Background Phenomic prediction has been defined as an alternative to genomic prediction by using spectra instead of molecular markers. A reflectance spectrum provides information on the biochemical composition within a tissue, itself being under genetic determinism. Thus, a relationship matrix built from spectra could potentially capture genetic signal. This new methodology has been mainly applied in several annual crop species but little is known so far about its interest in perennial species. Besides, phenomic prediction has only been tested for a restricted set of traits, mainly related to yield or phenology. This study aims at applying phenomic prediction for the first time in grapevine, using spectra collected on two tissues and over two consecutive years, on two populations and for 15 traits, related to berry composition, phenology, morphological and vigour. A major novelty of this study was to collect spectra and phenotypes several years apart from each other. First, we characterized the genetic signal in spectra and under which condition it could be maximized, then phenomic predictive ability was compared to genomic predictive ability. Results For the first time, we showed that the similarity between spectra and genomic relationship matrices was stable across tissues or years, but variable across populations, with co-inertia around 0.3 and 0.6 for diversity panel and half-diallel populations, respectively. Applying a mixed model on spectra data increased phenomic predictive ability, while using spectra collected on wood or leaves from one year or another had less impact. Differences between populations were also observed for predictive ability of phenomic prediction, with an average of 0.27 for the diversity panel and 0.35 for the half-diallel. For both populations, a significant positive correlation was found across traits between predictive ability of genomic and phenomic predictions. Conclusion NIRS is a new low-cost alternative to genotyping for predicting complex traits in perennial species such as grapevine. Having spectra and phenotypes from different years allowed us to exclude genotype-by-environment interactions and confirms that phenomic prediction can rely only on genetics.


We present RAVEn, a self-supervised multi-modal approach to jointly learn visual and auditory speech representations. Our pre-training objective involves encoding masked inputs, and then predicting contextualised targets generated by slowly-evolving momentum encoders. Driven by the inherent differences between video and audio, our design is asymmetric w.r.t. the two modalities' pretext tasks: Whereas the auditory stream predicts both the visual and auditory targets, the visual one predicts only the auditory targets. We observe strong results in low- and high-resource labelled data settings when fine-tuning the visual and auditory encoders resulting from a single pre-training stage, in which the encoders are jointly trained. Notably, RAVEn surpasses all self-supervised methods on visual speech recognition (VSR) on LRS3, and combining RAVEn with self-training using only 30 hours of labelled data even outperforms a recent semi-supervised method trained on 90,000 hours of non-public data. At the same time, we achieve state-of-the-art results in the LRS3 low-resource setting for auditory speech recognition (as well as for VSR). Our findings point to the viability of learning powerful speech representations entirely from raw video and audio, i.e., without relying on handcrafted features. Code and models are available at https://github.com/ahaliassos/raven.


The kinetics of the urea-induced dissociation of human plasma alpha 2-macroglobulin into two half-molecular fragments was investigated at 21.0 degrees C by using small-angle neutron scattering. The relative change in molecular mass that occurs upon dissociation was monitored by recording the forward scattering of neutrons as a function of time. All these kinetic data can be explained by a reaction that is first-order with respect to the concentration of undissociated alpha 2-macroglobulin. The velocity constant is a function of urea concentration and it varies within wide limits. For instance, the half-life of the reaction at the lowest concentration of [2H]urea studied (2.70 M) is 328 h, whereas the same value at the highest concentration of [2H]urea (6.24 M) is only 8 min. Measurements were made both with [1H]urea in 1H2O and with [2H]urea in 99% 2H2O, and it was found that there is a pronounced kinetic isotope effect, i.e. the dissociation is 4 times faster in the 1H-containing medium as compared with the 2H-containing medium at the same molar concentration of urea. From the angular dependence of the neutron scattering it can be concluded that the dissociation is associated with a drastic change in structure. This is directly shown by the radius of gyration, which increases from about 7.4 nm immediately after the addition of urea up to about 9.4 nm when the protein is fully dissociated. A structural analysis shows that the scattering curve of urea-dissociated alpha 2-macroglobulin can best be explained by that of a Gaussian coil with a radius of gyration equal to 9.44 nm. These data indicate that the so-called non-covalent interaction of alpha 2-macroglobulin probably is more complicated than just a pure hydrophobic interaction. Finally, it is also shown that the dissociation is accompanied by a loss in trypsin-binding activity, which is directly related to the fraction of dissociated protein.


Background Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) is defined as a condition in which children walk with a tip-toe gait pattern after the age of 2 years without evidence of neurologic, orthopaedic or psychiatric disease. Untreated, persistent toe-walking may place children at increased risk for falling or developing limitations in ankle mobility and structural abnormalities. However, there is little published literature on the natural history of this condition. Aims To raise awareness about the natural history of ITW and the treatment options among paediatricians. Methods It is a retrospective study. Patients were identified from physiotherapy department database. Results There were 40 patients (M:F 2.3:1). 63% were referred directly to physiotherapists, 27% to paediatricians and rest 10% to orthopaedicians. Age of referral varied from 13 months to 9 years (mean=4.2 years). No foot or toe abnormalities were identified on routine first day neonatal examination. Expressive speech was delayed in nine patients (22.5%).Family history was positive in 25% cases. All patients were advised dorsiflexion exercises and stretches to tendoachillis and hamstrings. 29 patients (72%) were given Pedro boots, 19 were given foot insoles (47%). One patient was given AFO splint. 18 children (45%) were given serial castings. Five patients did not need any orthotic help. All children were followed up by physiotherapists. Mean duration of follow up was 2.5 years (range 6 months to 6.5 years). No child has required surgical correction so far. Five cases were discharged from follow up. Residual toe-walking is still present in 35 children. Conclusions ITW is a well defined clinical entity with strong family history. Speech delay is an important association with ITW. A significant proportion requires physiotherapy input for long time with nearly half needing serial casting. Further follow up would help define natural history and outcome of these patients.


The video coding standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is designed based on the basic unit of macroblock (MB). In order to support the arbitrary resolution video coding when the picture does not contain an integral number of MBs, the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC encoder usually invokes a picture padding process to extend the boundaries of a picture by adding extra pixels. In this way, the video of an arbitrary resolution can be coded by an ordinary encoder and the resulting bitstream follows the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC syntax. From the perspective of coding efficiency and the concept of soft decision, we consider the issue of rate-distortion (R-D) based picture padding as an optimization problem, and present an iterative solution which integrates the optimal picture padding in the R-D optimization (RDO) process. Furthermore, to reduce the related computational burden, a heuristic solution is proposed based on comprehensive analyses on the influence of the padded pixels on the encoder performance. This solution takes the prediction errors and compression distortions of padded pixels as zero in the RDO process of the encoder, and automatically implements the concepts and techniques of template matching and spatial extrapolation to determine the padded pixels. Since it is carried out by directly utilizing the already existing algorithms of RDO, the proposed heuristic solution brings little additional computational complexity to the encoder. Based on the reference software for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC with its version of JM15.1, the effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified by extensive experiments.


Picture processing includes a variety of algorithms employed at different stages within a recognition process. Although single parallel algorithms have been suggested, no systematic comparison with sequential algorithms is available. We propose here some parallel algorithms solving a selected set of picture-processing tasks and compare their speed, when implemented on a CLIP machine, with that of the equivalent sequential algorithms implemented on a standard minicomputer. It is shown that parallel algorithms are faster than the sequential ones by a factor depending on the size of the digitization matrix, even when arithmetical operations are widely involved.


In an effort to define the cellular basis of abnormalities in polyclonal B cell activation previously noted in NZB mice, the surface immunoglobulin (sIg) isotypes of spleen cells from NZB mice were examined. After lactoperoxidase-catalyzed radioiodination, the cell surface immunoglobulins were analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). Spleen cells from 8- to 10-week-old NZB mice were found to have an increased ratio of cell surface IgM/IgD compared to cells from 11 control strains. The altered ratio of sIg isotypes was not a consequence of increased proteolytic activity present in NZB cell suspensions or of the presence of cytophilic antibody or autoantibody. Ontogenetic studies of the sIgM/sIgD (mu/delta) ration on splenocytes from NZB and BALB/c mice revealed that the former cells had higher mu/delta ratios as early as 2 weeks after birth. By 4 weeks of age the mu/delta ratios were equivalent. Between 4 weeks and 1 year of age, the mu/delta ratios on NZB splenocytes remained constant whereas those on BALB/c splenocytes decreased and reached adult levels at 6 weeks.


Background Minimally invasive endoscopic surgery has become an acceptable method for gynecologic indications for more than 20 years. We aimed to compare clinical and surgical outcomes between mini-laparoscopic surgery (MLS) and conventional laparoscopic surgery (CLS) for benign adnexal masses. As far as we know, no comparative study exists between these two minimal invasive procedures. Methods During the period between January 2014 and December 2016, a total number of 132 laparoscopic surgeries were performed for bening adnexal masses in our clinic. Seventy women underwent CLS and 62 women underwent MLS. Pathological results and operating time of procedures, estimated blood loss, preoperative and postoperative complications, patient scale and observer scale (POSAS) and length of hospital stay were recorded. Results There was no difference between the two groups regarding preoperative diagnosis, intraoperative surgical procedure performed, and length of hospital stay. The groups were compared in terms of postoperative pathological diagnosis using the Chi-square test, and there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Comparing the operation time and hematocrit change, there were statistically significant differences between the two groups. Both patient and observer PSOAS scar scores were better in MLS group (P < 0.05). Conclusions Mini-laparoscopy can be safely and effectively used to perform benign adnexal mass surgery.


