Heparin-binding epidermal growth factor-like growth factor (HB-EGF), a member of the ErbB receptor ligand family, exists in distinct molecular forms with disparate biological activities. Previous studies have shown that the HB-EGF precursor, proHB-EGF, localizes to the cytoplasm of transitional cells of the human bladder urothelium and that the soluble form of the growth factor is an autocrine urothelial cell mitogen. In this study, we identify a potential role for proHB-EGF in transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder. In an analysis of 33 TCC specimens and 8 normal controls, proHB-EGF, identified using an antibody directed against the cytoplasmic tail domain, localized to cell nuclei in a manner that correlated positively with tumor stage and grade (P < 0.001). The ability of proHB-EGF to localize to the nucleus was independently confirmed in a TCC cell line (TCCSUP), in which approximately 40% of transfected proHB-EGF was found to reside in the nuclear compartment. In Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, TCC patients with >20% proHB-EGF-positive cell nuclei demonstrated markedly reduced survival compared with patients with <20% proHB-EGF-positive nuclei (P < 0.005, log-rank test). In multivariate analysis, nuclear localization of proHB-EGF of >20% was an independent prognostic indicator of disease-specific mortality. This is the first report in any cell type that HB-EGF is capable of translocating to the cell nucleus. In addition, our findings suggest that nuclear proHB-EGF may play a role in disease progression in bladder cancer and possibly other cancers.


Objective: Variability describes speech differences within individual children, as well as differences between children. Variability within children has been used as an indicator of speech impairment, so knowledge of typical children's variability enhances clinicians' diagnostic and prognostic decisions. This study aimed to describe the extent of variability within children in the production of consonant clusters. Patients and Methods: Sixteen typically developing children aged between 2 and 3 years were studied monthly for 6 months. Spontaneous speech samples were used to construct variability profiles for repeated productions of words containing consonant clusters. Results: Variability between and within individuals featured prominently. Half (53.7%, range 42.4–77.6%) of all the words that were repeated were produced variably. As the children became older, they increased the accuracy of their productions overall; however, variability between and within individuals continued to occur. Conclusion: If the speech of typically developing children is highly variable, then the extent and nature of variability must be defined when it is used as a diagnostic marker of speech impairment.


This paper presents a novel low-cost poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) micropump with simple planar design featuring use of compliant in-contact check valves for reliable operation and easy system integration. The micropump mainly consists of two PDMS functional layers: one through-opening layer incorporating the planar in-contact check valves, pump chamber and flow channels, and the other thin membrane layer covering the chamber with a miniature permanent magnet on top for actuation. A special clamping molding technique was used to fabricate the through-opening functional layer, with which the flap-stopper based planar check valve was manipulated to contact each other enabling the minimized leakage flow. The micropump was then characterized by investigating the dependence of pumping flow rate on the driving frequency and backpressure. Testing results exhibit that the micropump is able to produce a flow rate at least of 3.0 μL/min, and work reliably against a backpressure of 1900 Pa, demonstrating the feasibility of this micropump for potential use in various lab-on-a-chip systems.


Factors such as innovations brought in by the developing technology, also rapidly changing social structures casted various roles to both the student and the teacher. Therefore, it is necessary to associate such knowledge acquired in courses with implications of the knowledge in our real lives and to constantly enrich course contents, namely to pursue innovations and transfer them into learning environment. The purpose of this study, physics teacher candidates' opinions on fiber optics and new technologies in the field are discussed; it is investigated how much and how new technologies are included in physics courses; teacher candidates' competence in conveying their field knowledge to real life spaces and methods they employ in pursuing scientific developments. Pursuant to qualitative research methods, the study was carried out during a semester in Waves Laboratory. At the end of the study, findings were also discussed.


Bayesian networks are a type of causal network used
for probabilistic reasoning, which have found wide application in
biomedical environments and machine vision.We have considered
their application in the realm of security, where behaviour that
is deliberately intended to deceive has to be considered. As a
first step to the the analysis of this behaviour we have analysed
problems in which an one agent provides truthfull, but evasive,
information to the other agents.
The three prisoners problem, and its simpler relation the
Monty Hall problem, are classic examples of statistical analysis
giving rise to counter intuitive results. In this paper the source
of the counter intuitive results is identified as an agent that only
releases partial data about the true state of the system. Furthermore
the data that is communicated is a function of the identity
of the agent requesting the data. Under these circumstances two
significant results are demonstrated; first different questioning
agents, will arrive at different probability estimates for the
same problem. Secondly, although if all the data is requested
the estimated probability will converge, the convergence may
be nonmonotonic. This means that some questions, truthfully
answered, will lead to a less precise probability measurement.
Keywords — Bayesian reasoning; three prisoner problem;


A survey was conducted in 22 farms in Kiambu and Kajiado districts to study the nematode associated with cabbage. Roots were rated for galls using a scale of 0 – 10. Roots were stained in Phyloxine B and in NaOCl-acid fuchsin for egg mass and endoparasite detection. Some roots were macerated for nematodes assays. A 200g soil sample per farm was assayed for nematodes. The study revealed that cabbage is a poor host of root knot nematodes (RKN) with 0 – 40% of the root systems galled and very few egg masses. The roots were predominantly infected by lesion nematodes (Pratylenchus spp.), having a 56% frequency of occurrence. The species detected included Pratylenchus brachyurus, P. zeae, P. scribneri, P. neglectus and P. loosi. The lesion nematodes were also detected in soils with a frequency of occurrence of 64%. Meloidogyne spp were detected in both the roots and soil at a frequency of occurrence of 26 and 14%, respectively. Tylenchorhynchus and Belonolaimus spp, potentially serious nematodes of vegetables were also recovered in significant numbers. The spiral nematodes; Scutellonema, Helicotylenchus and Hoplolaimus spp. were detected in soil with a frequency of occurrence of up to 77%. The stubby root nematodes (Trichodorus and Paratrichodorus spp) were present in 65% of the farms. Other nematodes detected included Xiphinema, Longidorus, Criconemoides, Hemicriconemoides and Hemicycliophora, Tylenchus, Coslenchus, quinisulcus, Polenchus and Paratylenchus spp. Although Filenchus spp. were detected in about 73% of the farms, it has not been reported as a serious pest of cabbage.


Great investigative journalism is present-tense literature: part detective story, part hellraising. This is the first anthology of its kind, bringing together outstanding (and often otherwise unavailable) practitioners of the muckraking tradition, from the Revolutionary era to the present day. Ranging from mainstream figures like Woodward and Bernstein to legendary iconoclasts such as I. F. Stone and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the dispatches in this collection combine the thrill of the chase after facts with a burning sense of outrage. As American history, Shaking the Foundations offers a you-are-there chronicle of great scandals and debates as reporters revealed them to their contemporaries: Jim Crow and financial trusts, migrant labor and wars, witch-hunts and government corruption. As journalism, these readingsfrom writers as diverse as Henry Adams and Ralph Nader, Lincoln Steffens and Barbara Ehrenreichare a source of inspiration for today's muckrakers. For the general reader, Shaking the Foundations reveals investigative journalism as a storytelling force capable of bringing down presidents, freeing the innocent, challenging the logic of wars, and exposing predatory corporations. Other selected contributors include Henry Adams, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Edward R. Murrow, Rachel Carson, Jessica Mitford, Susan Brownmiller, Anthony Lukas, Neil Sheehan, Drew Pearson, and Jack Anderson.


Utilization of magnetic nanoparticle-mediated conversion of electromagnetic energy into heat is gaining attention in catalysis as a source of heat needed for a substrate's chemical reaction (electrification of chemical conversions). We demonstrate that rapid and selective heating of magnetic nanoparticles opens a way to the rapid synthesis of a nanocatalyst. Magnetic heating caused rapid reduction of Ru3+ cations in the vicinity of the support material and enabled preparation of a Ru nanoparticle-bearing nanocatalyst. Comparative synthesis conducted under conventional heating revealed significantly faster Ru3+ reduction under magnetic heating. The faster kinetic was ascribed to the higher surface temperature of the support material caused by rapid magnetic heating. The nanocatalyst was rigorously tested in the hydrotreatment of furfural. The activity, selectivity and stability for furfural hydrogenation to furfuryl alcohol, a valuable biobased monomer, remained high even after four magnetic recycles.


Several locations in the Pentland Firth, UK, have been earmarked for the deployment of separate farms of tidal turbines. However, recent numerical modelling suggests that these farms will be inter-dependent and that they must work together to optimize their collective performance. To explain this inter-dependence, in this paper we develop an electrical circuit analogy to describe flow through the Pentland Firth, in which parallel connections in the circuit represent different sub-channels formed by the islands of Swona, Stroma and the Pentland Skerries. The analogy is introduced in stages, beginning with turbines placed in a single channel, then turbines placed in a sub-channel connected in parallel to another sub-channel, and finally more complicated arrangements, in which turbines are installed both in parallel and in series within a multiply connected channel. The analogy leads to a general formula to predict the tidal power potential of turbines placed in a sub-channel connected in parallel to another sub-channel, and a predictive model for more complicated multiply connected channel arrangements. Power estimates made using the formula and predictive model (which may be applied using only measurements of the undisturbed natural tidal hydrodynamics) are shown to agree well with numerical model predictions for the Pentland Firth, providing useful insight into how to best develop the resource.


In this paper a low cost real-time ARM-based energy management system is proposed. It is conceived as part of a distributed system that measures the main power system quantities and give the possibility to manage the whole power plant. An integrated Web Server allow to collect the statistics of power consumptions, power quality and is able to interface devices for load displacement. The device is characterized by easy access to the information and the combination of a smart meter and data communication capability allow local and remote access. In this way it is possible to manage the power consumption of the power system leading to an overall reduction in consumption and costs.


