Background and aims CD44v6 and CD44v3 are expressed on the surface of colonic epithelial cells in ulcerative colitis to a much greater extent than in Crohn's disease. We investigated mediators that induce CD44v6 and CD44v3 expression on colonic epithelium and the potential role of CD44 in mediating leucocyte–epithelial adhesion. Design and methods HT-29 cells were exposed to a range of T-helper 1 and T-helper 2 cytokines. Flow cytometry was used to determine their effect on CD44 isoform expression. The adhesion of peripheral blood and lamina propria lymphocytes to HT-29 monolayers was assessed and the effect of induction and blocking of CD44 isoforms was investigated. Results Treatment of HT-29 cells with IL-4 and IL-13 resulted in a two- to three-fold increase in membrane expression of CD44v6 and CD44v3 isoforms. This was inhibited by T-helper 1 cytokines and hydrocortisone (P < 0.001). IL-4 increased lymphocyte adhesion to HT-29 monolayers approximately two-fold (P < 0.01). This increased adhesion of both lamina propria leucocytes and peripheral blood lymphocytes was abolished by anti-CD44v6 monoclonal antibodies (P < 0.01 and P < 0.05, respectively). Conclusion IL-4 and IL-13 are potent inducers of CD44v6 and CD44v3 expression on colon epithelial cells. The reciprocal effects of T-helper 2 and T-helper 1 cytokines on CD44 isoform expression may explain the observed differences between ulcerative colitis and colonic Crohn's disease. We have identified increased adhesion between lymphocytes and colon epithelial cells caused by IL-4-induced CD44v6 expression. This may contribute to epithelial targeting of inflammation in ulcerative colitis.


Properties of the sliding disintegration response of demembranated tetrahymena cilia have been studied by measuring the spectrophotomeric response or turbidity of cilia suspensions at a wavelength of 350 nm relative to changes in the dynein substrate (MgATP(2-)) concentration. The maximum decrease in turbidity occurs in 20 muM ATP, and 90 percent of the decrease occurs in approximately 5.9 s. At lower ATP concentrations (1-20 muM), both the velocity and magnitude of the turbidity decreases are proportional to ATP concentration. The velocity data for 20 muM ATP permit construction of a reaction velocity curve suggesting that changes in turbidity are directly proportional to the extent and velocity of disintegration. At ATP concentrations more than 20 muM (50muM to 5mM), both velocity and magnitude of the turbidimetric response are reduced by approximately 50 percent. This apparent inhibition results in a biphasic response curve that may be related to activation of residual shear resistance or regulatory components at the higher ATP concentrations. The inhibitory effects of elevated ATP can be eliminated by mild trypsin proteolysis, whereupon the reaction goes to completion at any ATP concentration. The turbidimetric responses of the axoneme-substrate suspensions are consistent with the extent and type of axoneme disintegration revealed by electron microscope examination of the various suspensions, suggesting that the turbidimetric assay may prove to be a reliable means for assessing the state of axoneme integrity.


Abstract We recorded telemetry locations from 1,129 radiotagged turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo intermedia) on 4 study areas in the Texas Panhandle and southwestern Kansas, USA, from 2000 to 2004. Analyses of telemetry locations indicated both sexes selected riparian vegetative zones. Females did not select grazed or nongrazed pastures for daily movements. However, females did select nongrazed pastures for nest sites on 2 study areas and males selected for grazed pastures at one study area during the breeding season. We compared nest sites (n = 351) to random sites using logistic regression, which indicated height of visual obstruction, percent canopy cover, and percent bare ground provided the highest predictive power (P ≤ 0.003) for characteristics describing nest-site selection. Nest-site vegetative characteristics between vegetative zones differed primarily in composition: upland zone nest sites had more (P ≤ 0.001) shrubs and riparian zone nest sites had more (P ≤ 0.001) grass. There were no differences in measured nest-site vegetative characteristics between pasture types, but there were differences between available nesting cover in grazed and nongrazed pastures. Random plots in grazed pastures had less grass cover (P ≤ 0.001) and more bare ground (P = 0.002). Because of cattle impacts on average grass height and availability, grazing would likely have the highest impact on nesting in riparian zones due to turkey use of grass as nesting cover. An appropriate grazing plan to promote Rio Grande turkey nesting habitat would include grazing upland zones in the spring, when it likely has little impact on nesting-site selection, and grazing riparian zones following breeding season completion. Grazing at light to moderate intensities with periods of rest did not affect male turkey pasture use and may have continued to maintain open areas used by male turkeys for displaying purposes.


Objective To compare complications, disability, and long-term mortality of patients who received direct enteral tube vs nasogastric tube feeding alone after acute stroke. Methods We used the Ontario Stroke Registry to identify patients who received direct enteral tubes (DET; gastrostomy or jejunostomy) or temporary nasogastric tubes (NGT) alone during hospital stay after acute ischemic stroke or intracerebral hemorrhage from July 1, 2003, to March 31, 2013. We used propensity matching to compare groups from discharge and evaluated discharge disability, institutionalization, complications, and mortality, with follow-up over 2 years, and with cumulative incidence functions used to account for competing risks. Results Among 1,448 patients with DET placement who survived until discharge, 1,421 were successfully matched to patients with NGT alone. Patients with DET had reduced risk of death within 30 days after discharge (9.7% vs 15.3%; hazard ratio [HR] 0.61, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.49–0.75), but this difference was eliminated after matching on length of stay and discharge disability (HR 0.90, 95% CI 0.70–1.17). Patients with DET had higher rates of severe disability at discharge (modified Rankin Scale score 4–5; 89.6% vs 78.4%), discharge to long-term care (38.0% vs 16.1%), aspiration pneumonia (14.4% vs 5.1%) and other complications, and mortality at 2 years (41.1% vs 35.9%). Conclusions Patients with DET placement after acute stroke have more severe disability at discharge compared to those with NGT placement alone, and associated higher rates of institutionalization, medical complications, and long-term mortality. These findings may inform goals of care discussions and decisions regarding long-term tube feeding after acute stroke.


The effects of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and related compounds occur via the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), a member of the basic helix-loop-helix-Per-ARNT-Sim homology (bHLH-PAS) protein superfamily. A single AHR gene has been identified in mammals, whereas many fish species, including the Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) possess two distinctAHR genes (AHR1 and a novel form,AHR2). A mouse bHLH-PAS protein closely related to AHR and designated AHR repressor (AHRR) is induced by 3-methylcholanthrene and represses the transcriptional activity of the AHR. To determine whether AHRR is the mammalian ortholog of fish AHR2 and to investigate the mechanisms by which AHRR regulates AHR function, we cloned an AHRR ortholog in F. heteroclitus with high sequence identity to the mouse and human AHRRs. Killifish AHRR encodes a 680-residue protein with a predicted molecular mass of 75.2 kDa. We show that in vitro expressed AHRR proteins from human, mouse, and killifish all fail to bind [3H]TCDD or [3H]β-naphthoflavone. In transient transfection experiments using a luciferase reporter gene under control of AHR response elements, killifish AHRR inhibited the TCDD-dependent transactivation function of both AHR1 and AHR2. AHRR mRNA is widely expressed in killifish tissues and is inducible by TCDD or polychlorinated biphenyls, but its expression is not altered in a population of fish exhibiting genetic resistance to these compounds. The F. heteroclitus AHRR promoter contains three putative AHR response elements. Both AHR1 and AHR2 activated transcription of luciferase driven by the AHRR promoter, and AHRR could repress its own promoter. Thus, AHRR is an evolutionarily conserved, TCDD-inducible repressor of AHR1 and AHR2 function. Phylogenetic analysis shows that AHRR , AHR1, and AHR2are distinct genes, members of an AHR gene family; these three vertebrate AHR-like genes descended from a single invertebrate AHR.


Summary.
 Breeding phenology of blue tits in Mediterranean stone pine plantations: effects of nestboxes and holm oaks. A blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus population nesting in a Mediterranean stone pine plantation Pinus pinea in the Sierra Morena, Spain, was studied during 2007–2009. Nestboxes were distributed 50 m apart in a grid and territory size, territory location, number of Iberian holm oaks Quercus ilex in territories and number of conspecific neighbours were determined. Laying date, clutch size, hatching success, fledging success and fledgling mass were also recorded. Linear transects were carried out both within and outside the area where nestboxes were located. Over 50% of nestboxes remained unoccupied. The number of conspecific neighbours was positively associated with territory size. Occupied nestboxes had more holm oaks in their vicinity than did unoccupied nestboxes. Breeding success and fledgling mass were similar across territories although laying was earlier in larger territories and in those rich in holmoaks. Clutch size declined with laying date. Blue tits nesting in stone pine plantations are limited in their breeding phenology by the availability of holm oaks in the vicinity of the nest and by territory size. Holm oaks and territory size are more important for attainment of breeding condition by females than for raising nestlings.


Explores the impact of the role(s) that people play in large-scale multi-agent systems. We must develop strategies for coordinating not only the problem-solving behavior of autonomous agent communities, but also their information sharing and mixed-initiative human interaction behavior. In this paper, we describe our experience with combining two interactive agent systems: TRIPS (The Rochester Interactive Planning System) and CAMPS-MP (Constraint-based Airlift Mission Planning Scheduler-Mission Planner), an interactive airlift scheduling tool developed for the US Air Force. This revealed requirements for effective multi-agent mixed-initiative interactions, including the role of explanation and the need for contextual information sharing among the agents.