In clinical trials, longitudinal data are commonly analyzed and compared between groups using a single summary statistic such as area under the outcome versus time curve (AUC). However, incomplete data, arising from censoring due to a limit of detection or missing data, can bias these analyses. In this article, we present a statistical test based on splines-based mixed-model accounting for both the censoring and missingness mechanisms in the AUC estimation. Inferential properties of the proposed method were evaluated and compared to ad hoc approaches and to a non-parametric method through a simulation study based on two-armed trial where trajectories and the proportion of missing data were varied. Simulation results highlight that our approach has significant advantages over the other methods. A real working example from two HIV therapeutic vaccine trials is presented to illustrate the applicability of our approach.


Thin film solar cells are expected to play a key role in the next generation of photovoltaic devices, due to low costs and manufacturing advantages. Their functionality would be increased further if thin film solar panels were able to be machined efficiently without affecting the integrity of the nanoscale component layers. In this work, we investigated the effects of grinding and polishing processes on the integrity of solar panels. With the limited selection of grinding wheels and abrasive sizes, surface roughness and chipping were in the order of micrometers, while the use of diamond film polishing resulted in roughness in the order of nanometers with minimal damage to the layers.


Currently the New Zealand school system is undergoing changes as it introduces a new national curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum is focussed on outcomes and provides the underlying philosophy, guidelines and framework for schools to design and review their curriculum. In addition, teachers need to incorporate several other Ministry initiatives such as Schools Plus, Ka Hikitea – Managing for Success – the Maori Education Strategy from 2008 to 2012 and The Pasifika Education Plan, 2006-2010. For all of these initiatives, teachers need to keep what is best for the student at the forefront of their teaching and decision-making. Initial teacher education programmes need to respond to these initiatives, in terms of overarching philosophy, course structure and practical applications in courses. We have used the teacher education for the future project to help us identify key aspects of our initial teacher education programmes that need attention. This project is very timely in that it informs our programme review processes. We surveyed multiple stakeholders who were teachers, student teachers and teacher educators. Participants were asked to rank the aims of education and their preferred future focus for initial teacher education programmes. The implications for the design and facilitation of our initial teacher education courses are discussed.


Examining the economic value of education has been a central research agenda of social scientists for decades. However, prior research inadequately accounts for the discrepancy between educational credentials and skills at both the individual and societal levels. In this article, I investigate the link between credentials, skills, and labor market outcomes against a background of societal-level educational expansion and skills diffusion. Using internationally comparable OECD data for approximately 30,000 individuals in 26 countries, I find that both credentials and skills generally contribute to occupational and monetary rewards. In particular, the premium for credentials far outweighs that for skills. This is in contrast to recent arguments that skills are the key to economic success. Nevertheless, returns to credentials decline in tandem with educational expansion, whereas skills retain their premium even as they diffuse in a given society. Furthermore, skills diffusion also leads to the diminishing monetary return to high credentials. These findings suggest that skills diffusion promotes more meritocratic reward allocation via devaluing high credentials without explicit depreciation of high skills.


The Greek Committee, a body organised and run by Sir Charles Dilke, was publicly launched in May 1879 and functioned as a pressure group to advance Greek territorial claims during the various phases of the question concerning the rectification of the Greek frontier (1879-1881). The timing of the committee's establishment, its membership and appeal to the British public, and the changes brought about in its operations by the change of government in 1880 form a case study of the interweaving of British party politics with philhellenism. In the late 1870s, British philhellenism, that is, interest in the affairs of modern Greece and the advocacy of the "Greek cause", should be viewed within the framework of liberal and radical concerns for the formation of a "true English policy" in foreign affairs, based on the long-standing British interest in continental nationalities.


Human medicinal products for infusion should be tested for sterility at various stages of manufacturing including the final step before marketing. Conventional sterility methods recommended in pharmacopeia need a 14 days incubation period in order to get reliable analytical results. However, rapid alternative methods based on automated detection of microbial growth have the advantage of taking only 5 days for sterility testing of medicinal products which can be very important especially during pandemics and emergency conditions. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the microbial detection potential and capacity of the BACTEC FX system for the rapid sterility testing of Paracerol, a 10 mg/mL paracetamol containing pediatric medicine for infusion, and to specify time required for the detection of a variety of microorganisms. Accordingly, the results showed that there were no significant differences between the BACTEC and conventional membrane filtration methods for detecting contamination. All positive/negative controls and all samples intentionally contaminated with microorganisms were determined correctly by using both methods. BACTEC FX system detected all microorganisms including slow growers significantly faster than the membrane filtration method (p<0.05). This system can be considered as a rapid alternative over conventional sterility methods for the release of human medicinal products for infusion to the markets especially under emergency conditions. However, for each particular products, validation steps should be executed according to European Pharmacopoeia by using a broad range of microorganisms.


Studies examining the effects of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on both neutral and adaptive genetic variability are still scarce. We compared tadpole fitness-related traits (viz. survival probability and body size) among populations of the common frog (Rana temporaria) from fragmented (F) and continuous (C) habitats that differed significantly in population sizes (C > F) and genetic diversity (C > F) in neutral genetic markers. Using data from common garden experiments, we found a significant positive relationship between the mean values of the fitness related traits and the amount of microsatellite variation in a given population. While genetic differentiation in neutral marker loci (F-ST) tended to be more pronounced in the fragmented than in the continuous habitat, genetic differentiation in quantitative traits (Q(ST)) exceeded that in neutral marker traits in the continuous habitat (i.e. Q(ST) > F-ST), but not in the fragmented habitat (i.e. Q(ST) approximate to F-ST). These results suggest that the impact of random genetic drift relative to natural selection was higher in the fragmented landscape where populations were small, and had lower genetic diversity and fitness as compared to populations in the more continuous landscape. The findings highlight the potential importance of habitat fragmentation in impairing future adaptive potential of natural populations.


This article is an attempt to highlight the importance of biographic research to South African nursing. The writer believes that a particular attention should be paid to the contributions of South African Black/African nurse practitioners. South Africa has produced remarkable African nurses: they range from nurse Professors and Head of the University Nursing Departments to clinical nursing specialists and nursing administrators. The writer--having used the biographical approach in his Doctoral thesis--will highlight some practical and professional issues around biographic research. For the purpose of this publication, however, discussion will be confined to defining biographic research, reviewing different types of biographies, and discussing the value of the biographical research. Furthermore, the writer will identify some biographic concepts, examine their relationships, draw inferences and (hopefully) emerge with an increased understanding of the impact of biography as scientific concept.


1. The net-winged midges (Diptera: Blephariceridae) are a highly specialized group whose morphological characteristics and specific habitat requirements suggest a limited potential for dispersal. Levels of genetic variation were examined within streams, between streams in the same range and between mountain ranges in larval populations of Elporia barnardi in the south-western Cape of South Africa. The aim was to examine the hypothesis that population structure would reflect the poor potential for dispersal.

2. Significant deviations from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium in 17 of the 57 individual comparisons indicate a non-random mating population. Given the swarming behaviour and life history traits, larvae sampled may reflect the product of limited matings.

3. Analysis of population substructuring revealed significant levels of differentiation among geographically proximate populations. Large differences between streams within Table Mountain, similar in magnitude to those between mountain ranges, suggest that movement of individuals out of the stream catchment is rare. Observed FST values are more similar to those of fully aquatic species than other lotic insects with winged adult stages.

4. Results suggest that mountain ridges provided effective physical barriers to the dispersal of E. barnardi, with the catchment representing the effective population unit.


: Time series classification is a basic task in the field of streaming data event analysis and data mining. The existing time series classification methods have the problems of low classification accuracy and low efficiency. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a T-CNN time series classification method based on a Gram matrix. Specifically, we perform wavelet threshold denoising on time series to filter normal curve noise, and propose a lossless transformation method based on the Gram matrix, which converts the time series to the time domain image and retains all the information of events. Then, we propose an improved CNN time series classification method, which introduces the Toeplitz convolution kernel matrix into convolution layer calculation. Finally, we introduce a Triplet network to calculate the similarity between similar events and different classes of events, and optimize the squared loss function of CNN. The proposed T-CNN model can accelerate the convergence rate of gradient descent and improve classification accuracy. Experimental results show that, compared with the existing methods, our T-CNN time series classification method has great advantages in efficiency and accuracy.


Abstract:Unsustainable urbanization in the Indo-Pacific continues to threaten terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems due to habitat disturbances driven by human pressures. The Marikina Watershed, one of the most critical watersheds in the Philippines, has been exposed to economic and population growth resulting in landscape modification and water quality degradation. This led to establishment of the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape (UMRBPL) to rehabilitate the watershed ecosystem. To strengthen this conservation initiative, we aimed to assess whether the establishment of UMRBPL has been effective in conservation of benthic macroinvertebrate diversity in streams of the Marikina Watershed. Sixteen streams, eight from UMRBPL and eight from adjoining unprotected areas, were monitored for benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages and their habitat environments, such as pH, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, total dissolved solids, conductivity, salinity, and canopy openness. Principal component analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling based on the environmental variables and biological metrics, respectively, revealed that habitat quality and benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages significantly differed between the protected and unprotected streams, with the former having better environment and higher biodiversity. More precisely, protected streams have significantly higher dissolved oxygen and lower canopy openness and material loadings as compared to unprotected streams. Consequently, taxon richness was four-fold higher in protected streams while stream quality indices based on abundance of key invertebrate groups (EPT and EPTC) were ten-fold higher in protected streams, as compared to unprotected streams. This study demonstrates that freshwater protected areas play crucial roles in the conservation of stream ecosystems and biodiversity under rapid urbanization in developing countries, like the Philippines.