: Excellent clinical results were observed with the combination therapy of chloramphenicol with beta-lactam-antibiotics in the treatment of purulent meningitis. This came as a surprise as bacteriostatic antibiotics like chloramphenicol are commonly thought to antagonize the bactericidal action of penicillin or ampicillin. We reevaluated the mode of action of chloramphenicol against the three most common meningeal pathogens after the newborn period. Chloramphenicol was found to be bactericidal against H. influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis at clinically achievable levels in the CSF. In addition chloramphenicol showed synergistic action with ampicillin against H. influenzae which can possess clinical relevance particularly with the high inoculum of 10(7) organisms/ml which is frequently seen in bacterial meningitis. No synergism was found against Pneumococci and Meningococci but also no antagonism of the lower MIC and MBC values seen with ampicillin and penicillin G. The combination of chloramphenicol with either penicillin or ampicillin constitutes a clinically successful therapeutic regimen which is now also proven by in vitro investigations.


Antithrombotic effect of leech salivary gland secretion was maximal after intravenous administration into rats and was slightly decreased in cases of peroral administration. Blood from leech intestinal tract and leech homogenate exhibited less distinct antithrombotic action. Effect of these preparations was maintained after peroral administration. The antithrombotic effect of the leech preparations did not depend on their antithrombic activity caused by hirudin. These leech preparations appear to elongate a period of blood plasma recalcification caused by kallikrein inhibitor as well as apparently due to their capacity to inhibit aggregation of the thrombocytes.


Day-ahead unit commitment (UC) solution methods seek to determine the status and output of all available generators. In a world with an increasing integration of renewable energy sources such as wind electric generators (WEG), the UC solution process must model and include WEGs too in the decision-making process. Power output of WEGs in a day-ahead decision-making process are usually modeled using a short-term probabilistic forecast. Inclusion of WEGs introduces uncertainty in the solution that may be quantified through an imbalance risk function. Thus a UC solution method should seek a solution to minimize cost and risk in schedule. Two strategies are proposed in this paper to minimize costs and handle risks introduced due to WEGs. These formulations are posed as fuzzy optimization models and are solved using the mixed integer linear programming (MILP) technique. The proposed strategies are tested on a 26- and a 100-generator systems with associated transmission networks that have three and six wind generators each. The results with two strategies of handling WEGs are discussed.


This research presents a case study from the meat industry that developed an innovative product but failed to achieve expected profits due to manufacturability issues and high production rejects. The production staff believed the high levels of rejects were beyond their control and the product was unresolved when the product development (PD) team handed it over to them. On the other hand, the PD team believed the product was manufacturable and the production staff was incompetent and was not following the production procedures. With the application of statistical process control (SPC) the production rejects were reduced from more than 22 percent to less than 7 percent. Complete elimination of these rejects, however, was not possible because the production processes were incapable of producing the product. The PD team, when designing product, failed to consider manufacturability issues, and at the same time the production failed to follow the production processes. This paper also demonstrates the application of a relatively unknown technique known as variation transmission analysis (VTA) to estimate the variation attributable to different stages of the production process and to prioritize these sources of variability in the final product for further quality improvement.


Survival data often contain tied event times. Inference without careful treatment of the ties can lead to biased estimates. This paper develops the Bayesian analysis of a stochastic wear process model to fit survival data that might have a large number of ties. Under a general wear process model, we derive the likelihood of parameters. When the wear process is a Gamma process, the likelihood has a semi-closed form that allows posterior sampling to be carried out for the parameters, hence achieving model selection using Bayesian deviance information criterion. An innovative simulation algorithm via direct forward sampling and Gibbs sampling is developed to sample event times that may have ties in the presence of arbitrary covariates; this provides a tool to assess the precision of inference. An extensive simulation study is reported and a data set is used to further illustrate the proposed methodology.


In this work we propose a novel fully distributed approach to endow robots in a swarm with awareness of their relative position with respect to the rest of the swarm. Such spatial awareness can be used to support spatially differentiated task allocation or for pattern formation. In particular, we aim to partition the robots in the swarm in two (or more) distinct and spatially segregated groups. The distributed approach we propose only relies on local wireless communications and is based on a combination of distributed consensus and load balancing. We propose two metrics to measure the effectiveness of the obtained partitioning and we test the performance and the scalability of our algorithm in extensive simulation experiments. We also validate it in a small set of experiments with real robots.


Equational unification of two terms consists of finding a substitution that, when applied to both terms, makes them equal modulo some equational properties. A narrowing-based equational unification algorithm relying on the concept of the variants of a term is available in the most recent version of Maude, version 3.0, which provides quite sophisticated unification features. A variant of a term t is a pair consisting of a substitution sigma and the canonical form of tsigma. Variant-based unification is decidable when the equational theory satisfies the finite variant property. However, this unification procedure does not take into account constructor symbols and, thus, may compute many more unifiers than the necessary or may not be able to stop immediately. In this paper, we integrate the notion of constructor symbol into the variant-based unification algorithm. Our experiments on positive and negative unification problems show an impressive speedup.


This paper examines inter-speaker phonological variation within a mini-corpus of spoken Hong Kong English. The study focuses on consonantal features, and indicates that variation in the use of these features follows patterns that are implicational or hierarchical in nature. The findings are presented in the form of an implicational scale, in which the use of a particular feature by a speaker implies the use of other features by that speaker. The implicational patterns are discussed with reference to the intelligibility characteristics of the features and possible developmental pathways among L2 users. The possible relevance of the findings for areas of study such as the description of new varieties of English is also considered, with particular regard to pedagogical applications.


Heart failure (HF) is the most common
hospital discharge diagnosis among the elderly. It accounts for nearly 1.4
million hospitalizations and $21 billion in spending per year in the United
States. Readmission rates remain high with estimates ranging from 15-day
readmission rates of 13%, 30- day readmission rates of 25%, to 6-month
readmission rates of 50%. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
has started penalizing hospitals with higher than expected readmission rates.
Objective: To identify factors associated with increased 30-day readmission
among heart failure patients in an inner-city community-based teaching
hospital. Methods: A retrospective cohort study of patients with principal
discharge diagnosis of acute Heart Failure between 2008 and 2010. Demographic,
clinical characteristics, length of stay, discharge medications, disposition
and all-cause 30-day readmission were abstracted from the hospital's
administrative database and analyzed. Results: Almost 8 out of 10 patients were
65 years or older (mean age 75.4 ± 14.3) and 51% were female. The in-hospital
mortality rate was 2.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.6% - 4.3%) with a
median length of stay of 5.0 days (Interquartile range of 3 - 7). The all-cause
30-day readmission rate was 17.7% (95% CI 14.9% - 20.8%). By univariate
analysis, readmissions were predicted by black race, prior history of HF,
length of stay of more than 7 days and discharge to extended care facility
(ECF). By logistic regression analysis, black race (OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.4 - 3.8),
prior history of HF (OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.5 - 2.6) and discharge to an ECF (OR 2.4,
95% CI 1.5 - 3.7) were the independent predictors of 30-day readmission. HF
accounted for 43.7% of the readmissions. Conclusion: Prior diagnosis of HF,
black race, and discharge to an ECF were independent predictors of 30-day
readmission in this cohort, and over half of the readmissions were for reasons
other than HF.


AIM
To investigate the in vivo anti-tumor effect of K(8)(C(6)H(11)N(3)O(2))(2)[SiW(9)Ti(3)O(40)] (WT) and the immunological mechanism.

METHODS
WT was administrated intragastrically to mice bearing H22 hepatocarcinoma for 10 days and then the tumors were isolated and weighed. MTT colorimetry was used to detect lymphocyte transformation function and cytotoxicity of NK cells. The morphology of apoptotic tumor cells was observed under phase contrast microscope and light microscope after HE staining. The apoptosis rate of BEL-7402 cells treated with WT was detected by flow cytometry.

RESULTS
Compared to the control group, WT obviously inhibited the growth of H22 tumor in tumor bearing mice (P<0.05). It enhanced significantly lymphocyte transformation function and cytotoxicity of NK cells (P<0.05). Apoptotic tumor cells were observed under microscope and detected by flow cytometry.

CONCLUSION
WT inhibits significantly the growth of tumor by up-regulating the activity of immunocytes and inducing apoptosis of tumor cells.


A number of recent publications, addresses, seminars, and conferences have addressed the global backlog and increasing incidence of both congenital and acquired cardiac diseases in children, with reference to early and delayed recognition, late referral, availability of and access to services, costs, risks, databases, and early and long-term results and follow-up. A variety of proposals, recommendations, and projects have been outlined and documented. The ultimate goal of these endeavors is to increase the quality and quantity of pediatric cardiac care and surgery worldwide and particularly in underserved areas. A contemporary review of past and present initiatives is presented with a subsequent focus on the more challenging areas.


he puts forward. His theory on the synergistic action of a toxin from the obstructed bowel, however, while showing original thought, does not explain why this condition occurs in elderly patients only. He may well be right in thinking that certain toxins, specific or non-specific, may play some part in bringing about this condition. If, however, this is the complete answer, why is the condition not found in younger age groups ?-I am, etc.,


Hydraulic tomography is a state of the art method for inferring hydraulic conductivity fields using head data. Here, a numerical model is used to simulate a steady-state hydraulic tomography experiment by assuming a Gaussian hydraulic conductivity field (also constant storativity) and generating the head and flux data in different observation points. We employed geostatistical inversion using head and flux data individually and jointly to better understand the relative merits of each data type. For the typical case of a small number of observation points, we find that flux data provide a better resolved hydraulic conductivity field compared to head data when considering data with similar signal-to-noise ratios. In the case of a high number of observation points, we find the estimated fields to be of similar quality regardless of the data type. A resolution analysis for a small number of observations reveals that head data averages over a broader region than flux data, and flux data can better resolve the hydraulic conductivity field than head data. The inversions' performance depends on borehole boundary conditions, with the best performing setting for flux data and head data are constant head and constant rate, respectively. However, the joint inversion results of both data types are insensitive to the borehole boundary type. Considering the same number of observations, the joint inversion of head and flux data does not offer advantages over individual inversions. By increasing the hydraulic conductivity field variance, we find that the resulting increased non-linearity makes it more challenging to recover high-quality estimates of the reference hydraulic conductivity field. Our findings would be useful for future planning and design of hydraulic tomography tests comprising the flux and head data.