The question of whether and how tropical Indian Ocean dipole or zonal mode (IOZM) interannual variability is independent of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability in the Pacific is addressed in a comparison of twin 200-yr runs of a coupled climate model. The first is a reference simulation, and the second has ENSO-scale variability suppressed with a constraint on the tropical Pacific wind stress. The IOZM can exist in the model without ENSO, and the composite evolution of the main anomalies in the Indian Ocean in the two simulations is virtually identical. Its growth depends on a positive feedback between anomalous equatorial easterly winds, upwelling equatorial and coastal Kelvin waves reducing the thermocline depth and sea surface temperature off the coast of Sumatra, and the atmospheric dynamical response to the subsequently reduced convection. Two IOZM triggers in the boreal spring are found. The first is an anomalous Hadley circulation over the eastern tropical Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, with an early northward penetration of the Southern Hemisphere southeasterly trades. This situation grows out of cooler sea surface temperatures in the southeastern tropical Indian Ocean left behind by a reinforcement of the late austral summer winds. The second trigger is a consequence of a zonal shift in the center of convection associated with a developing El Nino, a Walker cell anomaly. The first trigger is the only one present in the constrained simulation and is similar to the evolution of anomalies in 1994, when the IOZM occurred in the absence of a Pacific El Nino state. The presence of these two triggers-the first independent of ENSO and the second phase locking the IOZM to El Nino-allows an understanding of both the existence of IOZM events when Pacific conditions are neutral and the significant correlation between the IOZM and El Nino.


In his classic study in the Siskiyou Mountains (Oregon, USA), one of the most botanically rich forested regions in North America, R. H. Whittaker (1960) foreshadowed many modern ideas on the multivariate control of local species richness along environmental gradients related to productivity. Using a structural equation model to analyze his data, which were never previously statistically analyzed, we demonstrate that Whittaker was remarkably accurate in concluding that local herb richness in these late-seral forests is explained to a large extent by three major abiotic gradients (soils, topography, and elevation), and in turn, by the effects of these gradients on tree densities and the numbers of individual herbs. However, while Whittaker also clearly appreciated the significance of large-scale evolutionary and biogeographic influences on community composition, he did not fully articulate the more recent concept that variation in the species richness of local communities could be explained in part by variation in the sizes of regional species pools. Our model of his data is among the first to use estimates of regional species pool size to explain variation in local community richness along productivity-related gradients. We find that regional pool size, combined with a modest number of other interacting abiotic and biotic factors, explains most of the variation in local herb richness in the Siskiyou biodiversity hotspot.


Traditional conceptualizations of knowledge management fail to incorporate the social aspects in which knowledge management work operates. Social knowledge management places people at the center of all knowledge management, including placing the end user at the center when developing eLearning packages, particularly within the context of digital health literacy. As many health professionals working in lower-resource settings face the digital divide, or experience unequal patterns of access and usage capabilities from computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs), ensuring that eLearning packages are tailored for their specific needs is critical. Grounded in our conceptualization of social knowledge management, we outline two of our experiences with developing eLearning packages for health professionals working primarily in lower- and middle-income countries. The Global Health eLearning Center provides eLearning courses to health professionals primarily working in the lower- and middle-income country context. The courses have robust and exhaustive mechanisms in place to ensure that issues related to digital health literacy are not barriers to taking the courses and subsequently, applying the course material in practice. In Bangladesh, we developed a digital health package for frontline community fieldworkers that was loaded on netbook computers. To develop this package, community fieldworkers were provided support during the implementation phase to ensure that they were able to use the netbooks correctly with their clients. As new digital technologies proliferate, guaranteeing that global health workers have the prerequisite skills to utilize and apply digital health tools is essential for improving health care. https://doi.org/10.34105/j.kmel.2015.07.039


Wheat is the third most produced grain in the world after maize and rice. Determining the protein concentration in wheat grain is one of the major challenges for measuring its industrial quality. Samples of wheat can be collected using a spectrophotometer device. The chal-lenge is to associate the energy absorbed by the device with the protein concentration in wheat. The device measures hundreds of variable intensities that can be related to the physicochemical properties. The selection of a subset of uncorrelated variables has been shown to be fundamental for establishing correct correlations and reducing prediction error. A new formulation of a compact genetic algorithm that uses only a mutation operator is proposed. The results produced by the proposed approach are compared with traditional techniques for spectroscopy variable selection as successive projection algorithms, partial least square and classical formulations of genetic algorithms. For near-infrared spectral analysis of the protein concentration in wheat, the prediction errors decreased from 0.28 to 0.10 on average, a reduction of 63%.


Differential privacy (DP) is a leading privacy protection focused by design on individual privacy. In the local model of DP, strong privacy is achieved by privatizing each user's individual data before sending it to an untrusted aggregator for analysis. While in recent years local DP has been adopted for practical deployments, most research in this area focuses on problems where each individual holds a single data record. In many problems of practical interest this assumption is unrealistic since nowadays most userowned devices collect large quantities of data (e.g. pictures, text messages, time series). We propose to model this scenario by assuming each individual holds a distribution over the space of data records, and develop novel local DP methods to sample privately from these distributions. Our main contribution is a boosting-based density estimation algorithm for learning samplers that generate synthetic data while protecting the underlying distribution of each user with local DP. We give approximation guarantees quantifying how well these samplers approximate the true distribution. Experimental results against DP kernel density estimation and DP GANs displays the quality of our results.


Worldwide, the number of cancer survivors is increasing, owing to improvements in cancer therapy, resulting in an increased need to address the physical and mental sequelae of cancer. This paper introduces a Danish psychosocial cancer intervention and presents the baseline characteristics of the cancer survivors with respect to cancer site, sociodemographic variables, social network, lifestyle, self-rated health and the prevalence of cancer-related late effects. The study is part of the FOCARE research project, in which the long-term effects of the rehabilitation programme are evaluated systematically. The study is based on data from a self-administered baseline questionnaire filled in by 2 174 cancer survivors who registered for a 1-week, publicly paid rehabilitation retreat and were invited to participate in the FOCARE study in the period 25 November 2002 to 31 December 2005. The response rate at baseline was 86% (n = 1876). Most participants were younger women with breast cancer. They were generally well educated and working. The cancer survivors reported having comprehensive social networks and being physically active. Several cancer-related symptoms were reported by women with cancers at selected sites, of which fatigue was the most prevalent. More than half reported good-to-excellent self-rated health, while fair-to-poor health was reported by 40%, most of whom were survivors of lung (56%) and haematological (48%) cancers. The results indicate that Danish cancer survivors experience considerably reduced physical health, possibly as late physical effects of treatment. The problems reported by the cancer survivors suggest that cancer rehabilitation should include these aspects of living after cancer and take account of differences among cancer survivors with regard to cancer site, sex, age, family, working status and social position. These challenges might be addressed optimally in multi-dimensional rehabilitation programmes.


3 Abstract: A document page may consist of text words, numerical in different regional script along with the English and/or National language.Especially the documents in multilingual country or in the border area may have this scenario to convey information at mass. The monolingual OCR fails to identify such other script words and hence script identification becomes essential in such cases. Script identification is one of the challenging steps in the Optical Character Recognition system for multi-script documents. In this work we propose a word-wise script identifier considering all the south Indian languages. The proposed method uses morphological features such as dilation and erosion and reconstruction as base and a nearest neighbor classifier is used to classify the script. The method showed robustness in the estimation of script when tested on 600 word document images.The overall accuracy is found to be 98.1%


Not much attention has been given to protest responses in choice experiments (CE). Using follow-up statements, we are able to identify protest responses and compute welfare estimates with and without the inclusion of such protest responses. We conclude that protest responses are fairly common in CE, and their analysis affects the statistical performance of the empirical models. In particular, when the sample is corrected by protests, our results come from utility consistent models. Thus, future choice experiments should consider the role of protest responses as contingent valuation studies have done.


Aqueduct hunting has been a favorite pastime for visitors to Rome since antiquity, although serious study of how the Eternal City obtained its water did not begin until the seventeenth century. It was Raffaele Fabretti (1619-1700), the well-known Italian antiquarian and epigrapher, who began the first systematic research of the Roman aqueduct system.Fabretti's treatise, "De aquis et aquaeductibus veteris Romae dissertationes tres, " is cited as a matter of course by all later scholars working in the area of Roman topography. Its findings--while updated and supplemented by more recent archaeological efforts--have never been fully superseded. Yet despite its enormous importance and impact on scholarly efforts, the "De aquis" has never yet been translated from the original Latin. "Aqueduct Hunting in the Seventeenth Century" provides a full translation of and commentary on Fabretti's writings, making them accessible to a broad audience and carefully assessing their scholarly contributions.Harry B. Evans offers his reader an introduction to Fabretti and his scholarly world. A complete translation and a commentary that focuses primarily on the topographical problems and Fabretti's contribution to our understanding of them are also provided. Evans also assesses the contributions and corrections of later archaeologists and topographers and places the "De aquis" in the history of aqueduct studies.Evans demonstrates that Fabretti's conclusions, while far from definitive, are indeed significant and merit wider attention than they have received to date. This book will appeal to classicists and classical archaeologists, ancient historians, and readers interested in the history of technology, archaeology, and Rome and Italy in the seventeenth century.Harry B. Evans is Professor of Classics, Fordham University.