The natural susceptibility of 221 Klebsiella strains to 71 antibiotics was examined. The strains were isolated from clinical specimens and the environment, and belonged to K. pneumoniae subsp. pneumoniae (n = 40), K. pneumoniae subsp. ozaenae (37), K. pneumoniae subsp. rhinoscleromatis (10), K. oxytoca (44), K. planticola (40), K. ornithinolytica (25) and K. terrigena (25). MIC values were determined by a microdilution procedure in IsoSensitest broth according to the German standard (DIN). All Klebsiella spp. were naturally resistant or intermediate to amoxicillin, ticarcillin and to antibiotics to which other Enterobacteriaceae are also intrinsically resistant. Klebsiella spp. were naturally sensitive or intermediate to several penicillins, all tested cephalosporins, aminoglycosides, quinolones, tetracyclines, trimethoprim, cotrimoxazole, chloramphenicol and nitrofurantoin. K. pneumoniae subsp. ozaenae and subsp. rhinoscleromatis strains were generally more susceptible to antibiotics than strains of other Klebsiella taxa. K pneumoniae subsp. rhinoscleromatis was the most susceptible taxon, being highly susceptible to cefuroxime, anti-folates and naturally intermediate to erythromycin and clarithromycin. K. pneumoniae subsp. ozaenae was most susceptible to glycopeptides. K. oxytoca and K. terrigena strains were least susceptible to cefazoline, cefoperazone and fosfomycin, respectively. The results of the present study describe a database of the natural antimicrobial susceptibility of Klebsiella spp., which can be used for the validation of antibiotic susceptibility results of these bacteria. MIC patterns to beta-lactams indicate the expression of chromosomally encoded class A gamma-lactamases in all the species, including the subspecies of K. pneumoniae. Similar natural susceptibility patterns of K. planticola and K. ornithinolytica to all tested antibiotics support the status of K. ornithinolytica as a biovar of K. planticola.


Studying activity patterns and temporal overlap among carnivores and their putative prey is difficult because of their secretive and elusive nature. With large carnivores declining worldwide, it is imperative for conservation planning that we understand how large carnivores interact with their prey and competitors. Camera trapping offers a promising avenue to address this issue. We investigated temporal overlap between male and female leopards, their known and putative prey as well as their competitor, the spotted hyenas, in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania. Data consisted of 4297 independent events from a 30 min interval criterion from 164 camera trap sites we sampled. Leopards were captured by camera traps throughout the day, with male and female leopards showing significantly different activity patterns (P < 0.001) indicating sexual segregation in activity patterns, with male leopards being more nocturnal than female leopards. Leopards had significantly different activity patterns from that of the majority of their prey, with yellow baboons, that displayed peak activity during midday, that had the least overlap. Moreover, both male and female leopards had significantly different activity patterns from that of spotted hyenas (P = <0.001), with female leopards appearing to be inactive during hours with peak hyena activity. We conclude that systematic camera trapping is a useful tool to study activity patterns and temporal niche interactions between sympatric carnivores and, to a lesser extent, their prey.


Introduction Most efforts to assess maternal health indicator validity focus on measures of service coverage. Fewer measures focus on the upstream enabling environment, and such measures are typically not research validated. Thus, methods for validating system and policy-level indicators are not well described. This protocol describes original multicountry research to be conducted in Argentina, Ghana and India, to validate 10 indicators from the monitoring framework for the 'Strategies toward Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality' (EPMM). The overall aim is to improve capacity to drive and track progress towards achieving the priority recommendations in the EPMM strategies. This work is expected to contribute new knowledge on validation methodology and reveal important information about the indicators under study and the phenomena they target for monitoring. Validating the indicators in three diverse settings will explore the external validity of results. Methods and analysis This observational study explores the validity of 10 indicators from the EPMM monitoring framework via seven discrete validation exercises that will use mixed methods: (1) cross-sectional review of policy data, (2) retrospective review of facility-level patient and administrative data and (3) collection of primary quantitative and qualitative cross-sectional data from health service providers and clients. There is a specific methodological approach and analytic plan for each indicator, directed by unique, relevant validation research questions. Ethics and dissemination The protocol was approved by the Office of Human Research Administration at Harvard University in November 2019. Individual study sites received approval via local institutional review boards by January 2020 except La Pampa, Argentina, approved June 2020. Our dissemination plan enables unrestricted access and reuse of all published research, including data sets. We expect to publish at least one peer-reviewed publication per validation exercise. We will disseminate results at conferences and engage local stakeholders in dissemination activities in each study country.


Portal vein thrombosis (PVT) may occur in liver cirrhosis patients. Malignant PVT is a common complication in cirrhotic patients with concomitant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and, in some cases, it may be even the initial sign of an undetected HCC. Detection of malignant PVT in a patient with liver cirrhosis heavily affects the therapeutic strategy. Gray-scale ultrasound (US) is widely unreliable for differentiating benign and malignant thrombi. Although effective for this differential diagnosis, fine-needle biopsy remains an invasive technique. Sensitivity of color-doppler US in detection of malignant thrombi is highly dependent on the size of the thrombus. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MRI) can be useful to assess the nature of portal thrombus, while limited data are currently available about the role of positron emission tomography (PET) and PET-CT. In contrast with CT, MRI, PET, and PET-CT, contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is a fast, effective, well tolerated and cheap technique, that can be performed even in the same session in which the thrombus has been detected. CEUS can be performed bedside and can be available also in transplanted patients. Moreover, CT and MRI only yield a snapshot analysis during contrast diffusion, while CEUS allows for a continuous real-time imaging of the microcirculation that lasts several minutes, so that the whole arterial phase and the late parenchymal phase of the contrast diffusion can be analyzed continuously by real-time US scanning. Continuous real-time monitoring of contrast diffusion entails an easy detection of thrombus maximum enhancement. Moreover, continuous quantitative analyses of enhancement (wash in - wash out studies) by CEUS during contrast diffusion is nowadays available in most CEUS machines, thus giving a more sophisticated and accurate evaluation of the contrast distribution and an increased confidence in diagnosis in difficult cases. In conclusion, CEUS is a very reliable technique with a high intrinsic sensitivity for portal vein patency assessment. More expensive and sophisticated techniques (i.e., CT, MRI, PET, and PET-CT) should only be indicated in undetermined cases at CEUS.


In this work, we address the question if it is possible to tune the thermal conductance through photoisomerism-capable molecular junctions. Using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we study heat flow due to phonons between two silicon leads connected via two classes of photoisomeric molecules—(a) azobenzene and (b) Spiropyran (SP)–Merocyanine (MC) isomers. For the case of azobenzene, isomeric states with different conformations are realized via mechanical strain, while in the case of SP-MC, via a hybridization change. Based on the phononic contribution to thermal conductance, we observe that the thermal conductance of both junctions is rather insensitive to the isomeric state, thereby rendering the tunability of molecular thermal devices rather difficult. Consistent with these observations, the vibrational density of states for different configurations yields very similar spectra. We note that including the effect of electronic contribution to thermal conductance could enhance the tunability ...


Background Increasing demand for hospital-prepared cytostatics has forced Danish hospital pharmacies to develop solutions which support effective work flow in decentralised and future centralised production units. One way to optimise the logistics is to hold stock of prepared cytostatics for 1-3 months. This requires documentation of extended shelf lives of the prepared products. This can be done in different ways but the authorities' opinion is crucial for the quality. The Danish Drug Agency in spring 2011 stated that stability data for prepared cytostatics should be delivered by the industry and stated in the summary of product characteristics (SPC). Purpose The aim of this study was to conduct a survey of the shelf lives and the usefulness of the information stated in section 6.3 in the SPCs for 13 selected prepared cytostatics. Materials and methods The SPCs were identified on www.produktresume.dk and www.ema.europa.eu 5 May 2011. Results 150 SPCs were identified for 13 cytostatics. The longest shelf life identified for prepared cytostatics was 28 days for doxorubicin, epirubicin, gemcitabine and irinotecan. Great variation between the minimum and maximum shelf lives for the same drug substance was observed. One of the biggest discrepancies occurred for epirubicin with a minimum shelf life of 'use immediately after preparation' and a maximum shelf life of 28 days after preparation. Apart from a few exceptions the times for which the concentrations are stable, which can be applied to the shelf lives, are not stated in the SPCs. Often no shelf lives for the prepared product are stated but only for the original or reconstituted product, and consistent terminology is lacking in the SPCs. Conclusions Due to the limited information on shelf lives in the SPCs it is not possible to produce cytostatics in DK for stock; the quality of the SPCs is deficient.


