable, as this process does not harm the tree, and the amount of cork produced increases with the number of extractions. Beyond this, the cork industry produces by-products that are used to sustain the industry itself, such as cork powder, which is reused for generating energy. Additionally, cork and cork by-products contain bioactive compounds mainly with antioxidant activity that can be of use to the cosmetic industry, such as for antiaging, anti-acne, anti-inflammatory, and depigmenting cosmetic products. We provide the reader with an overview of the putative cosmetic applications of cork and its by-products as well as of their bioactive compounds. It is noteworthy that only a few cork-based cosmetic products have reached the market, namely antiaging and exfoliant products. Clearly, the use of cork upcycled cosmetic ingredients will evolve in the future considering the wide array of biological activities already reported.


Now a day there is an emerging interest in replacing non-renewable additives with biodegradable compounds. Cellulose plays very important role in this modification. Their low cost and low density associated with high specific mechanical properties represent a good renewable and biodegradable alternative to the most commonly used synthetic reinforcement. The cellulose was modified by using 2-(Trifluromethyl) benzoylchloride by base catalyzed reaction. Modification of cellulose was confirmed by solubility and IR studies. The biodegradable composite films were developed by film casting method using modified cellulose with Poly (lactic acid) in different compositions. The film composite were characterized by mechanical, moisture absorption, water vapor permeability, oxygen permeability and biodegradable properties.


Healthy Beginnings: Exploring the impact of parental stress and relationship quality on birth outcomes By Anna A. Divney, MPH Advisor: Mary Clare Lennon, Ph.D. This dissertation consists of three studies exploring the effects of maternal and paternal experiences of stress and perceptions of relationship quality on length of gestation and birth weight. The first study assessed the association of parental relationship quality with the baby's length of gestation and birth weight among 2,072 families in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Romantic relationships can be a substantial source of social support as well as stress, and have been shown to influence many health outcomes. Beyond crude relationship characteristics, however, few studies have assessed the association of other dimensions of relationship quality, such as conflict and support, with birth outcomes. No studies have assessed the association of father's report of relationship quality with birth outcomes. In this study, multilevel linear regression analyses found that babies born to fathers who were present at their birth were born significantly heavier and had a longer gestation. The results also showed that greater paternal relationship conflict was associated with lower gestational age among all couples and lower birth weight among unmarried couples. The second study investigated the association between parental stress during pregnancy with their baby's length of gestation and birth weight among a sample of 270 young couples in southern Connecticut. Many studies have shown that women's experiences of stress during pregnancy are associated with preterm birth and low birth weight; however, men's experiences have largely been ignored. Structural equation modeling of the association between maternal and paternal stress latent iv variables and birth outcomes showed that greater paternal stress was significantly associated with longer gestation and greater birth weight, while maternal stress was not significantly associated with these outcomes. The findings from the first two studies suggest that men's experiences and feelings when they are expecting a baby may have a unique contribution to birth outcomes. The third study assessed the association between parental stress during pregnancy and their own and their partner's poor health behaviors and depressive symptoms among a sample of young couples in lower Connecticut. Many unhealthy behaviors, such as substance use, develop during adolescence and evidence shows that stress is a contributing factor. This association has not been established among pregnant adolescents and little attention has been paid to male partners. Among a sample of 294 young expectant couples, multilevel modeling showed that one's own experiences of stress were associated with more unhealthy behaviors and depressive symptoms for both members of the couple. Cross-over effects were also evident—paternal stress was predictive of more maternal conduct problems, while maternal stress was predictive of less paternal substance use and more depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of social relationships and interactions on health behaviors. Overall, the results of the three studies suggest that father's experiences during pregnancy matter to their baby's health, and that experiences of stress during pregnancy may impact an expectant couples' own and their partner's health behaviors. This dissertation research treated men's experiences during pregnancy, including experiences of stress and relationship quality, with equal weight to women's experiences when it came to their impact on birth outcomes and health behaviors. Future, research, programs and policies aimed at improving birth outcomes may be strengthened by the inclusion of expectant fathers.