"Allen's Dictionary of English Phrases" is the most comprehensive survey of this area of the English language ever undertaken. Taking over 6000 phrases, it explains their meaning, explores their development and gives citations that range from the Venerable Bede to Will Self. Crisply and wittily written, this book is packed with memorable and surprising detail, whether showing that 'salad days' comes from Antony and Cleopatra, that 'flavour of the month' originates in 1940s American ice cream marketing, or even that we've been 'calling a spade a spade' since the sixteenth century. "Allen's Dictionary of English Phrases" is part of the "Penguin Reference Library" and draws on over 70 years of experience in bringing reliable, useful and clear information to millions of readers around the world - making knowledge everybody's property.


The potentials and tools that are offered by Alife for biology in modeling the nervous system and animal behavior are mainly unexploited. There is no consistent Alife model of the biological evolution of the nervous system as yet. whereas the modeling tools are at hand and their application for this purpose seems evident. In a biologically grounded model we have to make every possible effort to use principles known from biology, and to minimize the arbitrarily employed organizing rules. The aim of our work is to create a biologically accurate Alife model of the formation and evolution of the nervous system in connection with the adaptive behavior. In this article we concentrate on the structure of the modeled genome, which is the basis of playing a double biological role: to ensure an open-ended evolutionary process, as well as to direct the ontogenesis. The main questions we examined are: what are the basic rules of construction that are sufficient to create a workable nervous system and how can we model them in a biologically realistic way'?


Distributed unattended ground sensor (UGS) networks are commonly deployed to support wide area battlefield surveillance and monitoring missions. The information they generate has proven to be valuable in providing a necessary tactical information advantage for command and control, intelligence and reconnaissance field planning. Until recently, however, there has been greater emphasis within the defence research community for UGS networks to fulfil their mission objectives successfully, with minimal user interaction. For a distributed UGS scenario, this implies a network centric capability, where deployed UGS networks can self-manage their behaviour in response to dynamic environmental changes. In this thesis, we consider both the application interface and networking technologies required to achieve a network centric capability, within a distributed UGS surveillance setting. Three main areas of work are addressed towards achieving this.
The first area of work focuses on a capability to support autonomous UGS network management for distributed surveillance operations. The network management aspect is framed in terms of how distributed sensors can collaborate to achieve their common mission objectives and at the same time, conserve their limited network resources. A situation awareness methodology is used, in order to enable sensors which have similar understanding towards a common objective to be utilised, for collaboration and to allow sensor resources to be managed as a direct relationship according to, the dynamics of a monitored threat.
The second area of work focuses on the use of geographic routing to support distributed surveillance operations. Here we envisage the joint operation of unmanned air vehicles and UGS networks, working together to verify airborne threat observations. Aerial observations made in this way are typically restricted to a specific identified geographic area. Information queries sent to inquire about these observations can also be routed and restricted to using this geographic information. In this section, we present our bio-inspired geographic routing strategy, with an integrated topology control function to facilitate this.
The third area of work focuses on channel aware packet forwarding. Distributed UGS networks typically operate in wireless environments, which can be unreliable for packet forwarding purposes. In this section, we develop a capability for UGS nodes to decide which packet forwarding links are reliable, in order to reduce packet transmission failures and improve overall distributed networking performance.


Background: Academic stress (AS) is a little studied topic and even less related to the eating habits (EH) and physical activity (PA) of college students when they are on exams. The university stage implies a greater degree of challenges that trigger a series of AS due to the overload of tasks or projects, which condition not only school performance, but also the quality of life and nutritional status of the university population. Objective: To analyze the relationship between stress and food consumption and physical activity in college students exposed in an academic testing period. Methods: The method was a descriptive, prospective, quantitative and observational study. 144 volunteer college students of bachelor degree of Physiotherapy, Nutrition, Psychology, Gastronomy, Business Administration, Educational Sciences and Architecture. The preference index (PI) was the method used to measure the frequency of EH, and Academic Stress Questionnaire by PA. Results: Physiotherapy and Nutrition students presented high levels of stress. Students in Nutrition and Physiotherapy had great physical and/or mental exhaustion, and little motivation to turn in projects and assignments. Consumption of alcoholic beverages, soft drinks and junk food increases during testing periods. The fruit consumption PI is moderated by students during the examination period. Most students of all bachelor's degrees prefer to be resting, sleeping, watching TV or being on their cell phones. Conclusions: The stress causes changes in eating habits and physical activities to college students to meet their academic needs.


With the recent rise in the cultural level, each region requires small-sized cultural and practice spaces, which absolutely lack. In addition, diverse buildings managed by each local government have recently been aged and neglected and are considered to cause social problems by local residents. So the government intends to remodel these neglected spaces into performing arts spaces to provide private art groups with stable practice and community spaces. To create such practice spaces, it is essential to secure and predict optimized acoustic performance for each space in the stage of design; however, there is almost no domestic data about this issue. From this point of view, this study aimed to measure acoustic performance of the four spaces of the Cheongju Tobacco Center East Warehouses in Busan remodeled into performing arts practice spaces and identify acoustic characteristics. The results of this study are expected to be useful in designing and remodeling similar performing arts spaces.


With the increased use of manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs) and increased environmental and human exposure, "nanosafety" has become a major research objective. This field has yet to advance due to challenges in systematically linking physicochemical properties to toxicity. The aim of this work was to develop a library of comparable NMs and study their behaviour and ageing in different scenarios. A library of metal oxide NMs based on a PVP capped ceria synthesis protocol was developed and extensively characterised. The protocol was successfully modified to produce PVP capped zinc oxide and copper oxide NMs, of comparable sizes. These NMs along with commercial uncoated ceria NMs were subjected to time and temperature dependent studies. The work studied the transformations occurring on exposure to 25, 45, 65 and 80 °C temperatures for 4 weeks. Results showed increased aggregation, changes in metal valency state and decreased stability with increasing temperature and time. Finally the potential phosphate induced environmental transformation of ceria was studied for the ceria library NMs, the commercial ceria NM and a series of zirconium doped ceria NMs. Samples were exposured to pH-adjusted phosphatisation solutions. Ceria and ceria-rich samples underwent physical and chemical transformations. Furthermore the commercial ceria was exposed to a pH-adjusted phospholipid containing phosphatisation solution where no characteristic phosphate ageing transformations were observed.


Phosphorothioate modification is commonly introduced into therapeutic oligonucleotides, typically as a racemic mixture in which either of the two non-bridging phosphate oxygens is replaced by sulfur, which frequently increases affinities with proteins. Here, we used isothermal titration calorimetry and X-ray crystallography to investigate the thermodynamic and structural properties of the interaction between the primary DNA-binding domain (CUTr1) of transcription factor SATB1 and dodecamer DNAs with racemic phosphorothioate modifications at the six sites known to contact CUTr1 directly. For both the modified and unmodified DNAs, the binding reactions were enthalpy-driven at a moderate salt concentration (50 mM NaCl), while being entropy-driven at higher salt concentrations with reduced affinities. The phosphorothioate modifications lowered this susceptibility to salt, resulting in a significantly enhanced affinity at a higher salt concentration (200 mM NaCl), although only some DNA molecular species remained interacting with CUTr1. This was explained by unequal populations of the two diastereomers in the crystal structure of the complex of CUTr1 and the phosphorothioate-modified DNA. The preferred diastereomer formed more hydrogen bonds with the oxygen atoms and/or more hydrophobic contacts with the sulfur atoms than the other, revealing the origins of the enhanced affinity.


Under Mitterrand9s presidency, despite radical swings in government ideology and policy, French business has been transformed. French industry has not only rationalized and internationalized its operations, it has also altered its capital structure, creating a hard-core of investors made up of nationalized and privatized companies, public and private firms, and—for the first time—banks. The environment of business has changed dramatically, with the socialist nationalizations having served to rehabilitate business as the "creator of riches" while the neo-liberal privatizations have fostered the notion that, private or public, business is business. Although management practice has been modernized, labor-management relations ameliorated, and the centralization of decision making somewhat attenuated, the traditional elite recruitment and promotion system, which privileges state education and service and thereby lowers morale and undervalues achievement in business, has only changed modestly.


Objectives: The role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) within female reproductive system is complex and oxidative stress can contribute to infertility, given the fact that diabetes mellitus strongly affects fallopian tubes, ovaries and uterus. Tribulus terrestris (family-Zygophyllaceae) is known for medicinal value and fruit is rich in saponins, flavonoids and antioxidants. In this study the antioxidant potential of Tribulus terrestris fruit (TTF) on diabetic female reproductive tract is assessed. Material and methods: Wistar strain, female rats were induced diabetes by STZ (45 mg/kgbw) and supplemented with graded doses of TTF ethanolic extract (50-250 mg/kgbw) for 30-days to measure the counter effects. Studies were directed to evaluate diabetes caused changes in blood glucose, body weight and antioxidant enzyme activities in female reproductive tract upon exposure of phytoextracts. Results and Conclusions: Normalcy in body weight and blood glucose levels was evident upon TTF supplementation on and beyond 19th-day of extract exposure and among supplemented doses 200 mg/kgbw found to be efficient to quench the free radicals and ameliorated the status of antioxidant enzymes viz., SOD, CAT, GPx, GST and GSH. TTF extract in 200 mg/kgbw dose improves endogenous antioxidant defense system, thereby recommended for therapeutic use as an alternative to current modalities for the management of diabetes.