At Topes de Collantes Natural Park, Alturas de Trinidad, in the mountains of Guamuhaya province of Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, 30 species of scale insects belonging to 21 genera, four families and an endemic species were identifi ed. Specimens were deposited at the insect zoological collection of the Ecology and Systematics Institute (CZACC), Cuba. A literature review was carried out and the world data base on scale insects, ScaleNet was consulted. A cartographic map indicating the collecting sites at the scale of 1: 250,000 was created using MapInfo Professional Version 4.5 program. Twelve species are recorded for the fi rst time for the mountains of Guamuhaya and further 10 species are recorded for other locations. 82% of the species were polyphagous, 11% were oligophagous and 7% were monophagous. 57% were introduced species, 43% were native and 79% are cosmopolitan or widely distributed species. 30 species and 21 families of host plants were identifi ed, of which 23 plant species were new host plant records for 19 scale insect species, and 11 botanical families are for the fi rst time recorded as hosts for 10 scale insect species. There were significant differences in the distribution of scale insects and their host plant species, botanical families and vegetation type.


: Most dentists are well aware of the value of the rubber dam in allowing technical excellence; however, few recognize the potential for protecting the dentist and staff against the ever-growing number of carriers of the hepatitis and human immunodeficiency viruses. The effectiveness of the rubber dam as an isolation barrier is dependent on the consistency of its application. Sporadic rubber dam application is therefore a weak link in an infection control program. This paper describes additional modified utilizations of rubber dam, uses that are generally not attempted with restrictive orthodox application methods. In addition, practical hints on other means of retention are offered, with the emphasis on nuisance-free and easy application.


Japan is the leading export market for U.S. beef and veal products importing about 203,483 metric tons valued at approximately 1.28 billion dollars in 1989.1/ The potential for exporting beef to Japan has received intensive interest since the signing of the 1988 Japanese Beef Market Access Agreement. Under the agreement, import quotas and the government's involvement in beef import will be replaced with higher tariffs and direct negotiations between Japanese importers and exporters starting in April 1991, promising easier access to the Japanese beef market. During the past decade, analysts in both private and public organizations have devoted substantial effort to studying the Japanese beef market. However, misconceptions of the market still exist. The main purposes of this paper are to improve our understanding of the Japanese beef market and to study the profitability of a proposed production/marketing strategy for expanding beef exports to Japan.


Heidegger's conception of the self seems, on the surface, to imply a paradox: he posits both individuality and sociality as simultaneous and essential facts constituting the self. Though, or perhaps because, he is famously critical of the Cartesian picture of subjectivity ― and thus of common conceptions of individuality and sociality ― his understanding of the self includes two substitute concepts ― mineness and Being-with-others ― that seem at odds. The result, and the difficulty he navigates in Being and Time, concerns how to uncover one's self in the face of society. The result is a theory in which one must "find" oneself within the public. It is what I will call a dynamic subjectivity in which there is no pure distinction between self and world, but one that is constantly in flux. But with this conception of the self, art and politics bear a special relation. Interpreting art to uncover new ideas or new readings becomes an act that, in disclosing insights into the public one inhabits, helps disclose one's self to oneself. In other words, it is an act of social engagement that is integral to the fundamental interrelation of self and society (or self and the public we-world, as Heidegger might say). As such, art criticism becomes a specifically political act. Stanley Cavell's reading of Walden is an informative example of this form of criticism. His particular understanding of interpretation ― a method he calls 're-inheritance' ― elucidates Heideggerian sociality by drawing out these questions in Thoreau's work. Cavell reads these philosophical dilemmas into Walden, though he does so without mentioning Heidegger specifically, and explicitly comments on the book's political nature. In this paper, I will highlight Heidegger's problematic and then detail Cavell's reading of Walden to begin to show how Cavell, via Thoreau, highlights the same questions. I will then demonstrate how the method of re-inheritance lies at the core of both Cavell's interpretive work and the political insights he and Thoreau have. In doing so, I hope to show that this method of aesthetic interpretation intimates the beginnings of a political theory.


This thesis reports an integrated analytical and physicochemical approach for the study of natural substances and new drugs based on mass spectrometry techniques combined with liquid chromatography.
In particular, Chapter 1 concerns the study of Berberine a natural substance with pharmacological activity for the treatment of hepatobiliary and intestinal diseases. The first part focused on the relationships between physicochemical properties, pharmacokinetics and metabolism of Berberine and its metabolites. For this purpose a sensitive HPLC-ES-MS/MS method have been developed, validated and used to determine these compounds during their physicochemical properties studies and plasma levels of berberine and its metabolites including berberrubine(M1), demethylenberberine(M3), and jatrorrhizine(M4) in humans. Data show that M1, could have an efficient intestinal absorption by passive diffusion due to a keto-enol tautomerism confirmed by NMR studies and its higher plasma concentration. In the second part of Chapter 1, a comparison between M1 and BBR in vivo biodistribution in rat has been studied.
In Chapter 2 a new HPLC-ES-MS/MS method for the simultaneous determination and quantification of glucosinolates, as glucoraphanin, glucoerucin and sinigrin, and isothiocyanates, as sulforaphane and erucin, has developed and validated. This method has been used for the analysis of functional foods enriched with vegetable extracts.
Chapter 3 focused on a physicochemical study of the interaction between the bile acid sequestrants used in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia including colesevelam and cholestyramine with obeticolic acid (OCA), potent agonist of nuclear receptor farnesoid X (FXR). In particular, a new experimental model for the determination of equilibrium binding isotherm was developed.
Chapter 4 focused on methodological aspects of new hard ionization coupled with liquid chromatography (Direct-EI-UHPLC-MS) not yet commercially available and potentially useful for qualitative analysis and for "transparent" molecules to soft ionization techniques. This method was applied to the analysis of several steroid derivatives.


The purposes of the study were to identify reproductive risk factors for breast cancer and to test the hypothesis that reproductive variables operate through a common factor: the number of times that the mammary tissue has been exposed to the endocrine changes of the ovulatory cycle. The study was conducted in Campinas, and was based on interviews with 348 women with breast cancer first diagnosed between October 1979 and August 1984. The control group consisted of 348 women with healthy breasts. The data were obtained in interviews in the home, which were conducted using a structured questionnaire that had been pretested. The data were analyzed by calculation of the odds ratio, Mantel's statistic, to determine the linear trend; by Cornfield's method to calculate the confidence intervals; and by logistic regression adjusted for paired data. It was found that nulliparity, not having breast-fed, and a high number of menstrual cycles were significantly associated with the risk of presenting the disease. In the multivariate analysis, which included all the women, the only variable associated with the risk of mammary cancer was no history of breast-feeding. When the nulliparas were excluded, logistic regression showed that higher age of the woman at her first delivery was significantly associated with breast cancer.


We have previously shown a strong relation between high serum uric acid and pulse wave velocity (PWV) as expression of arterial stiffness. This relation was even stronger than with blood pressure. In addition to its hypoglycemic effect, sodium-glucose transport protein 2 inhibitors (SGLT2i) may reduce serum uric acid (SUA) by a uricosuric effect. Aims: to evaluate in type 2 diabetic patients with hypertension and normal renal function the effect of canagliflozin on SUA and carotid femoral PWV. Methods: 20 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) 10 females, 59±4y received metformin 2000mg, canagliflozin 100-300mg and amlodipine 10mg daily during 6 months. Laboratory parameters including HbA1C, fasting blood glucose level, glomerular filtration rate, SUA, 24h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) and PWV were determined at baseline and after a 6-month treatment course with canagliflozin 100-300mg. Results: After 6 months of treatment, PWV dropped from 12±3 to 8.5±4 m/sec, p Conclusions: Canagliflozin ameliorates arterial stiffness in patients with type 2 DM and hypertension. This effect seems to be related, among other mechanisms, such as blood pressure drop and plasma volume contraction to the reduction in serum uric acid level. Since SUA has been shown to predict the risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in hypertension and DM, lowering serum uric acid by SGLT2i might be contributing to cardiovascular protection. Disclosure R.A. Sanchez: None. M.J. Sanchez: None. A.J. Ramirez: None.


A microglial-like cellular model can be used to identify functional consequences of genetic variants associated with neurodegenerative disease. The secret life of microglia In a new study, Ryan et al. characterized a cellular model of monocytes differentiated into a microglial-like state. They then demonstrated the effectiveness of this human in vitro cell model system for identifying functional consequences of genetic variation associated with neurodegenerative disease risk by performing a cis-expression quantitative trait locus (cis-eQTL) study. The authors identified six neurodegenerative disease–associated loci with genotype-driven gene expression differences in their cell model system. Two of these cis-eQTLs were not seen in ex vivo human monocytes, emphasizing the importance of examining the cell type of interest when investigating functional consequences of genetic variants. Microglia are emerging as a key cell type in neurodegenerative diseases, yet human microglia are challenging to study in vitro. We developed an in vitro cell model system composed of human monocyte-derived microglia-like (MDMi) cells that recapitulated key aspects of microglia phenotype and function. We then used this model system to perform an expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) study examining 94 genes from loci associated with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis. We found six loci (CD33, PILRB, NUP160, LRRK2, RGS1, and METTL21B) in which the risk haplotype drives the association with both disease susceptibility and altered expression of a nearby gene (cis-eQTL). In the PILRB and LRRK2 loci, the cis-eQTL was found in the MDMi cells but not in human peripheral blood monocytes, suggesting that differentiation of monocytes into microglia-like cells led to the acquisition of a cellular state that could reveal the functional consequences of certain genetic variants. We further validated the effect of risk haplotypes at the protein level for PILRB and CD33, and we confirmed that the CD33 risk haplotype altered phagocytosis by the MDMi cells. We propose that increased LRRK2 gene expression by MDMi cells could be a functional outcome of rs76904798, a single-nucleotide polymorphism in the LRKK2 locus that is associated with Parkinson's disease.