The present study was designed to identify factors related to nine- to twelve-year-olds' desire to drop out of after-school programs, as well as to examine the factors related to their satisfaction. While some researchers have demonstrated that older school-age children may prefer to go home alone after school (Cloutier, 1990; Fink, 1986), others have clearly indicated the potential negative consequences associated with self-care (Vandell & Ramanan, 1991; Posner & Vandell, 1994; Long & Long, 1982; Steinberg, 1986). One hundred and eleven children participated in the present study, from thirteen participating school-based child care programs. Children's desire to drop out and their satisfaction was assessed via a questionnaire designed using a compilation approach. Parental satisfaction was also assessed via questionnaires and information on directors and educators was collected. The quality of the school-age care programs was measured using the School-Age Care Environment Rating Scale (Harms, Vineberg-Jacobs & Romano-White, 1996). Data pertaining to the children's desire to drop out, the actual drop out rate during the course of the study, as well as the returning rate for the following year were obtained through parental phone interviews. Results indicated that the most important factors related to children's desire to drop out were age and the presence of friends. Gender, materials used at the centre, the reasons why children attended the centre and children's satisfaction were also important factors when examining children's desire to drop out. Quality was a significant factor, but not in the original direction stated in the hypothesis.


Abstract: The size of droplet affects the evaporation of the fuel. The greater the size of droplet is also the energy of fuel evaporation. The evaporation energy is directly proportional to the size of the droplet and oxidation must be mixed homogeneously. Mixing conditions in the combustion process affect the rate of combustion. One of the conditions of combustion is the droplet to the vapor. The more perfect the evaporation process the better the combustion process. This study saw the success of combustion due to the size of droplet on the performance. The droplet produced by atomization in the form of liquid granules. The size of atomization is the determinant of burning success. The four-stroke Otto engine performance depends on the size of the atomization in order to mix well with the oxidant during combustion process. The results of the research characteristic of the machine are due to the influence of the size of the droplet seen from the generated power, torque and thermal efficiency. Characteristic features increase with decreasing the size of the droplet. Torque increased 7.9%, power generated increased 7%, and thermal efficiency increased up to 7.3%. The results of this study show size of the droplet can improve the performance of engine.


Passive base isolation systems are one of the most successful and widely implemented technologies for seismic hazard mitigation. However, recent changes to the building codes have made the design requirements such that some of the potential gains of such systems may not be realized. This paper investigates the effects of using controllable semiactive dampers, such as magnetorheological fluid dampers, in a base isolation system. A two degree-of-freedom model of a base isolated building is used, with linear viscous, active, and semiactive supplemental damping devices in the isolation layer. Using an H 2 /LQG design, semiactive and active devices are able to achieve a notable decrease in base drifts, compared to the optimal linear passive designs, with no accompanying increase in accelerations imparted into the superstructure.


Abstract Background: Cigarette smoke induces inflammation and remodels immune response. Genetic and epigenetic alterations might be involved in the pathogenesis of smoking related diseases. In this study, we investigated the effect of smoking on systemic inflammation biomarkers and epigenetic changes at microRNA (miRNA) expression level. We also examined if the levels of inflammatory biomarkers were associated with selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Method: From 39 smokers and 101 non-smokers, levels of total white blood cells (WBCs) and its subpopulations, plasma cytokines/chemokines/proteins and miRNAs were analysed. For three biomarkers, C-reactive protein (CRP), MCP-1 and IFN-γ that were affected by smoking, the influence of SNPs was analyzed. Result: Elevated levels of total WBCs, neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, CRP, MCP-1, IFN-γ and lower levels of miR-21 were detected in smokers. The elevated levels of IFN-γ in smokers was only statistically significantly associated with rs2069705 AG/GG SNP-genotype. Conclusions: A lower level of oncomir miRNA-21 and a higher level of immune modelling cytokine IFN-γ detected in smokers could be a protective immune response to cigarette smoke. The higher level of IFN-γ in smokers with a specific SNP genotype also suggests that a genetic interaction with smoking might predict the pathobiology of smoking related disease.


Why do students undertaking practice-based Art and Design (A&D) degree courses have to write? What kind of writing would support them best in their practice? How do we mark student writing that challenges our current writing criteria? The 'Writing Purposefully in Art and Design' (Writing PAD) project seeks to encourage debates around writing in A&D. This article details the first year of the project and lays out the various debates that have developed. The project was initiated to focus specifically on disseminating current good practice for students with visual-spatial learning styles and dyslexia, international students, and mature students. This article presents the spectrum of views that have arisen from our discussions over the year. The issues presented are followed by the implications for change that have emerged from the various Writing PAD activities.


Extensive investigations on macrozoobenthic communities of the Pechora Sea (SE Barents Sea), carried out between 1991 and 1995, indicate that it is rich in terms of diversity, with a total of 712 taxa observed (505 identified to species level). Biomass distribution of zoobenthos varied greatly (2.6 to 1200 g m -2 wet wt). Average values recorded for the offshore areas are high for an Arctic environment, implying that the influence of the large Pechora River may extend far into the offshore area. In addition, intensive sedimentation of organic matter during the retreat of the highly productive ice-edge zone in the summer may also contribute to the observed high biomass. A method combining the abundance and biomass values of species was used to calculate an index approximat- ing the production of each species. This index was used to distinguish the different community types in the area. In the study area, 13 benthic community types were identified, of which 2 main types covered most of the offshore areas. The concentration of total organic carbon (TOC) in the sediment was shown to have a strong influence on the diversity of the benthic communities, while both TOC and water depth affected the distribution of communities and the feeding mode of the dominant species. A community type consisting of surface deposit-feeders is the most widely distributed type in the area. Suspension feeders, however, dominate an extensive shallow offshore area. Boreal-Arctic species show a marked predomination (68.9%) in the whole Pechora Sea. The share of Arctic species is greater in the northern part influenced by cold water currents, while boreal species predominate in areas affected by warmer coastal waters. These observations indicate that the Pechora Sea functions as a transitional zone between boreal and Arctic biogeographic regions.


Subspace representations have been widely applied for videos in many tasks. In particular, the subspace-based query-by-image video retrieval (QBIVR), facing high challenges on similarity-preserving measurements and efficient retrieval schemes, urgently needs considerable research attention. In this paper, we propose a novel subspace-based QBIVR framework to enable efficient video search. We first define a new geometry-preserving distance metric to measure the image-to-video distance, which transforms the QBIVR task to be the Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS) problem. The merit of this distance metric lies in that it helps to preserve the genuine geometric relationship between query images and database videos to the greatest extent. To boost the efficiency of solving the MIPS problem, we introduce two asymmetric hashing schemes which can bridge the domain gap of images and videos properly. The first approach, termed Inner-product Binary Coding (IBC), achieves high-quality binary codes by learning the binary codes and coding functions simultaneously without continuous relaxations. The other one, Bilinear Binary Coding (BBC) approach, employs compact bilinear projections instead of a single large projection matrix to further improve the retrieval efficiency. Extensive experiments on four real-world video datasets verify the effectiveness of our proposed approaches, as compared to the state-of-the-art methods.


Using the c-fos enhancer as a model to analyze growth hormone (GH)-promoted gene expression, the roles of CCAAT/enhancer-binding proteins (C/EBPs) in GH-regulated transcription were investigated. In 3T3-F442A fibroblasts stably expressing the c-fos promoter mutated at the C/EBP binding site upstream of luciferase, c-fos promoter activity is stimulated by GH 6-7-fold; wild type c-fos promoter shows only a 2-fold induction by GH. This suggests that C/EBP restrains GH-stimulated expression of c-fos. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays with nuclear extracts from 3T3-F442A cells indicate that GH rapidly (2-5 min) increases binding of C/EBPbeta and C/EBPdelta, to the c-fos C/EBP binding site. Both liver activating protein (LAP) and liver inhibitory protein (LIP), forms of C/EBPbeta, are detected in 3T3-F442A cells by immunoblotting. GH increases the binding of LAP/LAP and LAP/LIP dimers. Overexpression of LIP interferes with GH-promoted reporter expression in CHO cells expressing GH receptors, consistent with the possibility that LIP restrains GH-stimulated c-fos expression. Overexpression of LAP elevates basal luciferase activity but does not influence promoter activation by GH, while overexpressed C/EBPdelta elevates basal promoter activity and enhances the stimulation by GH. GH stimulates the expression of mRNA for C/EBPbeta and -delta and increases levels of C/EBPdelta. Although C/EBPbeta is not detectably altered, GH induces a shift to more rapidly migrating forms of LIP and LAP upon immunoblotting. Treatment of extracts from GH-treated cells with alkaline phosphatase causes a shift of the slower migrating form to the rapidly migrating form, consistent with GH promoting dephosphorylation of LIP and LAP. These studies implicate C/EBPbeta and -delta in GH-regulated gene expression. They also indicate that GH stimulates the binding of C/EBPbeta and -delta to the c-fos promoter and promotes the dephosphorylation of LIP and LAP. These events may contribute to the ability of C/EBPbeta and -delta to regulate GH-stimulated expression of c-fos.


Structural engineering projects are increasingly organized in networked cooperations due to a permanently enlarged competition pressure and a high degree of complexity while performing the concurrent design activities. Software that intends to support such collaborative structural design processes implicates enormous requirements. In the course of our common research work, we analyzed the pros and cons of the application of both the peer-to-peer (University of Bonn) and multiagent architecture style (University of Bochum) within the field of collaborative structural design. In this paper, we join the benefits of both architecture styles in an integrated conceptual approach. We demonstrate the surplus value of the integrated multiagent–peer-to-peer approach by means of an example scenario in which several structural engineers are co-operatively designing the basic structural elements of an arched bridge, applying heterogeneous CAD systems.