Summary: At least 11 esterase isoenzymes have been resolved from conidia of six strains of Neurospora crassa on starch gel zymograms using β-naphthyl acetate as substrate. By means of inhibitor studies, three of them were determined to be acetylesterases and nine to be carboxylesterases. Carboxylesterases could be distinguished from acetylesterases by their positive reaction with α-naphthyl butyrate. The distribution of these multiple forms of esterases in conidia was clearly strain specific. Each strain contained two forms of acetylesterase and from zero to three forms of carboxylesterase. These esterases could not hydrolyse the naphthyl esters of aliphatic carboxylic acids larger than butyrate or that of benzoate. During the first 20 h of conidial germination, a marked decrease in esterolytic activity was observed for most of the carboxylesterases but not for the acetylesterases. This might indicate that digestion of aliphatic esters is involved in the initial stage of conidial germination.


Recent research has provided mixed results regarding the presence of a time-varying risk premium in agricultural futures markets. In this paper we test for the presence of a time-varying risk premium and market efficiency focusing on the properties of the underlying data. Specifically, we examine the same markets and period used by McKenzie and Holt (2002) and extend the analysis through 2004. Our results show that accounting for the structural break in the early seventies plays a key role in the findings. In contrast to McKenzie and Holt, we find no evidence of time-varying risk premium in the four commodities analyzed. The corn market appears to be (weak form) efficient. Hogs, live cattle, and soybean meal futures contracts show evidence of inefficiency, which suggests an inability of these markets to incorporate all available information in the futures prices. Our results identify the importance of careful examination of the data as failure to do so can lead to inappropriate conclusions.


The applicability of glass chips with powder‐blasted microchannels for electrophoretic separations was examined, and the performance was compared to microchannels etched with hydrogen fluoride (HF), using bicarbonate buffer and rhodamine B and fluorescein as model compounds. The measured electroosmotic mobilities in all chips were comparable, with values of ca. 7×10‐4 cm2 V‐1s‐1. The effect of electrical field strength and detection length on the separation efficiency was monitored. It was found that the main source of dispersion is of the Taylor‐Aris type, which was discussed in relation to channel roughness differences. Although in powder‐blasted channels with a separation length of 8.20 cm, 7–9 times lower plate numbers were obtained than in a HF‐etched channel with similar dimensions, successful separation of five fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)‐labeled amino acids was obtained on a powder‐blasted chip within 80 s. Efficiencies of up to 360 000 plates/m were demonstrated on this chip, when a higher buffer concentration was used at a field strength of 664 V/cm. It can be concluded that powder‐blasted microchannel chips, although they have a lower separation efficiency compared to HF‐etched chips, perform well enough for many applications. Powder blasting can therefore be considered a low‐cost and efficient alternative to HF etching, in particular because of the possibility to fabricate access holes through the glass with the same process.


The poly(o-toluidine)/BaFe10Al2O19 (POT/BFA) composites were synthesized by in-situ polymerization of o-toluidine in the presence of BaFe10Al2O19 particles. The structure, composition and morphology and electromagnetic property of the obtained samples were characterized by means of modern testing techniques. The results indicated that BFA particles were coated effectively by POT polymer chain and some interactions between POT and BFA particles were existed in the composites. The conductivity and saturation magnetization of POT/BFA composites were smaller than those of pure polymers and pure BFA respectively. The POT/BFA composites had excellent magnetic loss (μ′′) and dielectric loss (ε′′) in the range of 1 MHz~3 GHz because of their intrinsic properties and synergistic effect between components. Hence, they could be recommended as candidates for electromagnetic wave absorption and shielding materials.


Heart rate histograms were analyzed during 24-hour Holter monitoring in patients with cardiac rhythm and conduction disturbances. The profiles of histograms in the most common cardiac arrhythmias: extrasystole, chronic supraventricular reentry tachycardia, atrioventricular block, sinus tachycardia, sick sinus syndrome and those in patients with implantable pacemakers were shown. Approaches to analyzing histograms were defined in Holter monitoring, the histographic analysis was demonstrated to be of value in the comprehensive evaluation of Holter monitoring findings.


Chicago School argues that the use of predatory strategy may not lead to a profit. Postchicago School, investigating this problem on
the basis of game theory, argues just the opposite. This dispute on the basis of theoretical economics, has an impact on ethics in economic
life. In a number of lawsuits companies rely on the views of the Chicago School to win, which raises the ethical concerns.


THE USE of electroencephalographic recording from newborn infants is gradually becoming an important and effective method of studying the maturation of the brain, especially in relation to stress and the development of later dysfunction. 1-6 Responses of the electroencephalogram to sensory stimulation or evoked sensory potentials are being increasingly investigated as a means of evaluating reactivity in involved pathways. 7-13 In detailed reports, Ellingson 9-11 has described the evoked cortical electroencephalographic responses to visual stimulation in the human infant, focusing mostly on their form, latency, and developmental changes. Although indicating the existence of responses to repetitive stimulation, he found photic "driving" "relatively rarely," in only 5% of infants during the neonatal period; this phenomenon, however, was elicited in 39% of infants 2 weeks of age or over. All investigators have emphasized that the topographical distribution of these responses is limited to the occipital region in the newborn. Ellingson 10 was


Purpose: Research in the field of business models is a challenge from the point of view of management science. Despite the increasing number of publications on this subject, attempts are still made to scrutinize the mechanisms of creating value by enterprises. An attempt was made to define an element of the business model which is the relationship with the measurable success of a sports club. Design/Methodology/Approach: Twenty-four volleyball clubs from the two highest levels of competition in Poland were studied.There was used a survey questionnaire research. The collected results were analyzed using the basic statistical tools presented in the article. In effect there was possibility to estimate Coefficient of Sports Club Relations. Findings: Main effect of the research was an indication of the correlation of the relationship element with the broadly defined success of the sports club, which as part of the conducted research, was defined as the market occupied position. Also, elements of relations have been identified that particularly imply the organization's success Practical Implications: The article is a reference point for further research on the creation of values by sports organizations and is a contribution to the science of business models in general and, consequently, to the specific of the sports industry. The Coefficient of Sports Club Relations, developed as part of the research, provides an opportunity to explore collaboration with other organizations and determine the entity's market position and potential. Originality/Value: The presented tool introduces an innovative way of thinking about newlybuilt relationships. It brings new insights into relationship management. The discussed issue has been taken up for the first time on the team sport market in Poland and constitutes one of the scarce scientific items on a global scale.


The piezocone penetration test (PCPT) is an effective in-situ testing method for the characterization of saturated clays. While various PCPT-based consolidation analysis methods were developed, uncertainties still exist, which are associated with the type of interpretation methods and model parameter determination. In this paper, a methodology for the analysis of horizontal consolidation using PCPT dissipation test results is explored and proposed for the application in vertical drains. Based on the concept of time-drainage distance relationship, a direct correlation model between field horizontal consolidation and PCPT dissipation processes is proposed. The proposed method refers the whole range of the PCPT dissipation process, and thus more realistic consolidation prediction is expected. PCPT dissipation test results and time-settlement data from the test site are used to evaluate the correlation parameter for the proposed method. In order to validate the proposed method, experimental test results were collected from the literature and used to compare measured and predicted consolidation behavior. It is observed that the results from the proposed method show reasonably close agreement with measured field consolidation settlements.


This paper introduces scientific data mining, the standard data-mining problem, and the strip-mining problem. StripMinerTM, a shell program for feature reduction and predictive modeling, integrates the executions of several different machine- learning models (Partial Least Squares Regression, Genetic Algorithms, Support Vector Machines, Neural Networks, and Local Learning). This paper introduces the StripMinerTM code, its functionality, and its options.


SUMMARY Tryptophan mustard, 0.3 mg/kg i.v. once weekly, was given to 38 patients with plasmacytic myeloma. Of these, 27 were treated for 30 days or more and therefore were considered to be eligible for evaluation of response. Improvement in one or more parameters occurred in 14 patients. Six patients received benefit in two parameters or more. Toxicity consisted of leukopenia and thrombocytopenia but this did not cause serious complications. Nausea and vomiting occurred in 18 patients and necessitated cessation of therapy in 4. Tryptophan mustard appears to possess activity against plasmaeytic myeloma and may be useful when other therapy has failed.


BACKGROUND
Despite the aging of the population, little is known about the sexual behaviors and sexual function of older people.

METHODS
We report the prevalence of sexual activity, behaviors, and problems in a national probability sample of 3005 U.S. adults (1550 women and 1455 men) 57 to 85 years of age, and we describe the association of these variables with age and health status.