Two sections of pavement were built with different specifications for the gradation of the aggregates, one with the standard WSDOT specification and one with a combined gradation, to determine if the use of the combined gradation would result in a pavement more resistant to studded tire wear. The standard gradation can result in a gap-graded aggregate whereas the combined gradation produces a more uniform gradation. Wear rates calculated for the most recent data set collected in the fall of 2006 reveals no difference in wear rates between the pavements paved with the standard gradation versus those paved with the combined gradation.


A towering figure in the literary history of twentieth-century China, Lu Xun has exerted immense and continuous influence through his short stories, which remain today as powerful as they were first written. While echoes of these stories can still be heard in the fictional works from both sides of the Taiwan Strait in the eighties and nineties, "The True Story of Ah Q" has long become an intrinsic part of the Chinese vocabulary.Like many Chinese intellectuals searching for a solution to China's problems, Lu Xun went to Japan to study medicine, a choice he later abandoned for a career in writing, which he considered to be a far more effective weapon to save China. A prolific author of pungent and "dagger-like" essays, Lu Xun is also a tireless translator of Western critical and literary works. His fictional works have been translated into more than twenty languages.


The Feynman path integral approach for solving the motion of a droplet along a silicon oil surface is developed by replacing the Planck constant by a surrogate parameter. The latter is proportional to the surface tension of the silicon oil multiplied by the area of the thin air film, separating the droplet from the oil, and by the half-period of the Faraday oscillations. It is shown that the Navier-Stokes equation together with the mass conservation equation can be reduced to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation when the surrogate parameter replaces the Planck constant. The Feynman path integral underlying the Schr\"{o}dinger equation is used then to calculate a wave function that plays the role of the de Broglie pilot-wave.


Three phase multi pulse rectifier classification using scale selection wavelet and probabilistic neural network is presented in this paper. The scale selection wavelet selectively perform continuous wavelet transform on the desired scales, which are determined by the scale frequency relationship to precisely locate each harmonic center frequency for harmonic analysis. Thus, the continuous wavelet transform selectively transform only the 16 characteristic harmonic frequencies of interest from 2nd to 25th order, which are required for three phase multi pulse rectifier classification. The 16 characteristic harmonic frequencies energy are used as the input vector to the probabilistic neural network to classify 5 types of three phase multi pulse rectifier including 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 pulse converter. Various sets of harmonic distortion signals are used to evaluate the performance of these wavelet and neural network based classification system. The results show excellent performance in terms of high accuracy in classifying harmonic distortion caused by three phase multi pulse rectifier. These harmonic classification information serves as guideline to develop and optimize mitigation solution to reduce harmonic disturbance and resonance problem in the industry facility.


Researchers of continuing professional development (CPD) in physical education have called for new models that move beyond the traditional CPD model. The outcomes of CPD protocols are hard to predict even when they align with the best practices. Responsibility-based CPD has become the focus of recent attention to assist physical educators in increasing the use of responsibility-based teaching strategies. The purpose of this study was to examine inhibitors to responsibility-based CPD based on Hellison's teaching personal and social responsibility model. A novel CPD protocol was introduced to a group of teachers but was inhibited by philosophical differences between the teachers and university collaborators, perceptions of students' ability to take on responsibility, and strategic compliance with grant-related work.


Coherent magnetic oscillations precede edge localized modes (ELMs) in TCV. The precursor has been detected prior to ELMs considered to be of type III and others previously referred to as TCV large ELMs. This permits the identification of both as type III ELMs according to the usual classification scheme. The strong localization of these precursors on the bad curvature side of the plasma and their medium toroidal mode numbers indicate their ballooning character. Unlike conventional MHD modes, these modes start toroidally localized and grow in amplitude and toroidal extent. When the precursor encompasses the whole toroidal circumference, the increased transport phase, as indicated by the characteristic Dα spike, begins.


This thesis presents an analysis of the recent transformations in the folk music scene in England.
Through interviews of professional and amateur folk artists, it elicits musicians' points of view about the music they perform and their own compositions. Adopting an ethnomusicological approach, it compares and contrasts theories of cultural globalisation with the musicians' perceptions of their position within the music scene and in relation to musical traditions in the twenty-first century.
Exploring changes in music-making, collecting, and modes and contexts of transmission, this study considers how musical repertoire is exchanged, adapted and preserved within and beyond local communities through means such as archiving, pub sessions, workshops, festivals and formal tuition.
From the perspectives of both artists and audiences, contemporary modes and contexts of transmission and the development of new technologies for recording, sharing and teaching music have been encouraging diverse transformations of perception, repertoire, composition and
interpretation, as well as the dynamics of interaction between folk musicians.
This thesis sheds light on how folk musicians' horizons have expanded far beyond the local sphere; processes of globalisation have engendered global perspectives, new conceptualisations of what "traditional" and "folk" music are, complex identities reflected in musical hybridisation, new opportunities to access traditional and folk music, new forms of communication technology, demographical changes and cross-borders musical initiatives. The thesis demonstrates that, although the folk music scene in England might often be perceived as somewhat conservative in
outlook and overshadowed by a profusion of widely disseminated contemporary popular musical products, many folk musicians have been open to transformation, adapting to new contexts and modes of transmission, embracing new communication technologies, and drawing influences from beyond the immediate local surrounding. At the same time as preserving musical heritage they have been enriching it in diverse ways to ensure its continued relevance.


Integrating autonomic computing concept into the behavior-based architecture enhances the abilities of mobile robots to operate in dynamically changing environment. The constraint-based behavior fusion mechanism provides a proper fusion solution for different behaviors and a unified entry point for autonomic computing components (ACC). This design philosophy distributes the responsibilities of task execution to several elementary behavioral units and the inner self maintaining mechanisms to corresponding self-X ACCs. A task execution of a door-opening example shows the implementation of this method.


Background An increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has been reported among patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). As of today, little is known what causes this increase. Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate whether traditional CVD risk factors, such as smoking, diet, physical activity and atherogenic blood lipids, differ among AS patients in comparison to the general population. Methods Eighty-nine patients diagnosed with AS by fulfilling the modified New York criteria were identified in the databases of a community intervention programme, the Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP). The patients were compared with 356 controls matched for age, sex and study period. As part of the VIP, participants have completed questionnaires regarding diet, physical activity and smoking. Additionally, the VIP included measurement of blood pressure, height and weight, and blood samples analysed for cholesterol, serum triglycerides and blood glucose. Results Levels of serum triglycerides (p<0.01) and cholesterol (p<0.01) were significantly lower in the patient group. Among the patients, the level of triglycerides was inversely correlated to the intake of total fat (rs = -0.25, p<0.05), monounsaturated fats (rs = -0.29, p<0.05) and positively correlated to the intake of carbohydrates (rs =0.26, p<0.05). These correlations were not seen among the controls. No significant differences were found between patients and controls regarding diet, physical activity, exercise frequency or smoking habits nor in measurements of body mass index (BMI), weight or blood pressure. Conclusions The patients exhibited significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides compared with controls. There were correlations between diet and atherogenic blood lipids among the patients which were not found in the control group. The results suggest that there may be differences in fat metabolism among patients with AS in comparison with the general population. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


Neutron scattering and neutron imaging have emerged as powerful methods for experimentally investigating material deformation and fluid flow in the interior of otherwise inaccessible or opaque structures. This paper describes the design and provides example uses of a pressure cell developed for investigating such behaviors within geological materials. The cell can accommodate cylindrical samples with diameters up to 38.1 mm and lengths up to 154 mm. Ports in the cell and a pressure isolating sleeve around the sample allow the independent application of confining pressure up to 69 MPa and axial pressure up to 34.5 MPa. Two material versions of the cell have been manufactured and used to date. An aluminum version is typically used for temperatures below 40 °C, because of its relative transparency to neutrons, while a titanium version, which is comparatively more neutron attenuating, is used for experiments requiring triaxial pressurization under conditions up to 350 °C. The pressure cells were commissioned at the VULCAN engineering diffractometer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Spallation Neutron Source, and have since been used at the ORNL high flux isotope reactor CG1-D imaging beamline, National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) BT-2, and NIST NG6 imaging beamlines.


A cluster is a geographical concentration of interrelated firms. Cluster theory states that the synergies created inside the cluster (by the interactions between firms that compete and those that collaborate) enhance the productivity and innovation of firms and therefore their economic performance. While manufacturing industries have been widely studied from the clustering perspective, service clusters and specifically touristic clusters have received less attention. In this paper, we identify U.S. touristic clusters using a concentration measure, the Location Quotient. Then we check whether hotels located in touristic clusters obtain higher economic results than those hotels located in areas where the level of touristic-related business concentration does not get the critical mass to consider it a cluster (instead of reducing their benefits due to the high level of competitors nearby). Our results find significant differences between the two sets of hotels. The effect is stronger for subsegments of hotels based on their star category, location, and management structure. Specifically, we demonstrate that the differences are more pronounced within luxury and upscale hotel categories and within chain-managed hotels. The differences are less important in resort and airport locations than in small-metro/town, urban, and suburban areas. These results have important location implications for managers. They also contribute to understanding that economies of agglomeration lead to benefits from being located closely and in highly concentrated industries. But there is still a lot of research needed to better understand the relations between cooperation and competition within touristic clusters and how these enhance the economic performance of hotels.