A two-step process has been developed for growing the shell of CdSe/CdS core/shell nanorods. The method combines an established fast-injection-based step to create the initial elongated shell with a second slow-injection growth that allows for a systematic variation of the shell thickness while maintaining a high degree of monodispersity at the batch level and enhancing the uniformity at the single-nanorod level. The second growth step resulted in nanorods exhibiting a fluorescence quantum yield up to 100% as well as effectively complete energy transfer from the shell to the core. This improvement suggests that the second step is associated with a strong suppression of the nonradiative channels operating both before and after the thermalization of the exciton. This hypothesis is supported by the suppression of a defect band, ubiquitous to CdSe-based nanocrystals after the second growth.


Several aspects of the involvement of free-living nematodes in the decomposition of the kelp Laminaria saccharina have been investigated. The seasonal pattern of growth and decay of the L. saccharina population at a site on the Isle of Cumbrae was followed. Brightfield, fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the distribution of all epiphytes from bacterial size upwards on fronds of different year-groups over a period of one year. The areas of decomposing tissue at the frond tip had a distinctive microbial community: bacteria of several morphological types, yeasts, diatoms, flagellates and ciliates. Most epiphytes on the intact frond surface (diatoms, rod-shaped bacteria) were most abundant on the older, apical part of the frond. In the spring and early summer a network of filaments of an ectocarpoid alga developed at the frond tip, and around these filaments accumulated a mucilage matrix containing bacteria, diatoms, flagellates, ciliates, sediment grains, faecal pellets etc. The distribution of hydroids, bryozoans etc. is described. The distribution and abundance of nematodes were studied over the same period. Four species dominated the fauna: Monhystera disjuncta, M. refringens, Chromadora nudicapitata and Theristus acer. Nematodes were virtually absent from the meristem and mid-frond regions. The first three of the above species are of similar body size, were present throughout the year, both on the tip surface and in the decomposing tissue, and bred continuously. An attempt is made to relate their seasonal changes in abundance to those of particular epiphytes, considering also data from gut contents analyses. T. acer is a larger nematode. As the ectocarpoid filaments grew in spring, progressively larger T. acer colonized the frond. One cycle of T.acer breeding took place, and then the filaments died, the material trapped around them dispersed and T. acer disappeared from the frond. Gut contents analyses suggested that T. acer fed on mucilage and bacteria. M. disjuncta appeared to be the nematode most closely associated with decomposing tissue. This species was cultured and its feeding 32 on bacteria isolated from the frond was investigated using P as a label. There was significant uptake of label from only one of the four bacterial strains tested. Comparison of the gut retention time determined by microscopic observation, with the time-course of uptake of label showed that assimilation was occurring. Uptake of label from solution was insignificant. L. saccharina plants were allowed to decompose below the photic zone, and changes in the nematodes and epiphytes were followed. The rate and process of decomposition were essentially the same as those of distal tissue loss in living plants. A preliminary attempt at respirometric measurement of decomposition rates in the laboratory is described.


ABSTRACT Internships are work-based learning experiences, but when they are unpaid and become the standard after formal education, they imply an opportunity cost and could add to the formation of obstacles to the socio-economic mobility that (public) education should seek to attenuate. The present study consists of an evaluation of the intern economy in the French-speaking part of Belgium. Based on data of over 900 available positions in the cultural industry, we examine the demand for internships by organisations and address issues such as substitution and efficacy in the intern economy. We discuss our findings in light of some proposed misconceptions regarding the education-based meritocracy, related to the diminishing role of educational credentials in hiring decisions, the changing role of education in socio-economic mobility, and the overlooked role of employers that prioritise the productive efficiency of their organisations over equal opportunities.


Tools to analyze cyclical cellular processes, particularly the cell cycle, are of broad value for cell biology. Cell cycle synchronization and live-cell time-lapse observation are widely used to analyze these processes but are not available for many systems. Simple mathematical methods built on the ergodic principle are a well-established, widely applicable, and powerful alternative analysis approach, although they are less widely used. These methods extract data about the dynamics of a cyclical process from a single time-point "snapshot" of a population of cells progressing through the cycle asynchronously. Here, I demonstrate application of these simple mathematical methods to analysis of basic cyclical processes—cycles including a division event, cell populations undergoing unicellular aging, and cell cycles with multiple fission (schizogony)—as well as recent advances that allow detailed mapping of the cell cycle from continuously changing properties of the cell such as size and DNA content. This includes examples using existing data from mammalian, yeast, and unicellular eukaryotic parasite cell biology. Through the ongoing advances in high-throughput cell analysis by light microscopy, electron microscopy, and flow cytometry, these mathematical methods are becoming ever more important and are a powerful complementary method to traditional synchronization and time-lapse cell cycle analysis methods.


In late 2016, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in TC Heartland, LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC, a case addressing the interpretation of the special patent venue and the general venue statutes. The case was brought by Heartland, a sweetener manufacturer organized as a limited liability company under Indiana law and headquartered in Indiana. In 2014, Kraft sued Heartland for infringement of three patents on liquid water enhancers. Although Kraft is headquartered in Illinois, the lawsuit was brought in the District of Delaware, where Heartland is not registered to do business and does not have a regular or established place of business. However, in 2013, some of Heartland's accused products (representing approximately 2% of Heartland's annual sales) were drop-shipped to locations in Delaware at the request of an Arkansas-based customer. The court deemed this link sufficient to trigger personal jurisdiction in the patent lawsuit brought by Kraft. A thinly construed nexus — chiefly through the sale of goods — is not uncommon in establishing personal jurisdiction for corporations in general, and in patent infringement cases in particular. For the past quarter of a century, the Federal Circuit has interpreted the patent venue statute permissively, enabling patentees to bring a lawsuit against a corporation in any district where personal jurisdiction arises. In the case of national companies like Heartland, this permissive approach allows patent infringement lawsuits to be brought anywhere in the United States where a modicum of sales may occur. From a venue perspective, what sets patent infringement cases apart are the idiosyncrasies of forum shopping and forum selling created by permissive constructions of the patent venue statute. Among these idiosyncrasies, most notably, is the overwhelming volume of patent infringement cases being filed in the anomalous rural Eastern District of Texas. TC Heartland, now before the Supreme Court, provides an opportunity to alter this scenario. In 2015, Heartland petitioned the Federal Circuit for a writ of mandamus directing the Delaware trial court to dismiss the Kraft lawsuit for lack of personal jurisdiction, or transfer the case to the Southern District of Indiana due to improper venue. After the Federal Circuit denied the mandamus petition, Heartland filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in September 2016, which the Supreme Court granted in December. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Heartland, patent venue will be interpreted independently from the general venue statute, which will result in a narrower construction of venue in patent infringement cases. This, in turn, will likely lead to less patentee forum-shopping as well as a redistribution of patent litigation across the country. This essay explores the implications of the upcoming Supreme Court decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft. In Part II, this essay addresses the legislative history and interpretation of the patent venue statute by the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, as well as the effects that the Federal Circuit's permissive constructions of venue have had on patent litigation over the past 27 years. Part III looks at possible outcomes after the Supreme Court's decision in TC Heartland v. Kraft: it starts by discussing patterns of patent litigation redistribution in the event of a decision for Heartland, and then turns to alternative channels for achieving patent venue reform, should the Court side with Kraft. Finally, this essay concludes by positioning the outcome of the case into the larger ongoing debate surrounding patent exceptionalism.


Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS) are often introduced in organizations without careful consideration of their support for organizational business processes. This paper explores the use of ECMS in a Diversification type of organization. A Diversification type of organization is characterized by low levels standardization and integration of business processes between business units. We followed a qualitative case study research approach to investigate the information sharing activities in a Malaysian oil and gas organization. The aim was to explore how this organization's ECMS support information sharing within and across business units. Findings suggest that for organizations with low levels process standardization and integration, ECMS can be used (1) as 'middleware' to access centralized and shared services, (2) to manage unstructured information and (3) to share open and restricted standardized processes information. The findings are significant for business and IT managers because it may guide them with ways to use ECMS and gain more benefits from these types of systems.


Abstract Theoretical investigation has a contested focus on conceptual, philosophical and non-empirical issues in psychology that is rarely examined empirically. This paper explores the status of theoretical psychology as scholarly research and its location in the curricula of Australian and New Zealand psychology departments. Nine self-identified theoretical psychologists and 2 psychological society representatives were interviewed. Participant responses and an examination of department websites indicated that theoretical psychology and advanced theoretical units are offered mainly in third year and honours levels. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed contrasting views of theoretical psychology as a subdiscipline or distributed throughout the curriculum, challenges to theoretical psychology as teaching and research activities, and a need for debate about the place of theoretical teaching and research in the discipline. The study recommends further empirical investigations to evaluate the presumed...


In this paper, we point out some discrepancies in a correspondence published in this journal recently by Gursaran and G. Roy (see ibid., vol. 27, no. 4, p. 381-4 (2001)). Due to the discrepancies, the central two "theorems" and two "corollaries" claimed in that correspondence may not be held true in some extreme circumstances and, therefore, its main conclusion cannot be drawn for all the possible cases.