RESULTS
The unweighted survey response rate for this probability sample was 74.8%, and the weighted response rate was 75.5%. The prevalence of sexual activity declined with age (73% among respondents who were 57 to 64 years of age, 53% among respondents who were 65 to 74 years of age, and 26% among respondents who were 75 to 85 years of age); women were significantly less likely than men at all ages to report sexual activity. Among respondents who were sexually active, about half of both men and women reported at least one bothersome sexual problem. The most prevalent sexual problems among women were low desire (43%), difficulty with vaginal lubrication (39%), and inability to climax (34%). Among men, the most prevalent sexual problems were erectile difficulties (37%). Fourteen percent of all men reported using medication or supplements to improve sexual function. Men and women who rated their health as being poor were less likely to be sexually active and, among respondents who were sexually active, were more likely to report sexual problems. A total of 38% of men and 22% of women reported having discussed sex with a physician since the age of 50 years.

CONCLUSIONS
Many older adults are sexually active. Women are less likely than men to have a spousal or other intimate relationship and to be sexually active. Sexual problems are frequent among older adults, but these problems are infrequently discussed with physicians.


This thesis consists of four papers on various aspects of inbreeding, effective population sizes and genetic differentiation in structured populations, that is, populations that consist of a number of subpopulations. Three of the papers concern age structured populations, where in the first paper we concentrate on calculating the variance effective population size (NeV) and how NeV depends on the time between measurements and the weighting scheme of age classes. In the third paper we develop an estimation procedure of NeV which uses age specific demographic parameters to obtain approximately unbiased estimates. A simulation method for age structured populations is presented in the fourth paper. It is applicable to models with multiallelic loci in linkage equilibrium.In the second paper, we develop a framework for analysis of effective population sizes and genetic differentiation in geographically subdivided populations with a general migration scheme. Predictions of gene identities and gene diversities of the population are presented, which are used to find expressions for effective population sizes (Ne) and the coefficient of gene differentiation (GST). We argue that not only the asymptotic values of Ne and GST are important, but also their temporal dynamic patterns.The models presented in this thesis are important for understanding how different age decomposition, migration and reproduction scenarios of a structured population affect quantities, such as various types of effective sizes and genetic differentiation between subpopulations.


Pushing the limits of electron microscopy Recent advances in cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) allow structures of large macromolecules to be determined at near-atomic resolution. So far, though, resolutions approaching 2 Å, where features key to drug design are revealed, remain the province of x-ray crystallography. Bartesaghi et al. achieved a resolution of 2.2 Å for a 465-kD ligand-bound protein complex using cryo-EM. The density map is detailed enough to show close to 800 water molecules, magnesium and sodium ions, and precise side-chain conformations. These results bring routine use of cryo-EM in rational drug design a step closer. Science, this issue p. 1147 Advances in electron microscopy allow protein structure determination at resolutions useful in drug discovery. Cryo–electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is rapidly emerging as a powerful tool for protein structure determination at high resolution. Here we report the structure of a complex between Escherichia coli β-galactosidase and the cell-permeant inhibitor phenylethyl β-d-thiogalactopyranoside (PETG), determined by cryo-EM at an average resolution of ~2.2 angstroms (Å). Besides the PETG ligand, we identified densities in the map for ~800 water molecules and for magnesium and sodium ions. Although it is likely that continued advances in detector technology may further enhance resolution, our findings demonstrate that preparation of specimens of adequate quality and intrinsic protein flexibility, rather than imaging or image-processing technologies, now represent the major bottlenecks to routinely achieving resolutions close to 2 Å using single-particle cryo-EM.


A textbook, written mainly for Frenchmen, of the diagnostic radiology of the kidneys and ureters. Much space is devoted to intravenous urography. The authors present a good general description of the examination technique, roentgen anatomyand most diseases of the kidneys and ureters. The presentation is simple and readily comprehensible. The author's views are on the whole acceptable, although several sections of the survey of the roentgenologic signs constitute a jig-saw puzzle of 'images' that could with advantage be fitted together. The abundant illustrations, many of which are of high quality, represent an important part of the book. Olle Olsson.


Micro-relief heterogeneity can lead to substantial variability in microclimate and hence niche opportunities on a small scale. We explored the relationship between plant species richness and small-scale heterogeneity of micro-relief on the subtropical island of La Palma, Canary Islands. Overall, we sampled 40 plots in laurel and pine forests at four altitudinal bands. Species richness was recorded separately for various growth forms (i.e., mosses, herbaceous and woody plants). Site conditions such as altitude, slope, aspect, and tree density were measured. Micro-relief heterogeneity was characterized by surface structure and a subsequently derived surface heterogeneity index. The effect of micro-relief heterogeneity on species richness was analysed by means of linear mixed effect models and variance partitioning. Effects of micro-relief heterogeneity on species richness varied considerably between growth forms. While moss richness was affected significantly by micro-relief heterogeneity, herbaceous and woody plants richness responded mainly to larger-scale site conditions such as aspect and tree density. Our results stress the importance of small-scale relief heterogeneity for the explanation of spatial patterns of species richness. This poses new challenges as small-scale heterogeneity is largely underrepresented, e.g. with regard to its application in species distribution models.


Humanitarian diplomacy is a new term, yet an old practice, and has received relatively little academic attention. This contrasts with the reality of humanitarian practitioners' work, which has shown increasing interest in and use of the term humanitarian diplomacy from the millennium onwards. Humanitarian diplomacy covers humanitarian action and its intricacies in catering for humanitarian needs, which sets it distinctively apart from other forms of diplomacy. In contributing to this underexplored area, in a theoretically driven discussion this article uses practice theory to propose an analytical framework for humanitarian diplomatic practices. The article suggests that humanitarian diplomacy, as currently led by practitioners, can be best understood by examining its characteristics at the level of its practices. This understanding produces a systematisation of the meaning of the term for scholarly audiences and assists practitioners themselves to identify their humanitarian diplomatic engagement as a self-standing practice.


Objectives: Two cluster solutions for the subtyping of alcohol dependence (AD) was investigated in an Indian male population. Subtypes were compared for various personality traits and childhood externalizing disorders. They were also compared with respect to single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of various candidate genes. Materials and Methods: This was a clinic-based study conducted among 202 patients with AD. All patients were assessed with SSAGA-II for comorbid antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and childhood conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). For the assessment of personality traits, the Indian Adaptation of Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and Barratt's Impulsiveness Scale were administered. SNP genotyping was done using taqmann assay by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results: Among those with AD, the two-cluster model which was able to produce the maximum degree of cohesion among disorders in the same cluster and separateness from the other cluster was the one with or without ASPD and CD. The quality of the cluster analysis was reduced when ODD and ADHD were included in the model along with ASPD and CD. Thus, in our index population, there are two distinct clusters of AD, one with ASPD and CD or the externalizing cluster (Cluster 2) and the other without ASPD and CD or the nonexternalizing cluster (Cluster 1). Externalizing cluster had significantly higher score in both the impulsiveness and the SSS. This cluster was also significantly associated with childhood ADHD and ODD. The genotype frequencies of all candidate genes were found to be nonsignificantly distributed among the two groups. Conclusion: Our study has conferred a cross-cultural validation of the known alcoholism subtypes.


A laboratory model of the parasitic system of Lyme borreliosis (LB) with Ixodes persulcatus and Borrelia burgdorferi s.s. underwent 5 epizootic cycles (Cycle I transition of Borreliae by the scheme a tick-->a mouse-->a tick corresponds to the seasonal cycle). A group of 5-6 mice was inoculated with the suspension of infected nymphs by the intracutaneously route and 35-45 days later intact tick larvae or nymphs were fed on them. In the first three cycles, 40-100% of mice in a group (a total of 33 of 59) were susceptible, but 3 of 11 groups of mice were not inoculated. 20-50% of larvae and 75-92% of nymphs were susceptible on the infected mice. The mean geometric abundance of borreliae was 2.8-6.3 cells per 100 fields of vision in the nymphs infected in the larval phase and 16.1-29.5 cells in the image phase. In cycle IV, 2 of 6 groups of mice were unsusceptible to borreliae and 5 of the 17 mice from 4 groups got infected. One mouse died from Lyme borreliosis when larvae were fed on it. The nymphs remolted from underfed larvae were infected in 62.2% of cases, the mean geometric abundance in these nymphs was 5.7% per 100 fields of vision. A total of 3.2-14.7% of the ticks fed on the remaining 4 mice were infected and the abundance of boreliae was 1-2 per 100 fields of vision. In cycle V, one of 12 mice got infected, the infection rate in nymphs was 9.1%, the abundance of borreliae was 1 per 100 fields of vision. Thus, as the number of epizootic cycles increases, the proportion of infected mice, that of ticks infected on these mice on feeding, and the abundance of borreliae in the infected ticks decrease. Moreover, there was a reduction in the length of borreliae reduced from 17-18 mm to 10-11 mm and in the duration of multiplication and preservation of borreliae in the infected ticks and there was concurrently an increase in the duration of development of an infectious process in mice. It is suggested that the population of borreliae consists of 2 morphophysiological groups or more. During cultivation of the laboratory model of the parasitic system of Lyme borreliosis, a group of borrelia that are short and slightly pathogenic for mice had got many points in its favour. A five-fold procedure of artificial election of precisely defining this group set the model on the verge of disappearance. The capacity of the populations of borreliae to alter their properties rapidly and fundamentally suggests that there might be violent annual fluctuations in human morbidity.


In the years 1981 to 1985 84 patients with scoliosis were mainly treated by the proceeding of Harrington respectively Harrington-Luque. By using the combination Harrington-Luque-wires its getting an evident better result in correction (63%) as by only using the Harrington-instruments (55%).