This article analyzes the different challenges of citizenship and rights in front of the new forms of flow migrations, especially in the Mediterranean and the case of Venezuelan migrants. The  new conception of globalization and Soveranity redefines the relations between the State and individuals, whether national or foreign, and must be the basis for rethinking the new issues of citizenship, of migrants and of dialogue between cultures, which must be addressed from the so-called "ethics" of hospitality "and based on the principles of interculturality, the good universality of human rights and substantive and cosmopolitan citizenship. In the expansion of the universal quantifier of human rights, at the time of the nomination of constitutional states of law, there are limitations on the universalist conception, whose archetypal point is based on the thesis of ontological monism. By virtue of this the correspondence between rights, guarantees and benefits were anchored in the course of the forms of government and State in the idea of homogeneity that appeared with the apogee of the nation - states, giving rise to the figure of the monism of the state. Venezuelan forced migration in the Latin America area points out the crisis of the theory of National state and forced to a new concept of citizenship.Starting from this case study, several other aspects of migrations and, more in general, of emerging human rights are addressed in this issue of the Journal of Mediterranean Knowledge.Keywords: Cosmopolitan citizenship, Modern migrations, Emerging human rights, Venezuelan refugeesÂ


BACKGROUND
When couples are faced with the dilemma of a higher order multiple pregnancy there are three options. Termination of the entire pregnancy has generally not been acceptable to women, especially for those with a past history of infertility. Attempting to continue with all the fetuses is associated with inherent problems of preterm birth, survival and long term morbidity. The other alternative relates to reduction in the number of fetuses by selective termination. The acceptability of these options for the couple will depend on their social background and underlying beliefs. This review focused on reduction in the number of fetuses.

OBJECTIVES
To assess a policy of multifetal reduction with a policy of expectant management of women with a triplet or higher order multiple pregnancy.

SEARCH STRATEGY
We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register (30 September 2002), the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (The Cochrane Library, Issue 2, 2002), and PubMed (to 30 September 2002).

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomized controlled trials with reported data that compared outcomes in mothers and babies who were managed expectantly with outcomes in women who underwent selective fetal reduction of a triplet or higher order multiple pregnancy.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two reviewers independently assessed trial quality and extracted data.

MAIN RESULTS
There were no randomised controlled trials identified.

REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS
There are insufficient data available to support a policy of pregnancy reduction procedures for women with a triplet or higher order multiple pregnancy. While randomised controlled trials will provide the most reliable evidence about the risks and benefits of fetal reduction procedures, reduction in the number of fetuses by selective termination may not been acceptable to women, especially for those with a past history of infertility. The acceptability of this option, and willingness to undergo randomisation will depend on the couple's social background and beliefs, and consequently, recruitment to such a trial may prove exceptionally difficult.


Using the cases of genetic resources management involved by local farmer, meaning of seeds for farmers is discussed. Farmers recognize the value of seeds not only based on yield potential and profitability but also based on risk distribution and domestic use values. Hiroshima local gene bank activities to re-introduce obsolete varieties of vegetables back into the communities where genetic resources had been originally collected showed importance of collaboration among different stakeholders for effective seeds management for rural (re-)vitalization including formal research institutes and farmers. Participatory research in Burkina Faso showed the difficulty of understanding farmers' criteria for seeds and variety selection by outsiders including extension workers and researchers. Institutional building to facilitate collaboration among national and local level stakeholders is suggested for seed and food security of farmers especially in disadvantaged areas.


Since 1994, the multiport techniques were further developed for microwave and millimeter-wave radios. Until today, several multiport architectures for specific applications, such as communication transceivers, radar, sensing, direction of arrival estimation, or phase noise measurements, have been developed and implemented.This special issue highlights, through several examples and multiple references, some of the modern applications of the multiport technology and significant advances in fabrication procedures, in the recent years.


The factors which influence the prognosis of carcinoma of the rectum and of the rectosigmoid in persons 30 years of age and less are multiple, although at present the most satisfactory indicators are the ability of the patient to withstand the effects of surgical removal of the lesion and the presence or absence of metastasis. The latter factor closely parallels the grade of the tumor as classified by Broders. 1 The clinical observations, the age and the sex of the patient and the rectal and proctoscopic observations, as well as the observations made at the time of surgical exploration, all must be correlated before the future health of a patient can be determined with any approximation of accuracy. The present paper is a review of 116 cases of carcinoma of the rectum and of the rectosigmoid in which persons 30 years of age and less were involved. The patients were


In "Regulation of Neurotrophin Receptor Expression during Embryonic and Postnatal Development" (E. Escandón, D. Soppet, A. Rosenthal, J.-L. Mendoza-Ramírez, E. Szönyi, L.E. Burton, C.E. Henderson, L.F. Parada, and K. Nikolics), which appeared on pages 2054–2068 in the April 1994 issue, the symbols defined in the legend to Figure 3 appeared out of order. The legend should read: Self- and cross-competition analysis of BDNF (A) and NT-4/5 (B) binding to recombinant cells expressing p145TrkB. Crude membrane preparations (150 ¨g of total protein/tube) were incubated in the presence of 50–100 pM 125I-labeled BDNF (A) or 125I-labeled NT-4/5 (B) with increasing concentrations of homologous or heterologous unlabeled ligands. The symbols are as follows: squf,■ BDNF; •, NT-4/5; ▼,; NT-3; ▲, NGF. The binding assay conditions are described in Materials and Methods. The competitor neurotrophin concentrations (picomolar) are indicated. The publisher regrets the error.


We develop a general equilibrium model to investigate the adverse effects of liquidity risk on price discovery and to examine the interaction of (externally or internally imposed) solvency requirements for financial institutions with the accounting measurement for financial assets in markets under stress. The model develops liquidity demand and supply curves generating two types of general equilibria: liquid and illiquid. We then investigate the adverse feedback effects in the illiquid equilibrium in response to banks selling risky assets to satisfy solvency requirements. Our model captures negative externalities of other banks responding to a liquidity shock with precautionary hoarding and predicts that the potential of bank runs reduces the motivation to hoard. Model results further suggest that applying mark-to-market accounting in the illiquid equilibrium can lead to loss spirals transforming a bank's illiquidity problem to one of insolvency. We discuss several policy implications for the role of fair value accounting in linking liquidity and solvency problems of banks during times of market stress.


The expression of connexin 32 (Cx32), a major liver gap junction protein, after partial hepatectomy (PH) and during development and progression of hepatocarcinogenesis was studied in the rat. Cx32 was quantitatively analyzed by counting immunohistochemically demonstrated protein spots on the membranes of hepatocytes. Livers were sequentially examined after PH to assess the correlation with cell proliferation. For the analysis of different stages in carcinogenesis, Cx32 was assayed in N-ethyl-N-hydroxyethylnitrosamine-induced enzyme altered foci (EAF), hyperplastic nodules (HN), hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC), pulmonary metastatic HCC and transplanted HCC in relation to their degree of altered enzyme expression. Cx32 showed: (i) a rapid decrease after PH to its lowest levels during and 12 h after the S phase of cell proliferation when 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) labeling indices were examined; (ii) a progressive decrease from early preneoplasia EAF to HN and HCC, values for pulmonary metastatic and transplanted HCC being 0; (iii) clearly inverse correlations with increased BrdU index and degree of altered enzyme expression in HN, indicating that these, with the lowest Cx32 count, are closest to HCC. Therefore, the observed decrease appears linked to cell proliferation and progression of hepatocarcinogenesis, providing a reflection of cellular independence and growth advantage.


High Performance Computing (HPC) is rapidly becoming an integral part of Science, Engineering and Business. Scientists and engineers are leveraging HPC solutions to run their applications that require high bandwidth, low latency, and very high compute capabilities. General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) are becoming more popular within the HPC community because of their highly parallel structure, which makes it possible for applications to gain multi-x performance gain. The Tianhe-1A and Tsubame systems received significant attention for their architectures that leverage GPGPUs. Increasingly many scientific applications that were originally written for CPUs using MPI for parallelism are being ported to these hybrid CPU-GPU clusters. In the traditional sense, CPUs perform computation while the MPI library takes care of communication. When computation is performed on GPGPUs, the data has to be moved from device memory to main memory before it can be used in communication. Though GPGPUs provide huge compute potential, the data movement to and from GPGPUs is both a performance and productivity bottleneck. Recently, the MVAPICH2 MPI library has been modified to directly support point-to-point MPI communication from the GPU memory [33]. Using this support, programmers do not need to explicitly move data to main memory before using MPI. This feature also enables performance improvement due to tight integration of GPU data movement and MPI internal protocols. ii Collective communication is commonly used in HPC applications. These applications spend a significant portion of their time doing such collective communications. Therefore, optimizing performance of collectives has a significant impact on the applications' performance. The all-to-all and allgather communication operations in message-passing systems are heavily used collectives that have O(N) communication, for N processes. In this thesis, we outline the major design alternatives for the two collective communication operations on GPGPU clusters. We propose efficient and scalable designs and provide a corresponding performance analysis. Using our dynamic staging techniques, the latency of MPI Alltoall on GPGPU clusters can be improved by 59% over a Naive approach based implementation and 44% over a SendRecv based implementation for 32KBytes messages on 32 processes. Our proposed design, Fine Grained Pipeline, can improve the performance of MPI Allgather on GPGPU clusters by 46% over Naive design and 81% over Send-Recv based design for a message size of 16KBytes on 64 processes. The proposed designs have been incorporated into the open source MPI stack, MVAPICH2.