This paper studies the active learning problem in crowdsourcing settings, where multiple imperfect annotators with varying levels of expertise are available for labeling the data in a given task. Annotations collected from these labelers may be noisy and unreliable, and the quality of labeled data needs to be maintained for data mining tasks. Previous solutions have attempted to estimate individual users' reliability based on existing knowledge in each task, but for this to be effective each task requires a large quantity of labeled data to provide accurate estimates. In practice, annotation budgets for a given task are limited, so each instance can be presented to only a few users, each of whom can only label a few examples. To overcome data scarcity we propose a new probabilistic model that transfers knowledge from abundant unlabeled data in auxiliary domains to help estimate labelers' expertise. Based on this model we present a novel active learning algorithm that: a) simultaneously selects the most informative example and b) queries its label from the labeler with the best expertise. Experiments on both text and image datasets demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art active learning methods.


BACKGROUND
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common problem and surgical decompression of the carpal tunnel is the most effective treatment. After surgical decompression, the palmar skin may be closed using either absorbable or non-absorbable sutures. To date, there is conflicting evidence regarding the ideal suture material and this formed the rationale for our review.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of absorbable versus non-absorbable sutures for skin closure after elective carpal tunnel decompression surgery in adults on postoperative pain, hand function, scar satisfaction, wound inflammation and adverse events.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the following databases on 30 October 2017: the Cochrane Neuromuscular Specialised Register, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and Embase. We searched two clinical trials registries on 30 October 2017.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We considered all randomised or quasi-randomised controlled trials comparing absorbable and non-absorbable sutures for skin closure after any form of carpal tunnel decompression surgery in adults.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
The unit of analysis was the hand rather than the patient. We performed meta-analysis of direct comparisons to generate standardised mean differences (SMDs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in pain scores and risk ratios (RRs) with 95% CIs for dichotomous outcomes, such as wound inflammation. The primary outcome was postoperative pain. Secondary outcomes included hand function, scar satisfaction, scar inflammation and adverse events (complications). We assessed the quality of evidence for key outcomes using GRADE.

MAIN RESULTS
We included five randomised trials (255 participants). The trials were all European (UK, Republic of Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands). Where quoted, the mean age of participants was between 48 and 53 years. The trials measured outcomes between one and 12 weeks postoperatively.Meta-analysis of postoperative pain scores for absorbable versus non-absorbable sutures at 10 days following open carpal tunnel decompression (OCTD) produced a SMD of 0.03 (95% CI -0.43 to 0.48; 3 studies, number of participants (N) = 137; I2 = 43%); the SMD suggests little or no difference, but with a high degree of uncertainty because of very low-quality evidence. At 10 days following endoscopic carpal tunnel decompression (ECTD), the SMD for postoperative pain with use of absorbable versus non-absorbable sutures was -0.81 (95% CI -1.36 to -0.25; 1 study; N = 54); although the SMD is consistent with a large effect, the very low-quality evidence means the results are very uncertain. Only the OCTD studies provided pain data at 6 weeks, when the SMD was 0.06 (95% CI -0.72 to 0.84; 4 studies; N = 175; I2 = 84%), which indicates little or no evidence of difference, but with a high degree of uncertainty (very low-quality evidence). The RR for wound inflammation using absorbable versus non-absorbable sutures after OCTD was 2.28 (95% CI 0.24 to 21.91; N = 95; I2 = 90%) and after ECTD 0.93 (95% CI 0.06 to 14.09; 1 study, N = 54). Any difference in effect on wound inflammation is uncertain because the quality of evidence is very low. One study reported postoperative hand function but found no evidence of a difference between suture types at two weeks (mean difference (MD) -0.10, 95% CI -0.53 to 0.33, N = 36), with similar findings at six and 12 weeks. Only the ECTD trial reported scar satisfaction, with 25 out of 28 people reporting a 'nice' result in the absorbable-suture group, versus 18 out of 26 in the group who received non-absorbable sutures (RR 1.29, 95% CI 0.97 to 1.72, N = 54). These findings are also very uncertain as we judged the quality of the evidence to be very low. All studies were at high risk of bias for most domains. No trials reported adverse events.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
It is uncertain whether absorbable sutures confer better, worse or equivalent outcomes compared to non-absorbable sutures following carpal tunnel decompression, because the quality of evidence is very low. Use of absorbable suture eliminates the need for suture removal, which could confer considerable savings to patients and healthcare providers alike. We need rigorously-performed, non-inferiority randomised trials with economic analyses to inform choice of suture.


