Previous studies of neurogenic activity in the thoracic neuromeres of indirect developing crustaceans indicated that the temporal patterns of neurogenesis can be correlated with the appearance of the thoracic appendages during larval and metamorphic development. To test further the idea that the temporal patterns of neurogenesis in crustaceans are related to their life histories, we examined neurogenesis in the ventral nerve cord of a direct developing crustacean, the freshwater crayfish Cherax destructor, whose life history contains neither larval stages nor metamorphoses. Neurogenesis was examined using the in vivo incorporation of bromodeoxyuridine into DNA. During late embryonic development the thoracic neuromeres of the crayfish contain arrays of mitotically active neuroblasts similar to those previously described in the spider crab and lobster. The arrays in the crayfish abdomen are, however, greatly reduced compared with those of the thorax. On hatching, both the thoracic and abdominal appendages of C. destructor are capable of movement. The pleopods, however, do not beat rhythmically until the second postembryonic stage whereas the pereiopods are not used in coordinated walking movements until the third stage. An examination of the time course of neurogenesis in the ventral nerve cord revealed that neurogenic activity in each neuromere ceases during or before the moult to the developmental stage in which its segmental appendage is first used in coordinated movements. These findings indicate that the patterns of neurogenesis in crustaceans are indeed related to the maturation of the segmental appendages and, in particular, to the maturation of motor behaviours.


Entrepreneurship Student Creativity Program featuring a distinctive innovative use of fabrics bali (endek fabric) as an attractive shoe in the present. Endek shoe aims to create a generation of young love against the fabric so that the fabric endek remain stable and do not become extinct. Endek shoe has a promising business opportunity because this endek new shoes were first produced in Bali and have quite a lot of interest so that the shoe is endek very high chance to develop.


In recent years, the financial performance of Romanian commercial banks has been considerably reduced, due to the decline in lending activity and the increase in operating expenses. The paper aims to estimate the impact of credit, liquidity and solvency risk on the efficiency of the operational activity of commercial banks listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The results obtained by the application of the multiple linear regression showed that the level of the "cost to income" indicator, during 2010-2015, was significantly influenced by the capitalization level, the lending rate and the saving rate.


Background: Exposure to stressful stimuli dysregulates inflammatory processes and alters the gut microbiota. Prebiotics, including long-chain fermentable fibers and milk oligosaccharides, have the potential to limit inflammation through modulation of the gut microbiota. To determine whether prebiotics attenuate stress-induced inflammation and microbiota perturbations, mice were fed either a control diet or a diet supplemented with galactooligosaccharides, polydextrose and sialyllactose (GOS+PDX+SL) or sialyllactose (SL) for 2 weeks prior to and during a 6-day exposure to a social disruption stressor. Spleens were collected for immunoreactivity assays. Colon contents were examined for stressor- and diet- induced changes in the gut microbiome and metabolome through 16S rRNA gene sequencing, shotgun metagenomic sequencing and UPLC-MS/MS. Results: Stress increased circulating IL-6 and enhanced splenocyte immunoreactivity to an ex vivo LPS challenge. Diets containing GOS+PDX+SL or SL alone attenuated these responses. Stress exposure resulted in large changes to the gut metabolome, including robust shifts in amino acids, peptides, nucleotides/nucleosides, tryptophan metabolites, and B vitamins. Multiple B vitamins were inversely associated with IL-6 and were augmented in mice fed either GOS+PDX+SL or SL diets. Stressed mice exhibited distinct microbial communities with lower abundances of Lactobacillus spp. and higher abundances of Bacteroides spp. Diet supplementation with GOS+PDX+SL, but not SL alone, orthogonally altered the microbiome and enhanced the growth of Bifidobacterium spp. Metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from mice fed the GOS+PDX+SL diet unveiled genes in a Bifidobacterium MAG for de novo B vitamin synthesis. B vitamers directly attenuated the stressor-induced exacerbation of cytokine production in LPS-stimulated splenocytes. Conclusions: Overall, these data indicate that colonic metabolites, including B vitamins, are responsive to psychosocial stress. Dietary prebiotics reestablish colonic B vitamins and limit stress-induced inflammation.