English and Portuguese relations had their beginning in the old defensive alliances of the fourteenth century. In the seventeenth century these alliances took on commercial features. The Methuen Treaty of 1703 was the first definite commercial agreement. Between 1898 and 1909 England became intensely interested in the Portuguese African colonies. She realized that Portugal's grave financial status, at the end of the nineteenth century, would lead to the seizure of her colonies by some strong European power. She desired to be that power. In attempting to conclude treaties that would make her the natural heir of these African colonies, she came into conflict with Germany, who entered in the colonial field late, and who was determined that there would be no transfer of any African colonies without her sharing in it. The bickerings and contests of England and Germany over the Portuguese African colonies furnish the main theme of this paper. This study is based primarily on the British Documents, volumes I, II, III, VI, and VIII. It is believed that some new evidence is given since Fay's Origins of the World War and Langer's The Diplomacy of Imperialism were published before some of these volumes appeared.


A critical and annotated review of published records of the Chrysididae of the Nordic and Baltic countries and the Russian part of Fennoscandia is presented with some taxonomic and faunistic notes. A total of 73 species are listed from the region. Additionally, 17 species are deleted. Three species are recorded for the first time from Denmark, six species from Estonia, one from Finland, eleven from Latvia, four from Norway, one from Sweden and 15 from Russian Fennoscandia. Elampus foveatus and Chrysis pulcherrima are reported for the first time from the Nordic and Baltic countries. Lectotypes are designated for Hedychrum cupreum Dahlbom, 1845, Chrysis zetterstedti Dahlbom, 1845, Chrysis succincta var. chrysoprasina Trautmann, 1927, Chrysis succincta var. virideocincta Trautmann, 1927 and Chrysis succincta var. nordstromi Trautmann, 1927. Information and images of the holotypes of Hedychrum metallicum Dahlbom, 1854, Chrysis var. westerlundi Trautmann, 1927 are given. Chrysis integra Dahlbom, 1829 is found to be a new synonym of Hedychridium ardens (Coquebert, 1801) and Chrysis scintillans Valkeila, 1971 a new synonym of Chrysis solida Haupt, 1957. Chrysis terminata Dahlbom, 1854 is reported for the first time as the valid name for C. ignita Form A sensu Linsenmaier, 1959.


American agriculture is shiRing from homogeneous commodities to differentiated products. Value differentiation, the process by which agrifood chain actors isolate, match, and exploit heterogeneity in consumer preferences and product attributes, is examined. Value differentiation is characterized by complementarities across four activities at each stage of the production chain: product characteristic measurement, product characteristic production, coordination between stages, and customer preference detection. Complementarities at the firm level are modeled using supermodularity. The model's predictions are discussed, as are potential testing approaches, and implications are presented for agrifood firms, marketing orders, and returns to research.


Purpose of review Antimicrobial overuse is a major health problem that contributes to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Infections with Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) and multidrug-resistant organisms (MDRs) are associated with high morbidity and mortality, particularly in patients with underlying medical conditions. Recent findings Although many recent studies have been published about the novel antibiotics in treating infections including those due to MDR-GNB, the optimal duration of treatment (DOT) remains inconclusive. Recent observation has supported that short antibiotic therapy (SAT) decreases AMR and adverse effects. This narrative review provides an overview of the most recent published studies on the duration of therapy in the treatment of GNB infections, including hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), intra-abdominal infections (IAIs), bloodstream infections (BSIs) and urinary tract infections (UTIs), with a particular focus on MDR-GNB. Summary Studies showed different outcomes when comparing SAT to long antimicrobial therapy (LAT). No generalization can be made on all sites of infections and different GNBs. Further studies are needed to address the optimal DOT in MDR-GNB, as this group is underrepresented in recent studies.


Smart cities have evolved in the last years, leading the cities to implement initiatives related to technical aspects to improve quality of life. City-rankings have become a central tool for assessing the attractiveness of urban regions. The development of smart cities, however, is not without risk. Cities and citizens are putting more and more responsibilities in urban systems. Hence, all key stakeholders should provide an effective safety and security response to any situation affecting their citizens or organizations. Special attention should be paid with respect to development of services aimed at reducing cybercrime. To prevent this, we believe that a better understanding of smart cities and their privacy implications is needed. The paper provides an overview of security aspects of a cyber security in smart cities. It starts with exploration of various definitions, threats, and risks in cyber security as well as threats from environments both internal and external and how these threats are currently mitigated with tools, processes and technologies as smart cities utilizes IoT with big data. Presently, most of the data is transmitted and collected online. Hackers usually try to exploit the vulnerabilities using various tools in order to know more about the customers and then misuse the customer's information. Enterprises, on the other hand, continue to collect more information in order to improve services, infrastructure, and security. They collect tons of data from customers in order to complete their requirements for the different services they provide. The main concern with the collected data is that it can be vulnerable to misuse by hackers. Building a security framework based on concepts and repositories of big data and leveraging on the intelligence of predictive analytics can help build a security system that can counter these threats and help to guard from these risk and threats to a large extent. Various concepts, applications, and technologies interact to cover every aspect of the digital citizen's life. Understanding this privacy-challenging environment is the basic requirement for the development of effective protection mechanisms. Thus, the paper aims to address sentiments on cyber security technologies and cybercrime awareness in order to come up with recommendations for innovative solutions. A survey has been conducted and the findings have been analyzed of a case study to come up with recommendations for building a conceptualizing security framework for smart cities. The survey is conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the most advanced countries in the MENA region, who is applying smart city concepts.


We study isothermal magnetization processes in the Cu-Al-Mn intermetallic alloy. Hysteresis is observed at temperatures below the spin-freezing of the system. The characteristics of the hysteresis cycles as a function of temperature and Mn content (magnetic element) are obtained. At low temperature $(\ensuremath{\lesssim}5$ K) a change from smooth to sharp cycles is observed with increasing Mn content, which is related to the decrease of configurational disorder. We also study a zero-temperature site-diluted Ising model, suitable for the description of this Cu-Al-Mn system. The model reproduces the main features of the hysteresis loops observed experimentally. It exhibits a disorder-induced critical line separating a disordered phase from an incipient ferromagnetic ground state. The comparison between the model and the experiments allows us to conclude that the observed change in the experimental hysteresis loops can be understood within the framework of the theory of disorder-induced criticality in fluctuationless first-order phase transitions.


Although α+ thalassaemia is the commonest haemoglobinopathy in the world, it is not known if it is associated with significant ineffective erythropoiesis, a fact of importance in interpreting its complex interaction with malaria. To study this problem, we have measured the concentrations of soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR) and ferritin in 181 children from Vanuatu with heterozygous (68) and homozygous (46) α+ thalassaemia, and normal controls (67). sTfR concentrations were significantly higher in both homozygotes (mean 3.1 mg/l, range 2.8–3.4) and heterozygotes (2.86 mg/l, 2.6–3.2) compared to the normal controls (2.48 mg/l, 2.3–2.7), suggesting that although globin chain imbalance is minimal, there is ineffective erythropoiesis in both these conditions. Age was also shown to significantly affect sTfR, with peak levels occurring in the 5–9 years age group. Ferritin concentrations showed a similar trend, being higher in the thalassaemic groups, although this did not reach statistical significance. No individuals had low ferritin concentrations, although two had significantly elevated sTfR levels. These observations suggest that the α+ thalassaemia phenotype includes an expansion of the erythron, and may suggest possible mechanisms for the increased susceptibility in babies with α thalassaemia to both P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria.


This article identifies the major enablers and inhibitors in the achievement of business-Information Technology (IT) alignment. Alignment involves the activities that management performs to achieve cohesive goals across the IT and functional (e.g., finance, marketing, manufacturing) organizations. Therefore, alignment addresses both how IT is in harmony with the business, and how the business should or could be in harmony with IT. IT requires strong support from senior management, good working relationships, strong leadership, appropriate prioritization, trust, and effective communication, as well as a thorough understanding of the business environment. This article develops a methodology that leverages the most important enablers and inhibitors to business-IT alignment.


As a consequence of their ever increasing pervasiveness in today's systems, software services are expected to guarantee their QoS even when operating in contexts whose operational conditions may continuously change. To cope with such continuous change, services must evolve in a way that is transparent to the end-user. This can be done by exploiting sophisticated means to reason about Quality of Service (QoS) and to drive service construction in a dynamic and automated fashion. The paper tackles this challenging scenario by proposing a model-based framework, called Smart, that automatically constructs complex services with guaranteed QoS. Smart exploits rich service descriptions (in particular concerning QoS characterizations) to automate the negotiation of Service Level Agreements (SLA) and to realize SLA-driven automated service reconfiguration, when the target QoS cannot be achieved by the current service assembly. Finally, Smart addresses the case in which some services involved in the composition do not support SLA negotiation. In this case, monitoring is used to characterize empirically (as opposed to "contractually") the QoS offered by such non-guaranteed services.