: This study was undertaken to answer the question, "Are there any differences in the mesiodistal tooth diameters, dental arch width and dental arch depth between the crowded and noncrowded dentitions?" The materials submitted for study consisted of the Orthoscan intraoral occlusograms of 89 subjects with well-aligned dentition and those of 74 subjects with gross dental crowding. The tooth size and arch dimensions were measured from these intraoral occlusograms. The data were subjected to statistical treatment for comparison of noncrowded and crowded groups. The findings in this study lead to the following conclusions: The mesiodistal tooth diameters of the crowded group were significantly larger than those of the noncrowded group. The dental arch widths of the crowded group were significantly smaller than those of the noncrowded group. No substantial or significant difference in dental arch depth between the crowded and noncrowded subjects could be noted. From these findings it seems that tooth size and dental arch width are determining factors in the formation of dental crowding. Clinically, these results suggest that in the treatment of dental crowding, extraction of teeth and/or expansion of dental arches should be considered depending on what is the main causative factor.


OBJECTIVE
High-grade metastatic epidural spinal cord compression from radioresistant tumor histologies is often treated with separation surgery and adjuvant stereotactic body radiation therapy. Historically, long-segment fixation is performed during separation surgery with posterior transpedicular fixation of a minimum of 2 spinal levels superior and inferior to the decompression. Previous experience with minimal access surgery techniques and percutaneous stabilization have highlighted reduced morbidity as an advantage to the use of shorter fixation constructs. Cement augmentation of pedicle screws is an attractive option for enhanced stabilization while performing shorter fixation. Herein, the authors describe their initial experience of open separation surgery using short-segment cement-augmented pedicle screw fixation for spinal reconstruction.

METHODS
The authors performed a retrospective chart review of patients undergoing open (i.e., nonpercutaneous, minimal access surgery) separation surgery for high-grade epidural spinal cord compression using cement-augmented pedicle screws at single levels adjacent to the decompression level(s). Patient demographics, treatment data, operative complications, and short-term radiographic outcomes were evaluated.

RESULTS
Overall, 44 patients met inclusion criteria with radiographic follow-up at a mean of 8.5 months. Involved levels included 19 thoracic, 5 thoracolumbar, and 20 lumbar. Cement augmentation through fenestrated pedicle screws was performed in 30 patients, and a vertebroplasty-type approach was used in the remaining 14 patients to augment screw purchase. One (2%) patient required an operative revision for a hardware complication. Three (7%) nonoperative radiographic hardware complications occurred, including 1 pathologic fracture at the index level causing progressive kyphosis and 2 incidences of haloing around a single screw. There were 2 wound complications that were managed conservatively without operative intervention. No cement-related complications occurred.

CONCLUSIONS
Open posterolateral decompression utilizing short-segment cement-augmented pedicle screws is a viable alternative to long-segment instrumentation for reconstruction following separation surgery for metastatic spine tumors. Studies with longer follow-up are needed to determine the rates of delayed complications and the durability of these outcomes.


The body has been a principle of socio-political organisation throughout the development of Western modernity. It has also been a continuing preoccupation of Asian modernities, with a range of discursive culture-specific constructions of the body emerging in certain historical junctures and in specific sites. One site of particular interest is post-colonial Singapore. Since independence in 1965, the struggle over control of the bodies of Singaporeans has been played out in a discursive field in which the female body has become a symbol of cultural crisis. Much has been written about the visions of the apocalyptic end of the family and nation arising from women's control of their own fertility that circulated in the discourses in the 1980s and 1990s. The female body was politicised as an element in the nation building process. It was also problematised as the site of threat to the social fabric and a key factor in the emergence of a politics of anxiety. Failure of individual women to reproduce at the level of the family was inscribed as a failure to reproduce the welfare of the nation. The male body is also politicised and located in the discourse of anxiety about social order, and the reproduction of the nation's security. While the body can be instrumental in the nation building process and a key site of discipline, it is also a site for conflict, contestation and resistance to embodied gender norms.


This paper presents a Link Adaptation (LA) algorithm for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) IEEE 802.11n Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems to solve the problem of wireless channel fluctuation that affect the propagation of radio signals between a transmitter and receiver. The proposed Greedy Algorithm (GA) will modify the modulation constellation size and code rate in response to the variation of the transmission medium. This Algorithm compared with the Auto-Rate-Fallback (ARF) algorithm performs better than the ARF approach in terms of throughput, packed loss, elapsed time and transmission efficiency.