AIM: Partial-Breast Radiotherapy following lumpectomy is an effective treatment for women with early stage breast cancer, with the technique of either brachytherapy or external beam treatment broadly being implemented in clinics. However, the current popular brachytherapy treatments are still limited to treating somewhat regularly shaped targets, with an additional limitation defined by the skin and rib radiation tolerances. A linac-based method that utilizes frame fixation, a contrast enhanced cavity/fiducial location approach, image localization guided treatment techniques, and special immobilization techniques was demonstrated to be accurate method to deliver radiotherapy to a site in the breast, a task that has challenged clinicians for decades. Methods: A prospective study of ten patients (six Left Breasts and four Right Breasts) had placed three internal gold-seed markers inside the surgical bed post-surgery (provided by CIVCO Corporation)/prior to planning and six external markers (made by Beckley). (Two sets of three fiducials) were placed in an axial plane above and below the surgery site) Prior to the Computerized Tomography (CT) scan performed for planning, contrast is introduced into the cavity to allow localization of the breast cavity during planning. A simulation was performed in a large-bore 3rd generation scanner with a patient's breast affixed using an Electa Body frame to improve localization and to control breathing variances. The planning was performed on an Eclipse treatment planning system, and the treatment was performed using a Varian CD Linear accelerator. Results: Small volumes field sizes, sometimes as small as 4 × 4, and Mutli-Leaf Collimators (MLCs) were required to deliver patient dose verification. This process was performed prior to treatment using diodes (including planar isodose to evaluate the MLCs required to deliver compared to the plan verification when using Map Check. (Diode Array Radiation Dosimeter made by Sun Nuclear Corporation) Conclusions: A Quality Analysis (QA) was performed. Five to seven fields were used, indicating good statistical and clinical agreement in these 10 cases. All fields were imaged daily prior to treatment using 2 Dimensional (2D) MV portal imaging and correlated and evaluated by the Radiation Oncologist using the Acculoc patient positioning system.


We report results of measurements that help to clarify the role of silver in the reflection of UV emission light from GaN. A GaN as an active layer was sandwiched between two silver metal reflectors. GaN layer on sapphire showed a photoluminescence (PL) peak around 364 nm and its full width half maximum was about 6.7 nm. Two types of microcavity, were fabricated: half-cavity GaN/sapphire/silver and full-cavity silver/GaN/sapphire/silver. Photoluminescence measurements showed a two-fold intensity enhancement in half-cavity back mirror. In the full cavity samples, the amplitude of the photoluminescence is enhanced ten times when we used 50 nm silver as a front mirror. A tremendous more than 16-fold enhancement is obtained when silver mirror of 25 nm was used as a front mirror. The increase in the photoluminescence intensity is explained in terms of competition between increasing absorption in the cavity, silver surface plasmon coupling and increasing optical field-enhancement due to resonator.


This paper proposes demosaicing methods for video clip of digital still cameras (DSCs). In video clips of DSCs, pixel mixture is performed for saving readout time, which mixes together two pixels on CCD. Pixel mixture reduces the number of pixels to be read out from CCD, and it enables video rate read out from DSCs of more than a million pixels. In this paper, an iterative method is presented in order to recover the image. Our approach achieves the results of smaller mean square errors than conventional interpolation methods.


This paper discusses the question of the concentrated pattern of agricultural development in Brazil, as expressed in the predominance of large-scale production, high level of mechanization and low absorption of non-qualified labor. It is proposed, initially, the existence of two conflicting explanations for this fact: the first, that blames our historical heritage, characterized by the predominance of the latifundio, and the second, that sees in this fact a technological determinism, with the implication that lesser concentration in agriculture would involve a loss of economic efficiency. This paper, however, attributes to the labor, land and credit policies directed to agriculture, instituted in the decade of 1960, the major responsibility for this problem. As the analysis shows, these policies turned unviable the agricultural temporary labor market and family farm, at the same time that they stimulated agricultural mechanization and large-scale production. The paper ends up proposing a deregulation both of agricultural labor and land markets, as well as a drastic reduction in the subsidized agricultural credit.


The Skindex: an instrument to measure Quality of Life in Dermatology. A psychometric comparison between long and short version in a group of psoriasis patients - Psoriasis is one of the prevalent skin diseases in the World. This chronic condition has a significant negative impact on patients' quality of life (QoL). The Skindex-29 is a selfadministered questionnaire assessing QoL of patients with skin diseases in 3 domains: burden of symptoms, social functioning, and emotional responses. Recently, authors (Nijsten et al., 2006) have developed a short version made up by 17 item that measures two dimensions: burden of symptoms and psychosocial responses. The aim of present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the both versions: original (Skindex-29) and short version (Skindex-17). Confirmatory factor analyses, conducted on a group of 360 psoriasis patients, supported the construct validity of the Skindex-17. Adequate internal consistency and significant distress correlations were found. Overall results suggested that Skindex-17 represented a brief and easily administrable questionnaire as well as a useful tool for both clinicians and researchers interested to assess QoL of psoriasis patients. Key words: psoriasis, quality of life, measurement, skindex, confirmative analyses Parole chiave: psoriasi, qualita di vita, misura, skindex, analisi confermative


Speech production in children with Down's syndrome (DS) has been found to be variable and inconsistent. Errors are concentrated in consonants that are typically late developing, such as fricatives. It has been suggested that inconsistency in speech production in DS is a result of a motor speech deficit but there is little detailed articulatory evidence to support this claim.
This study (with data from MRC grant 'Assessment and Treatment of Impaired Speech Motor Control in Children with Down's syndrome' (G0401388)) provides a detailed phonetic analysis of the voiceless sibilants /s/ and /ʃ/, in a group of young people with DS, by means of auditory and articulatory analysis. The aim of the study is to assess fine motor ability and articulation variability at word level production in a group of speakers with well-established difficulties in speech articulation.
The study analysed data from 25 children with DS, 10 typically developing children and 8 adult speakers, recorded using EPG. Perceptual measures were compared with quantitative analyses of EPG data, along with visual analysis of articulation patterns based on a new set of articulation taxonomies. The data is presented by group and in the form of 5 case studies. The case studies provide a means to analyse the relationship between articulation and auditory information in detail and to compare these with supplementary motor control measures.
The results show presence of atypical articulation patterns for speakers with DS for both perceptually acceptable tokens, and those in error. Higher levels of within-speaker articulation variability are presented in comparison to the TD control group. Further findings suggest presence of articulation patterns in the TD speakers previously unidentified in EPG studies.
Similar to previous studies, the results find that speakers with DS are a highly variable group and that speakers display a combination of typical and atypical speech patterns, influenced by speech motor control difficulties.


In order for Ionic Liquids (ILs) to be utilized to their full potential, it is necessary to have a complete understanding of their physical properties, including phase transitions temperatures1.
We have previously reported into the extent of structuring of ILs using photochromic molecular probes, and investigated the appropriate IL water content to yield hydrated IL systems for analysis of polarity and to create environments suitable for effective enzyme activity 1,2,3.
In this study we investigated interactions in hydrated ILs containing variable hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions through optical and thermal analysis. The enthalpies and phase transitions of the systems were compared, between the temperature range -50°C to +30°C for the ILs with varying degrees of hydration. Reichardt's dye was used as a molecular probe to monitor changes in interactions in the ILs as a function of temperature. Comparisons were made between ILs and for ILs with varying degrees of hydration. Spectroscopic studies were performed using Perkin Elmer UV-Visible Spectrometer and phase transitions monitored using a Perkin Elmer Differential Scanning Calorimeter.
The ILs examined are; Trihexyltetradecylphosphonium Chloride [P6,6,6,14 Cl] Tributyl-tetradecylphosphonium Chloride, [P4,4,4,14 Cl], 1-Ethyl-methyl-3-imidazolium-ethyl Sulfate [Emim][EtSO4] and Trihexyltetradecylphosphonium Dicyanamide [P6,6,6,14 DCA].
1. Robert Byrne, Simon Coleman, Simon Gallagher, and Dermot Diamond. Designer Molecular Probes for Phosphonium Ionic Liquids. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 2010.
2. Kyoko Fujita, Douglas R. MacFarlane, Maria Forsyth, Masahiro Yoshizawa-Fujita, Kenichi Murata,† Nobuhumi Nakamura, and Hiroyuki Ohno*,Solubility and Stability of Cytochrome c in Hydrated Ionic Liquids: Effect of Oxo Acid Residues and Kosmotropicity, 2007.
3. SergeiV.DzyubaandRichardA.Bartsch,Expandingthepolarityrange of ionic liquids, Tetrehedron Letters, 2002.


Deoxyribonuclease II (DNAase II) in mammalian cells has generally been considered to be located in the lysosomes. Several recent studies have indicated that some DNAase II activity is present in purified nuclei; this, however, could have been due to some contamination of the nuclear fraction by lysosomes, or alternatively, it could have been caused by specific binding of lysosomal DNAase II to the nuclear fraction during isolation. Our previous studies have eliminated the possibility that lysosomal contamination was the cause of the presence of DNAase II in isolated nuclei. In this study I have purified (14)C-labelled lysosomal DNAase II and added it to cells during isolation of their nuclei. This study demonstrates that there is no specific binding of lysosomal DNAase II to the nuclear fraction and concludes that DNAase II activity observed in isolated nuclei represents an intrinsic activity that might be involved in nuclear DNA metabolism.


The data on Ongole 283 cows maintained at four farms, spread over a period of 18 years from 1985 to 2001 were analyzed. The overall least squares means for life time milk yield, herd life, productive life, milk yield per day of herd life and productive life; wet days and dry days per herd life; wet days and dry days per productive life and gestation period per herd life and productive life were 3805.88 kg, 3773.84 days, 2287.48 days, 1.00 and 1.67 kg; 32.15% and 67.85%; 53.58% and 46.41% and 39.46% and 66.54%, respectively. The effect of farm was significant on all the life time traits studied except wet days per herd life and productive life percentages. Period of birth significantly influenced all the life time production traits studied except life time milk yield and productive life. Significant influence of season of birth was observed on life time milk yield, milk yield per day of herd life and milk yield per day of productive life, while set of the bulls had no significant influence on any of the life time production traits studied. The life time performance of the animals of Lam farm was superior, followed by those of Chadalawada, Mahanandi and Chintaladevi farms. The heritabilities of life time production traits ranged from low to high. The genetic and phenotypic correlations between productive traits were positive while the traits related with dry period and gestation period showed negative association with the traits under study.