The past five years has seen populist movements emerge on both the left and right in many Western democracies, disrupting traditional politics on both the center-left and center-right. Clearly, the most large-scale manifestation of this phenomena is the rise of Trumpism, with businessman Donald Trump having won the Republican nomination and U.S. presidency in 2016 with a campaign that challenged the political establishment on issues like free trade and immigration. In the following paper, I use the current populist moment as an opportunity to revisit the thought of Russell Kirk (1918 – 1994), an American political theorist most famous for his 1953 book The Conservative Mind. As a traditionalist conservative, Kirk emphasized civil society and order in his work over economic liberty, and as a prolific writer, commented on many issues over the course of his career that are highly relevant in our contemporary politics, including trade, immigration, foreign policy, culture, and the environment. Following a discussion of Kirk's thought on each of these issues and how it might be applied to contemporary times, I provide an extended meditation on how a reprisal of traditionalist conservatism inspired by figures like Kirk might heal some of the systemic issues within the Republican Party, before concluding with a look at how having a civil discourse on both sides of the aisle impinges on having a healthy center-right party within any political system.


This paper addresses the problem of reconstructing an image from 1-bit-quantized measurements, considering a simple but nonconventional optical acquisition model. Following a compressed-sensing design, a known pseudo-random phase-shifting mask is introduced at the aperture of the optical system. The associated reconstruction algorithm is tailored to this mask. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of the whole approach for reconstructing grayscale images.


The DNA damage response (DDR) involves a complex network of signaling events mediated by modular protein domains such as the BRCA1 C-terminal (BRCT) domain. Thus, proteins that interact with BRCT domains and are a part of the DDR constitute potential targets for sensitization to DNA-damaging chemotherapy agents. We performed a pharmacologic screen to evaluate 17 kinases, identified in a BRCT-mediated interaction network as targets to enhance platinum-based chemotherapy in lung cancer. Inhibition of mitotic kinase WEE1 was found to have the most effective response in combination with platinum compounds in lung cancer cell lines. In the BRCT-mediated interaction network, WEE1 was found in complex with PAXIP1, a protein containing six BRCT domains involved in transcription and in the cellular response to DNA damage. We show that PAXIP1 BRCT domains regulate WEE1-mediated phosphorylation of CDK1. Furthermore, ectopic expression of PAXIP1 promotes enhanced caspase-3–mediated apoptosis in cells treated with WEE1 inhibitor AZD1775 (formerly, MK-1775) and cisplatin compared with cells treated with AZD1775 alone. Cell lines and patient-derived xenograft models expressing both PAXIP1 and WEE1 exhibited synergistic effects of AZD1775 and cisplatin. In summary, PAXIP1 is involved in sensitizing lung cancer cells to the WEE1 inhibitor AZD1775 in combination with platinum-based treatment. We propose that WEE1 and PAXIP1 levels may be used as mechanism-based biomarkers of response when WEE1 inhibitor AZD1775 is combined with DNA-damaging agents. Mol Cancer Ther; 15(7); 1669–81. ©2016 AACR.


STÖHR, E. J., M. STEMBRIDGE, R. SHAVE, T. J. SAMUEL, K. STONE, and J. I. ESFORMES. Systolic and Diastolic Left Ventricular Mechanics during and after Resistance Exercise.Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 49, No. 10, pp. 2025–2031, 2017. Purpose: To improve the current understanding of the impact of resistance exercise on the heart, by examining the acute responses of left ventricular (LV) strain, twist, and untwisting rate (''LV mechanics''). Methods: LV echocardiographic images were recorded in systole and diastole before, during and immediately after (7–12 s) double-leg press exercise at two intensities (30% and 60% of maximum strength, one-repetition maximum). Speckle tracking analysis generated LV strain, twist, and untwisting rate data. Additionally, beat-by-beat blood pressure was recorded and systemic vascular resistance (SVR) and LV wall stress were calculated. Results: Responses in both exercise trials were statistically similar (P 9 0.05). During effort, stroke volume decreased, whereas SVR and LV wall stress increased (P G 0.05). Immediately after effort, stroke volume returned to baseline, whereas SVR and wall stress decreased (P G 0.05). Similarly, acute exercise was accompanied by a significant decrease in systolic parameters of LV muscle mechanics (P G 0.05). However, diastolic parameters, including LV untwisting rate, were statistically unaltered (P 9 0.05). Immediately after exercise, systolic LV mechanics returned to baseline levels (P G 0.05) but LV untwisting rate increased significantly (P G 0.05). Conclusions: A single, acute bout of double-leg press resistance exercise transiently reduces systolic LV mechanics, but increases diastolic mechanics after exercise, suggesting that resistance exercise has a differential impact on systolic and diastolic heart muscle function. The findings may explain why acute resistance exercise has been associated with reduced stroke volume but chronic exercise training may result in increased LV volumes.


The aim of this case report is to describe an uncommon hemorrhagic cerebrovascular accident (CVA) associated with an osteosarcoma (OSA) metastasis. Cerebrovascular accident (CVA) is the acute onset of a neurological deficit from any change in blood supply resulting from a pathological process, characterizing a stroke and among all the causes, the neoplastic thrombus of osteosarcoma, specifically, is the most infrequent in clinical practice. A seven-year-old female midsize mixed-breed dog was submitted to a forelimb amputation for showing an osteoblastic OSA in proximal humerus. Three weeks later, the patient presented uninterruptible seizure and coma, resulting in death. At necropsy, it was observed a friable and reddish mass in the left frontal cortex which, microscopically was constituted by OSA metastasis in association with multiple ruptures of blood vessels and focally extensive severe bleeding, which caused a CVA. At immunohistochemistry, neoplastic cells of the humerus and the brain metastasis were positive for vimentin and osteonectin, confirming the diagnosis of osteoblastic OSA. The reports about OSA metastasis on the brain are rare in animals and humans, what could be related to the low frequency and few diagnosis ante and post-mortem. As uncommon as the description of OSA metastasis to the brain, is the CVA associated to them, demonstrating that reporting cases related to these clinical and anatomopathological lesions are important for the scientific community.


The ras signaling protein requires a posttranslational modification to localize it to the inner surface of plasma membrane. In this state it can behave as a signal transduction mediator. Farnesyltransferase plays an important role in this posttranslational processing of ras by attaching a farnesyl group to the cysteine of the ras C-terminal tetrapeptide. In this study, we investigated the relationship of K-ras expression and mutation with farnesyltransferase beta-subunit expression in 20 ovarian tumors (17 carcinomas and 3 low malignant potential tumors) and 4 normal ovaries. The expression level of mRNA was determined by using quantitative PCR and mutation analysis was performed by direct cDNA sequencing. K-ras mutations were found in 1 of 3 low malignant potential tumors and in 4 of 17 carcinoma cases. K-ras mRNA overexpression was found in 1 of 3 low malignant potential tumors (one with mutated ras) and in only 1 of 17 carcinoma cases. Farnesyltransferase beta-subunit mRNA overexpression was found in 2 of 3 low malignant potential tumors and in 7 of 17 carcinoma cases. Interestingly, all K-ras mutation cases showed farnesyltransferase beta-subunit overexpression. These findings suggest that there may be a direct relationship between K-ras (ras dysfunction) mutation and expression of farnesyltransferase beta-subunit gene.


Purpose

Increasing use of 3D printing techniques to manufacture consumer products and open-source designs raises the question of "What is the mechanical reliability of 3D printed parts?" Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of build orientation on the mechanical reliability of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) produced using 3D printing.

Design/methodology/approach

Tensile tests on ABS specimens were performed with and without a hole in the center, which were produced by fused deposition modeling (FDM). Seven sets of approximately 30 specimens were printed in XY, XZ and C+45 orientations to obtain reliable fracture statistics. Weibull analysis was performed to quantify the variation in the tensile strength.

Findings

The Weibull analysis showed that the reliability of FDM produced ABS can be as low as advanced ceramics. Weibull moduli of specimens without a hole were between 26 and 69, and specimens with a hole had Weibull moduli between 30 and 41. P-type deviations from the Weibull statistics were observed. The XZ orientation resulted in the highest average fracture strength for specimens with and without a hole, and C+45 orientation resulted in the lowest strength.

Practical implications

As the Weibull distribution relates the applied stress to probability of failure, the Weibull analysis provides a practical design criterion to achieve specific reliability levels for additively manufactured parts.

Originality/value

This study, for the first time, provides Weibull statistics for FDM-produced ABS parts, which can be used to predict mechanical reliability.


The objective of work proposed in this paper is to propose a new method of measuring gas leakage for pneumatic industry. Compared with traditional flow measurements, equipment using this method can be connected to the pipeline in parallel. The measurement is enabled by employing a standard flow. Standard flow is used to determine the internal volume of the measured equipment. An algorithm is formulated to describe, to the extent possible, the relationship between gas leakage and standard flow. This paper also proposes a pressure differentiator that contains a slit-type laminar flow element. The measurement deviates from the theoretical leakage values by less than 5%, and shows a good precision and scope. In addition, the proposed parallel connection based on standard flow makes easy operation and fast measuring possible, thus promising new area of application for pneumatic equipments.


Colloidal gold immunochromatographic strip is a simple and convenient method for detecting harmful substances, such as Morphine and CLB. For the purpose of reducing sterically hinder and enhancing the measurement sensitivity, 20nm colloidal gold was choosed. Therefor, in this paper, the microwave heating method was improved to synthesize the 20nm collidal gold, the addtion of reductantan and the heating time were explored. We use transmission electron microscope and UV-vis spectroscope to character the size of series particles. The result showed that when 1ml reduces was added and the heating time was more than 2min, the gold particles were close to 20nm and much more uniform. In conclusion, the improved microwave method was more suitable for preparation of small diameter gold particles.