Following the fraud scandals in large companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Xerox, investors' concern about fraud in general and fraudulent financial reporting in particular increased and is on the rise. In response to these concerns, auditing standards setters have issued fraud standards that have expanded what is required of the external auditors in relation to fraud detection. However, regardless of these efforts, academic research studies indicate that more efforts are still needed from audit regulators and external auditors. The current paper provides insights into two areas. Firstly, it explores the reasons behind the audit expectation gap, and secondly, it assesses the efforts of standards' setters and external auditors to narrow the gap in relation to fraud detection. The paper provides a set of recommendations to regulators and external auditors in an effort to fight fraud.


Exploiting the performance potential of distributed memory machines requires a careful distribution of data across the processors. Vienna Fortran is a language extension of Fortran which provides the user with a wide range of facilities for such mapping of data structures. However, programs in Vienna Fortran are written using global data references. Thus, the user has the advantages of a shared memory programming paradigm while explicitly controlling the placement of data. In this paper, we present the basic features of Vienna Fortran along with a set of examples illustrating the use of these features. *The work described in this paper is being carried out as part of the research project "Virtual Shared Memory for Multiprocessor Systems with Distributed Memory" funded by the Austrian Research Foundation (FWF) under the grant number P7576-TEC and the ESPRIT project "An Automatic Parallelization System for Genesis" funded by the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research (BMWF). This research was also supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under NASA contract NASI-18605 while the authors were in residence at ICASE, Mail Stop 132C, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23666. The authors assume all responsibility for the contents of the paper. IDepartment of Statistics and Computer Science, University of Vienna, Rathausstrasse 19/11/3, A1010 Vienna AUSTRIA 1ICASE, MS 132C, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton VA. 23666 USA


In the present paper, the stress distribution in an infinite elastic body containing two neighboring nanofibers is studied. It is assumed that the midlines of the fibers are in the same plane. With respect to the location of the fibers according to each other the co-phase and anti-phase curving cases are considered. At infinity uniformly distributed normal forces act in the direction of the nanofibers, location. The investigations are carried out in the framework of the piecewise homogeneous body model with the use of the three-dimensional geometrically non-linear exact equations of the theory of elasticity. The normal and shear self-equilibrated stresses arising as a result of the nanofiber curving are analyzed. In particular, the influence of the interaction between the fibers on the distribution of these stresses is studied. A lot of numerical results on the effect of the geometrical non-linearity to the values of the self balanced shear and normal stresses are presented.


The research was carried out to evaluate yield, chemical composition and losses of chopped tropical grass hays with the following forages: pearl millet (Pennisetum americanum), sudangrass (Sorghum sudanense), elephantgrass (Pennisetum purpureum) and two cultivars of forage sorghum (SF-25 and IPA-467-4-2) (Sorghum bicolor). The materials were harvested at 30% flowering, except for elephantgrass (60 days). The experiment was conducted according to a complete randomized block design, with five treatments and four replications. There were significant differences among hay productions with sorghum cultivars IPA-467-4-2 and SF-25 reaching the highest yields (10.85 and 10.65 t/ha/cut). Production of elephantgrass, sudangrass and pearl millet hays were respectively of 6.94, 6.69, and 4.93 t/ha/cut. Percentage of hay losses were not different among all treatments and varied from 17.33 to 20.17%. Pearl millet and sudangrass hays had the highest CP concentrations (10.56 and 8.80%), which were superior to elephantgrass (6.76%) and sorghum cultivars (5.62 and 5.50%). Most of the NDF values were superior to 70.0%. Sorghum cultivars exhibited the lowest NDIN concentration (0.42 and 0.40% of DM). The ADIN concentration ranged from 0.06 to 0.30% of DM. The highest lignin (%DM) concentration was observed for pearl millet (6.52%) and sorghum IPA-467-4-2 (6.17%) hays. Estimated TDN of the hays showed significant differences and sudangrass reached the highest value (53.35%). Production of chopped tropical grass hays showed high yields and chemical composition according to the minimum standards for ruminant nutrition.


In this study, two geomagnetic field models, T89 and IGRF-11 models are compared with the satellite observations Total magnetic field, magnetic field components and angle between the model and observed data are used for comparisons. The differences are important for the satellite attitude determination systems where the total magnetic field and the angle between the model vector and the observed vector are essential. T89 model differs from the observations by an amount of (0.1-0.3)×104 nT in the total magnetic field. Differences increase when the geomagnetic activity occurs. Differences in the angle can range from 20 to 30o. Differences are found to be the highest in By component and the lowest in Bz component Comparisons are also made between the IGRF and T89 models. Two models are found to be the most different during the high geomagnetic activity periods.