Background A history of ankle injury is known to be associated with an increased risk of future injuries. Prevention of a first-time injury to an ankle will also prevent subsequent re-injury; yet these participants are often overlooked in reports of preventive testing. Determining the functional deficits which promote injury risk in all ankles, through studies inclusive of previously injured and never injured ankles, will enable training to be directed at improving known deficits in all sports participants. Objective To review studies investigating the measurement of intrinsic functions in healthy ankles and assess their predictive value for injury. Method Systematic review and meta-analysis of journal articles from selected electronic databases. Using all papers that included sufficient data for extraction in any paradigm, the authors pooled results for measures of strength, postural control, proprioception, muscle reaction time in response to perturbation, range of movement and ligament stability. Results Thirteen papers were found with adequate data reporting to allow calculation of pooled standardised mean difference (SMD) or pooled RR. The following are all associated with an increased risk of ankle injury: higher postural sway (SMD=0.693, 95% CI=0.151 to 1.235, p=0.012), being in the lower postural stability group (RR=2.06, 95% CI=1.364 to 3.111, p=0.001), lower inversion proprioception (0.573, 0.244 to 0.902, <0.001), higher concentric plantar flexion strength at faster speeds (0.372, 0.092 to 0.652, 0.009) and lower eccentric eversion strength at slower speeds (0.337, 0.117 to 0.557, 0.003). Conclusion There is a set of intrinsic functional and structural ankle deficits associated with significantly increased risk of ankle injury. These findings will enable clinicians and sports trainers to measure and train specific deficits in sports people for the prevention of ankle injury.


Iron-deficiency anemia is a public health concern that frequently occurs in pregnant mammals and neonatal offspring. Ferrous N-carbamylglycinate chelate (Fe-CGly) is a newly designed iron fortifier with proven effects in iron-deficient rats and weanling piglets. However, the effects of this new compound on pregnant mammals are unknown. Therefore, this experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of Fe-CGly on sow reproductive performance and iron status of both sows and neonatal piglets. A total of 40 large-white sows after second parity were randomly assigned to two groups (n=20). They were receiving a diet including 80 mg Fe/kg as FeSO4 or Fe-CGly, respectively, from day 85 of gestation to parturition. The serum (day 110 of pregnancy) and placentas of sows were sampled. Litter size, mean weight of live born piglets, birth (live) litter weight, number of live born piglets, and the number of still-born piglets, mummies, and weak-born piglets were recorded. Once delivered, eight litters were randomly selected from the 20 litters per treatment, and one new-born male piglet (1.503±0.142 kg) from each selected litter was slaughtered within 3 h after birth from the selected litters, without colostrum ingestion. The serum, longissimus muscle, liver and kidneys of the piglets were collected. The iron status of the serum samples and the messenger RNA level of iron-related genes in the placenta, liver and kidney were analyzed. The results showed that litter weight of live born piglets was higher (P=0.030) in the Fe-CGly group (19.86 kg) than in the FeSO4 group (17.34 kg). Fe-CGly significantly increased placental iron concentration (P<0.05) of sows. It also significantly increased iron saturation and reduced the total iron-binding capacity of piglets (P<0.05) at birth. However, the results revealed that supplementation of Fe-CGly in sows reduced liver and kidney iron concentration of neonatal piglets (P<0.05), indicating decreased iron storage. In addition, the concentration of iron in the colostrum was not significantly changed. Therefore, the present results suggested that replacement of maternal FeSO4 supplement with Fe-CGly in the late-gestating period for sows could improve litter birth weight, probably via enhanced iron transportation in the placenta.


An exhibition exploring the development of the City of Medellin, Colombia, and the connections that may exist between art and development. Medellin is the city selected by the IDB for the 2009 Annual Meeting of IDB Governors in March of this year. The exhibit is one of the events celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Inter-American Development Bank and was organized in close collaboration with the Antioquia Museum, Casa Museo Pedro Nel Gomez, Biblioteca Publica Piloto, and Embassy of Colombia in Washington, DC.


The term New brutalism often echoes an architecturally specific discourse, yet the introduction of the term in Britain in the 50s, looking at the example of Banham's writings from the Architectural Review, seems to take architecture as a starting point only to discuss a variety of art forms as the new location of avant garde art practices. Those included examples from the historical avant-garde to early precedents of British Pop, such the artists involved in the Independent Group. In this context, Banham defended and defined a particular understanding of the 'image' as an overarching category connected to the idea of 'form', which he then tied to a historiographic discourse on architectural theory, perspective and humanism. Despite the emphasis on form, Banham's notion of New Brutalism may be read, I argue in this paper, as a polemic against formalist art theory and as a critique on the notion of style as the privileged tool of historical explanation in this context. Drawing largely on his published doctoral thesis supervised by Pevsner as Theory and Design in the first machine age, I would like to suggest that Banham's 1950s discussions on art and painting as forms of a historical experience was conceived and expressed as a polemic against Pevsner's notion of style as the site of historical explanation, succession and change from the 19th to the 20th century, from his Pioneers of Modern Design. Unlike Pevsner's preference for style, Banhman turns to 'brutalist form' which he conceives, along with its precedents in avant garde art and contemporary manifestations in a number of artists, not least those associated with the British Independent Group, as an event, a notion which echoes Panofsky's 1940s spatio-temporal structures. In the final part of this essay I explore this connection further drawing on Panofsky's famous essay 'Art History as a Humanistic Discipline'.


Construction engineering and management experts asserted in the 1980s that computer-based information and communication technologies (ICTs) would grow quickly to increase the efficiency of communications in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Since that time, many studies have measured the rate of adoption and effectiveness of these tools. Recently, studies have noted that these tools are not being used ubiquitously and have yet to reach their full potential in increasing the efficiency of intercompany communications. The present research employed the Delphi method with a panel of AEC industry professionals to address barriers and facilitators of using project-based project management software systems (PMSS), including issues of access to PMSS and how project-based access would affect the efficiency with which information can be communicated. The results of this research indicate that data reentry is a common source of inefficiency in the use of PMSS and that future construction ICT developments should focus on implementing a more collaborative, project-based PMSS that allows direct and active access to the PMSS by all project team members. However, governance issues may be preventing more widespread use of a collaborative PMSS implementation model. Specifically, the respondents felt that general contractors should maintain their roles as managers and controllers of the PMSS. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000596. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Information technology (IT); Communication; Information management; Project management; Computer software.


Health researchers are increasingly encouraged to use large, community-level data sets to examine factors that promote or diminish health, including social determinants. First Nations people in Canada experience disparity in a range of social determinants of health that result in relatively low community well-being scores, when compared to non-First Nations people. However, First Nations people also possess unique protective factors that enhance well-being, such as traditional language usage. Large data sets offer First Nations a new avenue for advocating for supports and services to decrease health inequity while developing culture-based evidence. However, care must be taken to ensure that these data are interpreted appropriately. In this paper, we respectfully offer a cautionary note on the importance of understanding culture and context when conducting First Nations health research with large data sets. We have framed this caution through a narrative presentation of a simple and concrete example. We then outline some approaches to research that can ensure appropriate development of research questions and interpretation of research findings.


Optimal resource planning and power dispatch models (from a societal welfare point of view) imply an optimal pricing policy, which is referred to here as reliability differentiated real-time pricing or, in short, reliability differentiated pricing. This pricing scheme combines real-time pricing and priority pricing with reliability differentiation based on consumer outage costs. This pricing policy is analyzed. The model used in the analysis is developed with particular emphasis on consumer behavior and welfare effects. The implications of the model for the pricing of spinning reserve and firm capacity, as well as for revenue reconciliation, are examined. It is concluded that such a pricing scheme will in general result in greater attainable welfare than either the real-time pricing or priority pricing paradigms. Moreover, it results in the maximum attainable welfare for the system with revenue reconciliation and provides an optimal pricing scheme for spinning revenue and firm capacity. >


BACKGROUND
Elevated serum cholesterol levels play an important role in the development of coronary artery disease. Previous studies have suggested that nut consumption benefits lipid profile. Pistachio nuts are widely available, inexpensive and frequently consumed by the general population.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether substituting 20% of the daily caloric intake in the form of pistachio nuts will improve the lipid profiles of humans with primary, moderate hypercholesterolemia.

DESIGN
Controlled, randomized crossover design.

SETTING
Outpatient dietary modification, counseling and blood analysis.

PATIENTS
Ten patients with moderate hypercholesterolemia.

INTERVENTION
Three weeks of dietary modification with 20% caloric intake from pistachio nuts.

MEASUREMENTS
Body weight, blood pressure, total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, and triglycerides were monitored. Lipid profiles were analyzed prior to, during and after dietary modification.

RESULTS
After three weeks, there was a decrease in total cholesterol (p<0.04), an increase in HDL (p<0.09), a decrease in the total cholesterol/HDL ratio (p<0.01) and a decrease in the LDL/HDL ratio (p<0.02). Triglycerides and LDL levels decreased, but not significantly. Body weight and blood pressure remained constant throughout the study.

CONCLUSIONS
Results suggest that eating pistachio nuts instead of other dietary fat calories can improve lipid profiles, thereby decreasing coronary risk. Further studies will be required to confirm these results and to determine the mechanism of this effect.