Increased frequency and intensity of drought episodes as a consequence of current and predicted climatic changes require an understanding of the intra-specific variability in structural and physiological characteristics of forest trees. Adaptive plasticity and genotypic variability are considered two of the main processes by which trees can either be selected or can acclimate to changing conditions. We tested for the relative importance of genotypic variability, phenotypic plasticity and their interaction by comparing the growth and physiological performance of 15 provenances of Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.), under two contrasting irrigation regimes. Selected provenances rep-resenting the distribution range of the species in Anatolia, Turkey, were contrasted with seed sources spanning the range from Spain to the UK, in Europe. We found a strong latitudinal differentiation among the 15 provenances for survival after drought, largely the result of the higher mortality of some western and central European provenances. Differentiation in diameter and height growth was also clear with the worst provenance coming from Western Europe (UK). Among the Turkish provenances, the more extreme southern high-elevation populations showed greater survival and lower growth rates overall. Differences in growth and survival were related to differences in photosynthetic pigment and nutrient contents and in the photosynthetic efficiency of photosystem II. Plasticity was strongest for growth characters and pigment contents.


Summary form only given. Since the invention of the transistor, new technology nodes have been added approximately every two years. This march of progress has yielded smaller transistors that run about 40% faster with each geometry scaling, fulfilling the promise and industry-defining mantra of "smaller, faster, cheaper!". Now, in the realm of 65- and 45-nanometer design and manufacturing, the industry is confronted by multiple complex and stubborn challenges: silicon technology keeps shrinking, but doesn't advance in speed at the same rate. The high-k dielectric announcements have yet to be proven manufacturable, and copper interconnect is already hitting the wall. We are driving to the edge of the silicon roadmap, but there is no viable alternative to CMOS within our reach. Not coincidentally, several companies are announcing their intention to stop internal R&D at the 45 nanometer node and use foundry-supplied processes at 32 nanometers and below. The electronics industry ecosystem is at a fork in the road: those few who can afford it will keep rushing to 45 nanometers and maybe beyond, to 32 and 25 nanometers; the rest will hold at 130 or perhaps 90 nanometers, trying to get the most out of those processes that they can. In both cases it is EDA that will come to the rescue. Advanced EDA provides a competitive advantage at 90 nanometers and above, and is a matter of plain survival at 65 nanometers and below. In 2006 only 10% of IC design starts have been at 90 nanometers and below (source: IBS), but they have generated more than 30% of silicon (source: VLSI Research), and absorbed more than 50% of all the engineering effort (source: SNUG '06). Without EDA, more EDA, or more advanced EDA, when design starts at 90 nanometers and below exceed 30% in 2 years (source: IBS), twice as many engineers will be needed. EDA innovation is the gear that enables design for low power, design for manufacturing and yield (which encompasses design for test), and design for variability. The challenges faced by tools for multiple-valued logic clearly mirror those challenges faced by binary logic EDA tools. EDA is not only the enabler for quality in electronic design; it is truly "where electronics begins".


The main goal of this study is to design a market operator (MO) and a distribution network operator (DNO) for a network of microgrids in consideration of multiple objectives. This is a high-level design and only those microgrids with nondispatchable renewable energy sources are considered. For a power grid in the network, the net value derived from providing power to the network must be maximized. For a microgrid, it is desirable to maximize the net gain derived from consuming the received power. Finally, for an independent system operator, stored energy levels at microgrids must be maintained as close as possible to storage capacity to secure network emergency operation. To achieve these objectives, a multiobjective approach is proposed: the price signal generated by the MO and power distributed by the DNO are assigned based on a Pareto optimal solution of a multiobjective optimization problem. By using the proposed approach, a fair scheme that does not advantage one particular objective can be attained. Simulations are provided to validate the proposed methodology.


Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backwards as well as forwards, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (7)


This paper presents the characterization results and proposes a technique for the compensation of measurement drifts observed in heat dissipation soil moisture sensors when repeated measurements with a small time interval (less than 15 minutes) is used. A heat dissipation sensor was fabricated using the center probes of a conventional electrical conductivity Wenner-array probe. Several experiments were conduct, using two types of soils, with different sampling frequency of data, from 5 to 15 minutes. It is observed that the drift of the measured values depends strongly on the type of soil, since for a clay loam soil the errors due to the repetition of measurements with short time intervals result in a much more humid soil indication than the correct value, while for a sandy loam exactly the opposite behavior is verified. Based on experimental measured data for each type of soil, it is proposed a correction technique to compensate for errors present in repeated measurements.


Background. The influence of endoscopic video camera (VC) image quality on surgical performance has not been studied. Flexible endoscopes are used as substitutes for laparoscopes in natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES), but their optics are originally designed for intralumenal use. Manipulable wired or wireless independent VCs might offer advantages for NOTES but are still under development. Objective. To measure the optical characteristics of 4 VC systems and to compare their impact on the performance of surgical suturing tasks. Methods. VC systems included a laparoscope (Storz 10 mm), a flexible endoscope (Olympus GIF 160), and 2 prototype deployable cameras (magnetic anchoring and guidance system [MAGS] Camera and PillCam). In a randomized fashion, the 4 systems were evaluated regarding standardized optical characteristics and surgical manipulations of previously validated ex vivo (fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery model) and in vivo (live porcine Nissen model) tasks; objective metrics (time and errors/precision) and combined surgeon (n = 2) performance were recorded. Results. Subtle differences were detected for color tests, and field of view was variable (65°-115°). Suitable resolution was detected up to 10 cm for the laparoscope and MAGS camera but only at closer distances for the endoscope and PillCam. Compared with the laparoscope, surgical suturing performances were modestly lower for the MAGS camera and significantly lower for the endoscope (ex vivo) and PillCam (ex vivo and in vivo). Conclusions. This study documented distinct differences in VC systems that may be used for NOTES in terms of both optical characteristics and surgical performance. Additional work is warranted to optimize cameras for NOTES. Deployable systems may be especially well suited for this purpose.


As more structures enter orbit for long-term use or for short-term missions, safety of space vehicles becomes increasingly important. Structural health monitoring (SHM) can play a significant role in achieving the goal of safe space flight as well as reducing orbital debris. Before SHM is implemented in space structures on orbit, it is imperative to understand the effects of the extreme space environment on elements of the SHM system. Elastic wave propagation and electro-mechanical impedance spectroscopy are among the most promising SHM methods and could be implemented for on-orbit applications, provided effects of space environment are compensated. Piezoelectric sensors are susceptible to elements of the extreme space environment, such as temperature changes, vacuum, and radiation. Effects of temperature, vacuum, and radiation on piezoelectric sensors were experimentally investigated during electro-mechanical impedance testing in simulated space environment. In this paper, the authors present data from gamma radiation experiments and discuss the possible mechanisms at work in the changes in impedance signatures of the sensors. A theoretical model was used to identify the parameters of the piezoelectric constitutive equations that are affected by gamma radiation exposure. The proposed approach allows for compensating effects associated with space environment and may find utility in design and development of SHM systems for space applications.


The aim of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of the execution times of low-level vision algorithms on two different SIMD parallel machines. The set of algorithms is part of the DARPA Image Understanding benchmark, a widely-accepted platform for performance comparison of parallel systems in the field of computer vision. The considered computer architectures represent two opposite solutions in terms of granularity in approaching the SIMD paradigm, one with a coarse-grain array of floating-point processors and the other with a fine-grain array of single-bit processing elements. For these reasons, the set of algorithms was implemented on both systems taking into account machine specificities. In this work some insights into implementation issues and a comparative analysis of the assessed execution times are presented.


Corporations are now collaborating to meet complex global sustainability challenges, which, until recently, were considered beyond the mandate of business leaders. Multi-organizational consortia have formed, not as philanthropic efforts, but to find competitive advantage. To examine the dynamics of an early collaboration of this sort, with a view to suggesting how future inter-organizational projects might be fostered, we pursued an in-depth multi-method case study of "The Sustainability Consortium." The Consortium has convened Fortune 50 senior managers since 1998. Our analysis uncovers the primacy of "Relational Space" – a rich context for aspirational trust and reflective learning across organizational boundaries, which is enabled by, and in turn gives rise to, collaborative projects. Within this space, an ecology of organizational leaders committed to sustainability can accomplish together what would be impossible in their individual organizations. We explain the viability of this collaboration.


Abstract Chronic venous insufficiency is a common and treatable medical condition which has a high morbidity if left untreated, progressing to lower extremity edema, skin changes of lipodermatosclerosis, and venous ulceration. Treatment options have significantly expanded over the last several decades, shifting away from the traditional surgical approach to more minimally invasive procedures such as endoluminal venous laser ablation or radiofrequency ablation. Even more recently, several techniques using nonthermal methods to ablate varicose veins have been developed, which offer the advantage of not requiring labor-intensive and painful tumescent anesthesia to protect the surrounding tissues. These techniques include mechanochemical ablation, cyanoacrylate closure, or polidocanol microfoam injection and can be offered to a wider range of patients without the need for sedation while offering similar closure rates and improved postprocedure symptom profile. Furthermore, certain patient characteristics which might preclude or complicate the use of thermal ablation methods might not pose a problem with nonthermal nontumescent methods.


In the present contribution, ultra-high molecular polyamide 6 (PA6) solutions were prepared in various pure and mixed-solvent systems and later electrospun with the polarity of the emitting electrode. The PA6 concentration in the as-prepared solutions was fixed at 4 wt%. Some of the solution properties, i.e., surface tension, and conductivity, were measured. In the mixed-solvent systems, formic acid (FA) was blended with dichloromethane (DCM), trichloromethane (THM), and acetone, the influences of low boiling point nonsolvents on morphological appearance and sizes of the resulting PA6 electrospun fibers were also investigated.