The notion of place is integral to any understanding of cultural sustainability. Present and future places are the product of the political negotiations of past places. How we recreate and represent the history and the stories of a place impacts the individual and collective cultural identities associated with it. Moreover, these representations help to determine who does, or does not, belong. When planning for the sustainment of cultures, we need to draw on our ethical responsibility to ensure that everybody and every culture enjoys the right to a sense of belonging. To do this, we must turn to questions such as, whose story is primarily being represented through the identity of a particular place? Or, whose place is being replaced and reimagined without acknowledgement or permission? And how will these communities and individuals, whose stories are not amplified, become sustainable? To respond to some of these questions, this article presents an analysis of placemaking on the Gold Coast. It sketches insights from cultural practitioners, industry leaders, cultural workers and the communityat- large, to expose heterogeneous Gold Coasts wrestling with the one identity. Most notably, it documents the emergence of a cultural voice that is developing via artist-run spaces involving joint collaborations between the academy and the community. By adopting transdisciplinarity alongside an historical approach to conversation, this article also suggests some alternative ways to develop policies that fosters and sustains multiple cultures, rather than just reproducing more of the same.


This work presents a comprehensive study on the behaviour and operation of a vertical 1.2 kV 4H-SiC junctionless power FinFET. The increased bulk conduction in the channel of this topology may bring reductions in the channel resistance compared to trench MOSFETs, whose performance is limited by the high interface state density. For this purpose, finite element (FE) simulations are used to examine the operation of this device. It is hence demonstrated that the junctionless FinFET can attain a high average channel drift mobility well above 100 cm2/(Vs), leaving the resistance to be determined by the drift and substrate regions. This allows the FinFET to turn on and reach its steady state current using a much (> 3x) smaller gate overdrive than standard designs. On the other hand, however, the overly high field in the gate oxide, the lack of an efficient mechanism for hole extraction, and the low threshold voltage can cause significant reliability issues. Furthermore, it is shown that the high input capacitance of the FinFET can limit its switching speed to slower levels than in standard trench MOSFETs, which raises the need for further development of the original design proposed for vertical GaN devices. In this context, it is demonstrated that the addition of a p-shield below the trenches can alleviate the off-state reliability issues and increase the speed, while still maintaining a competitive R on ∼ 2mΩ cm2 even without the use of n-JFET enhancement doping.


Speaking English language in front of the public is sometimes a daunting task to many people, including students of universities. Those who are capable of delivering a sound presentation in English language will definitely have some advantages for future employment and professions. This research addresses issues related to English public speaking at the university by setting three objectives. Firstly, it seeks undergraduate students' opinions of their English public speaking performance. Secondly, to get insights on the students' preferred instructors in teaching English public speaking and thirdly to get their opinions on preferred techniques or methods in teaching English public speaking. This research employed qualitative approach by conducting interviews to 25 students from 9 faculties at Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), Malaysia. The findings revealed that majority of the students opined that their performance in English public speaking was rather poor and moderate. Only a small section of students thought that their performance was fairly good. Some contributing factors to the poor  performance of their English public speaking were due to lack of confidence, lack of English grammar and vocabularies. It was also revealed that the students preferred having instructors who were friendly, and had a high sense of humor. In relation to teaching methods or techniques, the research revealed that the students preferred to have practices in a nonthreatening environment with some meaningful activities such as video shows, drama, sketch or English games that could stimulate a conducive and fun learning environment.


1. Studies of reproductive effort in ectotherms have focused primarily on the energetic investment in gamete production; much less is known about the indirect energetic costs of reproduction, such as increased metabolic costs of maintenance or activity.

2. The metabolic cost of reproduction in the oviparous lizard, Sceloporus undulatus, was investigated by measuring the metabolic rate of females prior to and following oviposition.

3. The metabolic rates of gravid females were adjusted for embryonic metabolism by subtracting the metabolic rate of egg clutches, measured immediately after oviposition.

4. The metabolic rate of females when gravid was elevated by 122% compared with that when non-gravid. The difference was not detected until the metabolic rates of gravid females were adjusted for the metabolic rates of the embryos.

5. The increment in metabolic rate associated with reproduction was not correlated with clutch mass or body mass, indicating that different components of reproductive effort (i.e. metabolism vs gametic investment) may not covary in a predictable fashion.

6. Indirect energetic costs of reproduction constitute a substantial portion of the reproductive effort of female S. undulatus, and should be incorporated into theoretical considerations of life history.


Vilnius University Cardboard skulls decorating the book of the dead's pink cover―the Necronomicon; intoxicated young ladies having a 'kitty party' then gang raping their male servant; secret agents 077 and 707 serving the nation; a shape-shifting monster's head rotates 180 degrees while tracing a doomed bride in red and the list of similar images is far from exhaustive. The above mentioned aesthetical and narrative cinematic devises just happen to come from a variety of Indian films―usually ascribed to the 'lower' cinematic cultures and labeled as exploitative, B-grade or even 'trash' cinema. Often despised and ridiculed by academicians, critics, and the big budget film industries while at the same time enjoying vast popularity in smaller urban centers and towns, these Indian low budget films co-exist with Bollywood and other major industries―yet work by their own sets of rules and agendas. These films remain a part of the national as well as global film consumption, even if slightly overshadowed by the blockbuster or Arthouse cinemas. Despite the changing trends in India's film productions and aesthetics, the low budget cinema retains its cult status throughout the country―and this is most evident while taking a stroll down the Grant Road in Mumbai, lined up with numerous video stalls and offering enormous amounts of cheaply produced '3 films in 1' type of DVDs: the genre selection ranging from action (fight) to horror; from mythological to soft-core sex films.


This paper investigates the robust delay-dependent stability problem of a class of linear uncertain system with interval time-varying delay, and proposes less conservative stability criteria for computing the maximum allowable bound of the delay range. The proposed stability criteria are based on the delay central point technique wherein the delay interval is partitioned into two sub-intervals of equal length, and the time variation of a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is considered individually for each of these segments in order to reduce the conservatism of the stability criteria. For robust stability conditions, two categories of system uncertainties, namely, time-varying structured and polytopic-type uncertainties are considered. In deriving the stability conditions in LMI framework, neither model transformations, nor bounding techniques using free-weighting matrix variables are employed for dealing the cross-product terms; instead, they are dealt using tighter integral inequalities. This, in turn, makes the proposed approach computationally more efficient and simple. Subsequently, the results obtained are less conservative in the range of allowable delay bound. The effectiveness of the proposed stability criteria is validated through numerical examples.


To reduce development time and introduce technologies faster to the market, many companies have been turning more and more to Model Based Design. In Model Based Design, the development process centers around a system model, from requirements capture and design to implementation and test. Engineers can skip over a generation of system design processes on the basis of hand coding and use graphical models to design, analyze, and implement the software that determines machine performance and behavior. This paper describes the process implemented in Autonomie, a Plug-and-Play Software Environment, to design and evaluate component hardware in an emulated environment. We will discuss best practices and provide an example through evaluation of advanced high-energy battery pack within an emulated Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle.


We report the discovery of a new asteroid family among the dark asteroids residing in the Phocaea region the Tamara family. We make use of available physical data to separate asteroids in the region according to their surface reflectance properties, and establish the membership of the family. We determine the slope of the cumulative magnitude distribution of the family, and find it to be significantly steeper than the corresponding slope of all the asteroids in the Phocaea region. This implies that subkilometer dark Phocaeas are comparable in number to bright S-type objects, shedding light on an entirely new aspect of the composition of small Phocaea asteroids. We then use the Yarkovsky V-shape based method and estimate the age of the family to be 264 ± 43 Myr. Finally, we carry out numerical simulations of the dynamical evolution of the Tamara family. The results suggest that up to 50 Tamara members with absolute magnitude may currently be found in the near-Earth region. Despite their relatively small number in the near-Earth space, the rate of Earth impacts by small, dark Phocaeas is non-negligible.


We describe a method of measuring lifetime characteristics of heap objects, and discuss ways in which such quantitative object behaviour measurements can help improve language implementations, especially garbage collection performance. For Standard ML of New Jersey, we find that certain primary aspects of object behaviour are qualitatively the same across benchmark programs, in particular the rapid object decay. We show that the heap-only allocation implementation model is the cause of this similarity. We confirm the weak generational hypothesis for SML/NJ and discuss garbage collector configuration tuning. Our approach is to obtain object statistics directly from program execution, rather than simulation, for reasons of simplicity and speed. Towards this end, we exploit the flexibility of the garbage collector toolkit as a measurement tool. Careful numerical analysis of the acquired data is necessary to arrive at relevant object lifetime measures. This study fills a gap in quantitative knowledge of the workings of heap-based compilers and their run-time systems, and should be useful to functional language implementors.


In this study, we successfully developed a solid-state reference electrode based on sodium polyanethol sulfonate (SPS) immobilised on a cellulose acetate membrane and coated on a layer of polypyrrole on top of a carbon screen-printed electrode (SPE). We varied the concentration of SPS salt from 1% to 5% (w/v) and achieved an optimal concentration of 4%. SPS optimisation test was performed by varying concentrations of KCl and pH buffer solution. The slope obtained for 4% SPS was 3.5 ± 0.3 with a residual standard deviation (RSD) of 9.3% of KCl solution, whereas the slope obtained for pH buffer solution was 3.4 ± 0.2 with 1.2% RSD. The stability test in pH 7 buffer and 10−3 M KCl yielded drift at <0.4 mV/h for 60 h of continuous monitoring. We also performed tests using standard NH4+, K+ and NO3− ion-selective electrode sensors, and the slopes measured were respectively 52.4 ± 0.4, 51.4 ± 0.4, and −52.3 ± 0.9 mV/dec with a dynamic range of 0.1–10−5 M.