Many young adults with neurodevelopmental disorders experience poor transition outcomes in key areas, including employment, health care, and independent living. Innovative welfare models highlight the importance of involving the local community, and in particular the parents, as important stakeholders capable to generate services and affect local economy. As indicated by the World Health Organization, the availability of person-centered responses, also providing a health budget, appears to be the basis for taking into account person's rights to self-determination. Health services and local stakeholders could play an important role to facilitate the implementation of support networks that are functional for an effective social inclusion. In order to improve current practices in transitioning to adulthood, it is of paramount importance to collect and learn from the living experience of people with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families.


A systematic methodology for design and evaluation of a class of application-oriented parallel computer architectures is defined, presented and investigated. The methodology is based on adding quantitative characterizations of communication and computation operators to a model of parallel computation. The general technique (based on an exhaustive enumeration) for implementing the methodology is intractable, and heuristics are defined to implement the methodology in polynomial time. Logical and arithmetic edge characterizations of a graphical representation of the target applications are used to derive guidelines for selective applications of the heuristics. The guidelines may be used to apply a subset of the heuristics when special case redundancies exist, or to apply alternate techniques when some of the heuristics can not be implemented effectively for the target application. A procedure for implementing the guidelines, properties of the heuristics, and related open problems are discussed.<<ETX>>


Primary and secondary risk factors and prevention strategies for coronary artery disease are reviewed. Cigarette smoking, hypertension, dyslipidemia, heredity, diabetes mellitus, obesity, beta blockades, and coronary artery bypass surgery are some of the topics discussed.


OBJECTIVES To compare the distribution of body mass index (BMI) in a national representative study in The Netherlands in 1996–7 with that from a study in 1980. METHODS Cross sectional data on height, weight, and demographics of 14 500 boys and girls of Dutch origin, aged 0–21 years, were collected from 1996 to 1997. BMI references were derived using the LMS method. The 90th, 50th, and 10th BMI centiles of the 1980 study were used as baseline. Association of demographic variables with BMI-SDS was assessed by ANOVA. RESULTS BMI age reference charts were constructed. From 3 years of age onwards 14–22% of the children exceeded the 90th centile of 1980, 52–60% the 50th centile, and 92–95% the 10th centile. BMI was related to region, educational level of parents (negatively) and family size (negatively). The −0.9, +1.1, and +2.3 SD lines in 1996–7 corresponded to the adult cut off points of 20, 25, and 30 kg/m2 recommended by the World Health Organisation/European childhood obesity group. CONCLUSION BMI age references have increased in the past 17 years. Therefore, strategies to prevent obesity in childhood should be a priority in child public health.


Accurate X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) of first row atoms, e.g., O, are notoriously difficult to obtain due to the extreme sensitivity of the measurement to surface contamination, self-absorption, and saturation affects. Herein, we describe a comprehensive approach for determining reliable O K-edge XAS data for ReO(4)(1-) and provide methodology for obtaining trustworthy and quantitative data on nonconducting molecular systems, even in the presence of surface contamination. This involves comparing spectra measured by nonresonant inelastic X-ray scattering (NRIXS), a bulk-sensitive technique that is not prone to X-ray self-absorption and provides exact peak intensities, with XAS spectra obtained by three different detection modes, namely total electron yield (TEY), fluorescence yield (FY), and scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM). For ReO(4)(1-), TEY measurements were heavily influenced by surface contamination, while the FY and STXM data agree well with the bulk NRIXS analysis. These spectra all showed two intense pre-edge features indicative of the covalent interaction between the Re 5d and O 2p orbitals. Density functional theory calculations were used to assign these two peaks as O 1s excitations to the e and t(2) molecular orbitals that result from Re 5d and O 2p covalent mixing in T(d) symmetry. Electronic structure calculations were used to determine the amount of O 2p character (%) in these molecular orbitals. Time dependent-density functional theory (TD-DFT) was also used to calculate the energies and intensities of the pre-edge transitions. Overall, under these experimental conditions, this analysis suggests that NRIXS, STXM, and FY operate cooperatively, providing a sound basis for validation of bulk-like excitation spectra and, in combination with electronic structure calculations, suggest that NaReO(4) may serve as a well-defined O K-edge energy and intensity standard for future O K-edge XAS studies.