Westerns created outside of the United States and Europe present a productive corpus for examining the shared imperatives of western studies and Third Cinema. The Thai Western Tears of the Black Tiger (2000) and Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha's Antonio Das Mortes (1969) represent two extremes, both thematically and chronologically, in re-appropriation strategies of the Western by Third Cinema filmmakers. In this essay, I intend to explore the narrative, stylistic, and genre conventions that these two films manipulate and effectively revise for their respective cultural frameworks. Some of the issues that concern me include memory and power, colonial and postcolonial temporality, questions of language and translation, and most important, aesthetics and politics in cross-cultural genres. Through this film analysis, I will demonstrate how the discourses of Third Cinema and western studies contribute and shape my methodology and create a potential pedagogical model for critical media and cultural scholarship.


The construction sector providing largest number the employment opportunities after agriculture. NOIDA city is known for its industrial and constructed city and commercial area follows the development of Residential, Industrial and Institutional properties. In the matter of employment, the construction sector also plays a significant role for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Constructed commercial building has attracted a large number of workers to NOIDA from different states. Rural to urban migration exist in this sector, mostly urban construction rural migrant an over third of rural migrants work in construction sector. Those who were working on the NOIDA construction sites, they are in engaged in different types labour economic activities. And duration of migration of workers in the NOIDA city was based on short time of period, approximate 70 percent workers (male and female) based on years (less than 1, up to 1 and 2 to 3). The present study has been focused on the migrant construction workers those who were mainly working in commercial construction sector in NOIDA city.


Background: Over the past two years health educators in Australia have benefited from funding made available from national organizations such as the Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) and Health Workforce Australia (HWA). Funded research has been conducted into educational activities across the country that aim to promote integrated and sustainable interprofessional learning. Methods and Findings: A collaboration between multiple stakeholders led to the establishment of a consortium of nine universities and interprofessional organizations. This collaboration resulted in a series of research studies and the development of a conceptual framework to guide the planning and review of interprofessional health curricula. A case study of the development of a suite of health education programs at a regional university in Australia is used to demonstrate how the framework can be used to guide curricular reflection and to plan for the future. Shedding a light on interprofessional health education activities across multiple sites provides a rich picture of current practices and future trends. Commonalities, gaps, and challenges become much more obvious and allow for the development of shared opportunities and solutions. Conclusions: The production of a shared conceptual framework to facilitate interprofessional curriculum development provides valuable strategies for curricular reflection, review, and forward planning.


Building Audit is the key to determine the level of maintenance and management of the building. Some organization has different policies and guidelines for their maintenance of toilet facilities. Building Audit in toilet facilities is to determine the level of it services compare to the current standard. This research is to determine the toilet provide the in UiTM about the audit in toilet facilities. The objective is to determine whether the toilet in UiTM is keep to standard toilet as should provide. It also measure the level service of facilities provided from the satisfactory of user. The aim is to improve the toilet facilities and management in UiTM Shah Alam. From this the research readers know the satisfactory level from the user of using the toilet through the questionnaire that are distribute into student and staff of UiTM and also know the condition of the facility provided inside the toilet through observation. The data is analyzed and the conclusion is made up from the result of user feedback and observation of real situation. The result show the rating that are calculated based on condition of facilities provided, common defect such as malfunction,cracking or unclean facilities and user satisfactory toward the facilities provided inside the toilet. These researches give information to the user and management about the current condition of the toilet and satisfactory of user toward the service provided. The management can use this research as their guideline for the better in providing the toilet facilities to the student and staff of UiTM.


Copyright © 2014 by ASME. A synthesis technique for designing novel vehicle suspension linkages based on the Watt I six-bar is presented. The goal is to maintain near vertical alignment of the wheels to the road during cornering. The complete suspension is analyzed as a symmetric planar 12-bar linkage with ground pivots located at the contact patches. The design procedure specifies the vehicle chassis orientation and the tire camber angles of the vehicle when cornering. As well, two task positions of the wheels with respect to the chassis are specified for suspension movement in straightaways. The result is 18 design equations with 18 unknowns that have a total degree of 2,097,152, though only 336 roots. An example design is presented.


The process of interaction between macrophages and Tritrichomonas foetus and Trichomonas vaginalis was analysed using light microscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The parasites attach to the macrophage surface and are ingested through a phagocytic process. Parasite-macrophage association index was higher for activated than for resident macrophages. Previous incubation of the parasites in the presence of Concanavalin A rendered their surface less negative and more hydrophobic, as evaluated by measurement of the zeta potential and contact angle, respectively. This treatment significantly increased parasite ingestion by resident, but not activated macrophages.


The discovery of the triaxial superdeformed bands provide a new opportunity to understand the axial symmetry breaking even in highly elongated nuclei. A total of 17 triaxial superdeformed nuclei in the mass A similar to 160 region and 11 in the mass A similar to 80 region are predicted by the three dimensional total routhian surface calculations. A possible way to identify the triaxiality of triaxial superdeformed nuclei is suggested.


Spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, which were first introduced as LDPC convolutional codes, have been shown to exhibit excellent performance under low-complexity belief-propagation decoding. This phenomenon is now termed threshold saturation via spatial coupling. Spatially-coupled codes have been successfully applied in numerous areas. In particular, it was proven that spatially-coupled regular LDPC codes universally achieve capacity over the class of binary memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels under belief-propagation decoding. Recently, potential functions have been used to simplify threshold saturation proofs for scalar and vector recursions. In this paper, potential functions are used to prove threshold saturation for irregular LDPC and low-density generator-matrix codes on BMS channels, extending the simplified proof technique to BMS channels. The corresponding potential functions are closely related to the average Bethe free entropy of the ensembles in the large-system limit. These functions also appear in statistical physics when the replica method is used to analyze optimal decoding.


Online churches are Internet-based Christian communities, pursuing worship, proselytism and other ecclesial activities through digital media. This article is based on three case studies of online churches: i-church, the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life, and LifeChurch.tv Church Online. Seven key themes emerge from these case studies and are used here as a framework for comparative analysis: mass appeal, spiritual experience, community, reliance on the familiar, local church attendance, internal control and external oversight.


Background: A multi-disciplinary approach has led to an improvement in prognosis of childhood cancers. However, in parallel with the increase in survival rate, there is a greater occurrence of long-term toxicity related to antineoplastic treatment. Hypogonadism and infertility are among the most frequent endocrinological sequelae in young adult childhood cancer survivors. The aim of this study was to identify which category of patients, grouped according to diagnosis, therapy, and age at treatment, shows the worst reproductive function in adulthood. Methods: We evaluated morpho-volumetric development of the testis, endocrine function of the hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis, and sperm parameters in 102 young adult childhood cancer survivors. Results: Overall, about one-third of patients showed low total testicular volume, total testosterone (TT) <3.5 ng/mL, and altered sperm count. Hodgkin's disease, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and non-cranial irradiation associated to chemotherapy were risk factors for poor gonadal function. Patients treated in pubertal age showed lower total testicular volume; however, the difference was due to more gonadotoxic treatment performed in older age. Testicular volume was more predictive of spermatogenesis than follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), while anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) was not useful in the evaluation of testicular function of male childhood cancer survivors. Conclusions: Pre-pubertal subjects at high risk of future infertility should be candidates for testicular tissue cryopreservation.


The analysis and measurement of production and transaction costs is an important tool in guiding decisions and in comprehending the behavior of the agents in a particular institutional environment. Although production costs have been widely studied in the literature, transaction costs have not been so extensively analyzed, especially empirically. Based on 125 questionnaires and on theoretical review, this work presents an analysis and a measurement of the transaction costs for two groups of rural producers in the region of Sao Carlos, in Sao Paulo state. The groups were defined using cluster analysis, considering the amount of milk sold in the informal market as the analysis variable. The theoretical reference includes the New Institutional Economics and Transaction Cost Economics theories. It was concluded that, although transaction costs are low for both groups, they are relatively higher for producers inserted mainly in the informal market than for producers inserted in the formal market. Moreover, a small number of formal contracts were observed, which can be explained by the high frequency of transactions and the consequent establishment of reliability.


Self-supervised pre-training, such as BERT, MASS and BART, has emerged as a powerful technique for natural language understanding and generation. Existing pre-training techniques employ autoencoding and/or autoregressive objectives to train Transformer-based models by recovering original word tokens from corrupted text with some masked tokens. The training goals of existing techniques are often inconsistent with the goals of many language generation tasks, such as generative question answering and conversational response generation, for producing new text given context.
This work presents PALM with a novel scheme that jointly pre-trains an autoencoding and autoregressive language model on a large unlabeled corpus, specifically designed for generating new text conditioned on context. The new scheme alleviates the mismatch introduced by the existing denoising scheme between pre-training and fine-tuning where generation is more than reconstructing original text. An extensive set of experiments show that PALM achieves new state-of-the-art results on a variety of language generation benchmarks covering generative question answering (Rank 1 on the official MARCO leaderboard), abstractive summarization on CNN/DailyMail as well as Gigaword, question generation on SQuAD, and conversational response generation on Cornell Movie Dialogues.


In this work, we present a simple approximate transfer matrix method for 2D and 3D Ising ferromagnet to calculate spontaneous magnetization of the system. The critical coupling strength Kc of 2D and 3D Ising models in reduced transfer matrix approximation is obtained quite accurately by simple improvements over the mean field theory. The important physical effect we include is the some of the fluctuations effects of the systems directly with help of this method. We predict from the spontaneous magnetization curve that the critical coupling strength Kc=J/kBT = 0.401 and 0.245 for two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) systems, respectively.