Difference and variation of leaves shape is usually used as primary identifier of the plant species. But some plants may have a similar leaf shape and thus require another more accurate identifier. This study applied principal component analysis (PCA) methods for identifying tropical plant species from the shape of the leaves. This method simplified the observed variables by reducing the dimensions of the information that is stored as much as 75%, so it did not eliminate important information and can save the data processing time. There were 100 images of leaves taken from several sides of the leaf in JPEG format with which the shape of leaves were look similar, like citrus (Citrus aurantifolia), durian (Durio zibethinus), guava (Psidium guajava), mango (Mangifera indica), jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), avocado (Persea americana), rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), sapodilla (Manilkara zapota), red betel (Piper crocatum) and soursop (Annona muricata). Identification of those 10 kind plant leaves produced 97% accuracy rate. Measurement systems were designed using the K-fold Cross Validation with k = 10, the results of experiments shown omission error occurs on the leaves of guava, jackfruit and red betel while twice commission error were found on the leaves sapodilla and once on citrus leaves.


Brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) were monitored intraoperatively during 44 posterior fossa operations. Technically satisfactory recordings were obtained from 42 patients (95%) and, in 41 of these cases (98%), the intraoperative changes in BAEPs were correlated with the postoperative neurological findings. The functional integrity of the brainstem was assessed by intraoperative BAEP monitoring in 33 patients. Transient, reversible changes were observed in six (18%), and none had postoperative brainstem dysfunction. The functional integrity of the auditory pathway was monitored in 11 cases, and nine of these patients (82%) exhibited alterations of BAEP waveforms. Transient, reversible dysfunction occurred in three, and permanent changes in six (obliteration in five). Seven patients experienced postoperative hearing loss, six of whom had intraoperative changes in BAEPs that became permanent. The seventh had only transient derangement during surgery. BAEP monitoring appeared to be a much more sensitive indicator of auditory than of brainstem function.The study suggests that the maximum delay in wave V latency in reversible dysfunction is about 1.0 msec. Therefore, surgery should be interrupted before the wave V latency is delayed by 1.0 msec, in order to avert postoperative neurological deficits. However, when BAEP changes are rapid, it is extremely difficult to halt the surgical procedure before such alterations become irreversible. The authors conclude that a more timely indicator of reversible trauma must be developed.


The proper construction of the compensation clause of the Constitution has emerged as the central legal issue of the environmental revolution, as property owners have challenged a steady stream of environmental statutes that have cut deeply into traditional notions of property rights. When may they justly demand that the state compensate them for the sacrifices they are called upon to make for the common good? Ackerman argues that there is more at stake in the present wave of litigation than even the future shape of environmental law in the United States. To frame an adequate response, lawyers must come to terms with an analytic conflict that implicates the nature of modern legal thought itself. Ackerman expresses this conflict in terms of two opposed ideal types---Scientific Policymaking and Ordinary Observing---and sketches the very different way in which these competing approaches understand the compensation question. He also tries to demonstrate that the confusion of current compensation doctrine is a product of the legal profession's failure to choose between these two modes of legal analysis. He concludes by exploring the large implications of such a choice---relating the conflict between Scientific Policymaking and Ordinary Observing to fundamental issues in economic analysis, political theory, metaethics, and the philosophy of language.


Healed microfractures in quartz grains in 14 to 169 Ma granites from the Basin and Range province in western Utah and eastern Nevada record a history of paleostress. The microfracture data are in good agreement with the orientations of paleostresses determined for this same region by using orientations of dikes emplaced into only slightly older igneous host rocks. Samples generally have two or three steeply dipping microfracture sets. One set is related to the tectonic stress field at the time of magma emplacement. It strikes northeast-southwest in 31-169 Ma samples and east-northeast-west-southwest in 25-30 Ma samples, rotates to east-west by about 22 Ma, and strikes northwest-southeast in the youngest samples (about 14 Ma). Plutons younger than about 14 Ma are not exposed at the surface in western Utah and eastern Nevada. Other crack sets in the samples could have formed during cooling of the pluton, during a post cooling regional thermal or tectonic event, or during some local stress event. A strong north-south trend in these other crack sets may suggest a formation during Basin and Range extension.


Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association between serological biomarkers at the acute phase of infection at hospital admission with the development of long-term post-COVID fatigue and dyspnea. Methods: A cohort study including patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 in one urban hospital of Madrid (Spain) during the first wave of the outbreak (from March 20 to June 30, 2020) was conducted. Hospitalization data, clinical data, and eleven serological biomarkers were systematically collected at hospital admission. Patients were scheduled for an individual telephone interview after hospital discharge for collecting data about the presence of post-COVID fatigue and dyspnea. Results: A total of 412 patients (age: 62 years, standard deviation: 15 years; 47.5% women) were assessed with a mean of 6.8 and 13.2 months after discharge. The prevalence of post-COVID fatigue and dyspnea was 72.8% and 17.2% at 6 months and 45.4% and 13.6% at 12 months after hospital discharge, respectively. Patients exhibiting post-COVID fatigue at 6 or 12 months exhibited a lower hemoglobin level, higher lymphocyte count, and lower neutrophil and platelets counts (all, p < 0.05), whereas those exhibiting post-COVID dyspnea at 6 or 12 months had a lower platelet count and lower alanine transaminase, aspartate transaminase, and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels (all, p < 0.05) than those not developing post-COVID fatigue or dyspnea, respectively. The multivariate regression analyses revealed that a lower platelet count and lower LDH levels were associated but just explaining 4.5% of the variance, of suffering from post-COVID fatigue and dyspnea, respectively. Conclusion: Some serological biomarkers were slightly different in patients exhibiting post-COVID fatigue or dyspnea, but they could not explain the long-COVID problems in those patients.


This article uses the framework of transitional justice to examine two prominent examples of national public inquiries into institutional child abuse: the Irish Commission into Child Abuse of 2000–09 and the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse of 2013–2017. It provides a detailed account of the practical workings of each inquiry in the context of the Irish and Australian political and legal environments, with a view to highlighting the particular nation-building function each played in informing a narrative about transitioning from the past to the present. Public inquiries are increasingly used by democratic states as a form of political and legal reckoning for mass crimes committed on children in the care of the state, with inspiration drawn from other examples of the political redress of atrocities (such as war crimes). While transitional justice approaches to peacetime human rights abuses have much to offer in their promise of truth recovery and accountability, they are limited in their ability to achieve justice in the context of consolidated democracies where the 'transition' from the past to the present is ambiguous and incomplete. This article points to the benefits of the national public inquiry approach to addressing institutional child abuse, while offering cautions about the expectations of transitional justice in this context, through the landmark examples of Ireland and Australia.


Despite significant innovations in rural microfinance over the years, millions of people around the world do not have access to financial services. Can strategic linkages and alliances between financial institutions help resolve this problem? Research funded by the Ford Foundation, drawing on 12 case studies conducted in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America indicated that financial linkages are increasingly used by formal financial institutions (public or private) to target rural clients. A wide variety of less formal, often rural financial institutions are the linkage partners. Initial evidence indicates that the partnerships seem to afford both partners the opportunity to overcome a weakness in what they can achieve on their own. But does this initial appeal translate into anything sustainable or replicable? Although it is certainly too early to tell, financial linkages, while promising, are difficult to set up and manage, require strong NGO-MFIs as well as formal institutions and seldom resul...


During software maintenance, bug report is an effective way to identify potential bugs hidden in a software system. It is a great challenge to automatically locate the potential buggy source code according to a bug report. Traditional approaches usually represent bug reports and source code from a lexical perspective to measure their similarities. Recently, some deep learning models are proposed to learn the unified features by exploiting the local and sequential nature, which overcomes the difficulty in modeling the difference between natural and programming languages. However, only considering local and sequential information from one dimension is not enough to represent the semantics, some multi-dimension information such as structural and functional nature that carries additional semantics has not been well-captured. Such information beyond the lexical and structural terms is extremely vital in modeling program functionalities and behaviors, leading to a better representation for identifying buggy source code. In this paper, we propose a novel model named CG-CNN, which is a multi-instance learning framework that enhances the unified features for bug localization by exploiting structural and sequential nature from the control flow graph. Experimental results on widely-used software projects demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed CG-CNN model.


Giant resonance enhancement is demonstrated to be due to the Fano interference in a grating waveguide composed of gain-assisted silicon slabs. The Fano mode is characterized by its ultra-narrow asymmetric spectrum, different from that of a pure electric or magnetic dipole. The simulation indicates that a sharp Fano-interfered lineshape is responsible for the giant resonance enhancement featuring the small-gain requirements.


Abstract Stratigraphic and subtle combination traps have a well-documented track record as significant producing hydrocarbon resources. The majority of these success cases come from onshore USA where unprecedented drilling densities combined with a long history of hydrocarbon exploration provide a large portfolio of stratigraphic and subtle combination traps. By comparing USA-based examples with other global cases it is evident that numerous basins still have the potential for exploration success associated with these traps. This paper attempts to raise the awareness of the exploration potential of stratigraphic and subtle combination traps through four approaches. Firstly, a summary of key global statistics related to stratigraphic and subtle combination traps is provided with the intention of demonstrating that they have historically represented a key hydrocarbon resource. Secondly, a classification scheme is introduced and acts as a reference for the observations and case studies presented. The third component of this paper is to present a range of case studies, which serve to demonstrate the exploration history behind successful discoveries associated with stratigraphic and subtle combination traps. The final component is to consider the general exploration history and from this long experience highlight the key techniques necessary for the development of a successful exploration strategy.