Thermoacoustics (TA) deals with the conversion of heat into sound and vice versa. The device that transfers energy from a low temperature reservoir to a high temperature one by utilizing acoustic work is called TA cooler (TAC). The main components of a typical TA device are a resonator, a regenerator (stack of parallel plates) and two heat exchangers. The thermoacoustic phenomenon takes place in the stack when a nonzero temperature gradient imposed along the regenerator (i.e. parallel to the direction of the sound wave propagation) interacts with the sound wave oscillations. The low temperature at the cold of TAC can be used to condense humid water from the air and also reduce the moisture in the air at some humid areas.
 In the current study, the high intensity sound waves was produced by the speaker to drive a TA cooler to produce cooling power at a cold temperature of around 18°C. The drainage of condensate in the regenerator is the key for the system performance, because if the porous structure will be blocked by the condensate, TA phenomenon cannot take place in the regenerator. This work is dedicated to investigate the effect from temperature gradient created in TAC for condensation enhancement. 3D printer was used to design and fabricate different structures of regenerator, and then the systematic cooling capacity was measured and compared with different designs of regenerators. Energy balance was also discussed for each type of regenerator. The potential application of this investigation can be an autonomous thermoacoustic cooler system for water harvesting in arid areas. This work can be used to evaluate how the TA effect can be affected by the condensation if humid air is used as the working fluid.


Stop codon readthrough (SCR) occurs when the ribosome miscodes at a stop codon. Such readthrough events can be therapeutically desirable when a premature termination codon (PTC) is found in a critical gene. To study SCR in vivo in a genome-wide manner, we treated mammalian cells with aminoglycosides and performed ribosome profiling. We find that in addition to stimulating readthrough of PTCs, aminoglycosides stimulate readthrough of normal termination codons (NTCs) genome-wide. Stop codon identity, the nucleotide following the stop codon, and the surrounding mRNA sequence context all influence the likelihood of SCR. In comparison to NTCs, downstream stop codons in 3′UTRs are recognized less efficiently by ribosomes, suggesting that targeting of critical stop codons for readthrough may be achievable without general disruption of translation termination. Finally, we find that G418 treatment globally alters gene expression with substantial effects on translation of histone genes, selenoprotein genes, and S-adenosylmethionine decarboxylase (AMD1).


At the outset of solid organ transplantation, genetic variation between donors and recipients was recognized as a major player in mechanisms such as allograft tolerance and rejection. Genome-wide association studies have been very successful in identifying novel variant-trait associations, but have been difficult to perform in the field of solid organ transplantation due to complex covariates, era effects, and poor statistical power for detecting donor-recipient interactions. To overcome a lack of statistical power, consortia such as the International Genetics and Translational Research in Transplantation Network have been established. Studies have focused on the consequences of genetic dissimilarities between donors and recipients and have reported associations between polymorphisms in candidate genes or their regulatory regions with transplantation outcomes. However, knowledge on the exact influence of genetic variation is limited due to a lack of comprehensive characterization and harmonization of recipients' or donors' phenotypes and validation using an experimental approach. Causal research in genetics has evolved from agnostic discovery in genome-wide association studies to functional annotation and clarification of underlying molecular mechanisms in translational studies. In this overview, we summarize how the recent advances and progresses in the field of genetics and genomics have improved the understanding of outcomes after solid organ transplantation.


Bicyclic aziridines undergo formal [3+3] ring expansion reactions when exposed to rhodium-bound vinyl carbenes to form complex dehydropiperidines in a highly stereocontrolled rearrangement. Mechanistic studies and DFT computations indicate the reaction proceeds through the formation of a vinyl aziridinium ylide; this reactive intermediate undergoes a concerted, asynchronous, pseudo-[1,4]- sigmatropic rearrangement to directly furnish the heterocyclic products with net retention at the new C-C bond. In combination with an asymmetric silver-catalyzed aziridination developed in our group, this method quickly delivers enantioenriched scaffolds with up to three contiguous stereocenters. The mild reaction conditions, functional group tolerance, and high stereochemical retention of this method are especially well-suited for appending piperidine motifs to natural product and complex molecules. Ultimately, our work establishes the value of underutilized aziridinium ylides as key intermediates in strategies to convert small, strained rings to larger N-heterocycles.


September 11, 2001 marked a flashpoint in the World Politics after the cold war in terms of changing security environment and actors. The U.S under Bush administration responded the attacks in 2001 by declaring the Global War on Terrorism desined to fight the war in many fronts where the terrorists live and breath. Southeast Asia has been declared by Washington as the 'second front' in the war on terrorism, implying the the US started to put Southeast Asia in their security strategy agenda after 9/11. The 2002 National Security Strategy launched by the White House on 2002 guided the way for the U.S to strengthen its relationships with the allies and friends in order to win this war. To meet this objective the U.S engaged in a wide range of bilateral and multilateral cooperations with the allies and friends in Southeast Asia.
Singapore on the other side has been known as the US closest allies instead of the two other formal allies that is the Philippines and Thailand. Singapore itself has been engaging in the counterterrorism effort in end of 2001 and continuously enhancing its security architecture to prevent the city-state from the threat of terrorism. In 2004, Singapore launched the white paper of its new security strategy named The Fights Against Terror – a manual consists of comprehensive strategy in countering and preventing terrorism. As an informal allies, Singapore has proven itself as the US closest allies and biggest supporter in most policies taken by Washington in Southeast Asia. It is also the first one to join U.S Ploriferation Security Initiative (PSI) together with another counterterror initiatives and programs.
This research is aimed at finding the influence of US-led Global War on Terror on Singapore's counterterorism policy and how does the US influence the policy. The author used the alliance theory of Stephen Walt to analyse the alliance order, pattern and formation of the US and Sngapore regarding to the threat of terrorism. Besides, by using the Constructivist account on norms, the author is trying to understand the context of regional security cooperation in Southeast Asia being implemented how does it infuence the policy taken by Singapore and other ASEAN states. The conclusion of this thesis come at the finding that the US used bilateralism in the form of alliance as the most effective tool in engaging with Singapore in their counterterrorism policy while the multilateral framework work less effective on the other hand due to the regional divergent interest to the US role in counterterrorism. The ASEAN norms (non-interference) in the following analysis explained why such divergence took place and limit the US influence. Eventually, the author seek to see the big picture of the regional security architecture in Southeast Asia through the case of US-Singapore alliance relationships in countering terrorism


The behavior of a cavitation bubble is greatly influenced by its surroundings.
In an unbounded liquid a cavitation bubble grows and collapses
spherically but a nearby solid boundary changes everything. Now the
bubble collapses towards the wall and looses its spherical shape. During
collapse a thin jet is formed piercing through the center of the bubble
aimed towards the wall. Upon impacting on the boundary the jet spreads
out radially exerting a strong shear stress on the wall. The shear strength
drops with a -11=4 power law.
The strength of the jet depends strongly on the starting distance between
the bubble and the wall. The jet impact velocity increases the closer
the bubble gets to the wall up to a maximum for a standoff distance of
about » 0.6. For bubbles closer than that the jet velocity decreases.
This jet flow can be utilized to temporarily porate the membranes of
living cells; adherent cells are grown on the wall of a culture flask and exposed
to a single cavitation bubble. As the jet impacts on the cell monolayer
it detaches cells in a circular region around the point of impact. Surrounding
the cleared area there is a ring where the shear stress was to
weak to detach the cells but strong enough to rip small holes in the cell
membrane.
This permeabilization of the membrane can be detected by adding a
dye to the liquid such that only the porated cells will be stained. Afterwards
the cells are tracked for an entire day to make sure they survive the
treatment.
Interestingly enough when a bubble is created with a standoff distance
smaller than ° = 0.6 the amount of stained cells keeps increasing while
the circular detachment area shrinks. The cause for this is the bubble
growth on top off the surface which is also strong enough to porate cells.
This finding can be used for instance in microfluidics. If a bubble is
created in a thin liquid film between two parallel plates the bubble takes
on a flat pancake like shape. This quasi 2-dimensional bubble grows and
collapses in a circular fashion and no jets are formed. But as was shown before bubble growth across a surface can also porate cells and by growing
cells on one of the two walls in such a system this was also proven the case
in microfluidics.
Cells in suspension can also be porated but during bubble growth they
take on a "tear" shape which is expected to be a result of entraining the
cell from the boundary layer into the main flow. A way to circumvent this
instability we created a second bubble on the other side of the cell. The
cell becomes compressed and simultaneously sheared yet it remains in
place.
Bubbles in confined geometries jet in the presence of a channel wall;
even when a small channel opening is present. By positioning the bubble
such that the jet does not impact on the wall but flows into the a channel
opening realizes a pump. This idea which was put forward for larger millimeter
sized bubbles by Khoo's group (Khoo, et.al. 2005) has now been
for the first time realized on the microscale for lab on a chip devices.
Similar to the step from 3D to 2D the addition of second side wall
close the first side wall takes us from 2D to a quasi 1-dimensional bubble.
A bubble generated in such a long and thin channel only grows and
collapses in the lengthwise direction of the channel. A one dimensional
model does indeed describe the bubble dynamics quite accurately but
only if the temperature inside the bubble is taken into account.
This time another solid boundary will not induce jetting in the bubble.
A free interface close to the jet however does result in a jet. It is however
not a jet penetrating through the bubble but the result of the rapidly growing
bubble pushing liquid out of the open end of the channel. We demonstrate
on demand and reproducible jetting on the micrometer scale with
more than 100 m/s.