Performing the Border. 42 minutes, VHS, color, 1999. Writing Desire, 25 minutes, VHS, color, 2000. Remote Sensing. 53 minutes, VHS, color, 2001. Filmmaker Ursula Biemann, Switzerland. Distributed by Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. Tel: (212) 925-0606; e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com; website: www.wmm.com; Sale $250.00, rental $60.00 (each). Europlex. 20 minutes, VHS, color, English or Spanish, 2003. Filmmaker Ursula Biemann in collaboration with Angela Sanders, Switzerland. Distributed by Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. Tel: (212) 925-0606; e-mail: email@example.com; website: www.wmm.com; Sale $195.00, rental $60.00. Swiss-based filmmaker, curator, and cultural theorist, Ursula Biemann has recently created a series of critical feminist video essays that interrogate and map the physical, metaphorical, and gendered geographies of borderlands produced by the intersection of new technologies and globalized capitalist economies. Like the transitional performative spaces that are the subject of this series, video essays are a mixed "genre" of practice that taps the creative potential of mediating between cultural spaces while deploying innovative aesthetic strategies. In her commentary on her video essays, Biemann categorizes them as part documentary, part art, transgressing the borders of both. In a documentary tradition they engage reality, but their gaze is subjective, disassociative, and theoretically situated in post-colonial situations of diaspora, migration, and ambivalent experiences of nation, borders, and belonging. Likewise, as art, video essays concern more than aesthetics since they are socially involved and explicitly political. In reviewing Biemann's videos, it is qualities of contingency and ambivalence that configure their transdisciplinary nature and experimental qualities. Reflective of the digital age we live in, the imagery of video essays is highly concentrated, non-linear, and draws on multiple sources of knowledge and audio-visual effects. As cultural studies theorist Imre Szeman notes: "it is no easy task to deconstruct these visual documents" (1). "Stuff it! Distill it! Stratify and compress it" are mottos of the digital essayist. In mapping the transnational topographies of border zones, Biemann focuses on several places to investigate their layered complexity. The first video, Performing the Border, focuses on Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican border town located in a Free Trade Zone where the first US high-tech assembly plants were built some twenty years ago. The second, Writing Desire, examines the internet as a space for the construction and pathways of desire. The third, Remote Sensing, utilizes satellite technology to monitor the trafficking and migration of women who transverse national borders to work in the world-wide sex industry. And the fourth, Europlex, fixes on the Spanish-Moroccan border to follow the crossings of three groups of Moroccan women: those who clandestinely smuggle clothing on their bodies; domesticas moving in and out of Moroccan and European time zones; and women working in trans-national zones for the European market. While all four of Biemann's videos link border zones to globalization, they utilize diverse ways of recording this. Shooting from an aerial perspective gives a remote view of traffic but eliminates specificities; shooting from the ground gives visibility to the movements of people, capital, and technology to make gender and power relations evident. And camera zooming can distance or embed the viewer in border spaces providing a sense of their compressed reality. Performing the Border opens with the camera's lens positioned in the front of a car as it speeds through the landscapes of the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez and its desert hinterlands. This topography covers the "entertainment" area, the industrial parks of the maquiladoras (golden factories), and thousands of shacks spread out across the desert built by the maquilas' largely female work force as unauthorized housing. …


We propose a regularized optimization problem for
computing numerical di®erentiation for the second order deriva-
tive for functions with two variables from the noisy values of the
function at scattered points, and give the proof of the existence
and uniqueness of the solution of this problem. The reconstruc-
tion scheme is also given during the proof, which is based on bi-
harmonic Green function. The convergence estimate of the regular-
ized solution to the exact solution for the regularized optimization
problem as the regularized parameter and discrepancy of noisy data
tending to zero is provided under a simple choice of regularization
parameter. In the end we give the numerical examples and analyze
the computational results.


Presents a novel system that provides high quality imaging of the interior surface of pipelines. The imaging device uses a refined conical mirror micro-surface machined from aluminum to image a 360/spl deg/ strip of the pipe in a single frame. A continuous stream of such images is transmitted to the surface where it is stored on a standard video recorder. The image sequences are processed off-line, ultimately producing high definition imagery of areas of interest. We address the design issues of the conic profile of the mirror, and some aspects of the image reconstruction/registration process.


From the Publisher:
UNDERSTANDING PARALLEL SUPERCOMPUTING is an exhaustive, applications-oriented survey of the world's largest and fastest computers. Beginning with the evolution of parallel supercomputing technology in recent history, author R. Michael Hord goes on to illustrate architectural concepts and implementations at the very center of today's cutting-edge technology. Topics featured include: technology benefits and drawbacks, software tools and programming languages, major programming concepts, sample parallel programs, algorithmic methods, both SIMD and MIMD architectures. This carefully written text will be of interest to engineers, scientists, and program managers involved in geologic exploration, aircraft design, image processing, weather modeling, operations, research, chemical synthesis, and medical applications. It will also be of practical use to computer specialists.


While attentional effects in visual selection tasks have traditionally been assigned "top-down" or "bottom-up" origins, more recently it has been proposed that there are three major factors affecting visual selection: (1) physical salience, (2) current goals and (3) selection history. Here, we look further into selection history by investigating Priming of Pop-out (POP) and the Distractor Preview Effect (DPE), two inter-trial effects that demonstrate the influence of recent history on visual search performance. Using the Ratcliff diffusion model, we model observed saccadic selections from an oddball search experiment that included a mix of both POP and DPE conditions. We find that the Ratcliff diffusion model can effectively model the manner in which selection history affects current attentional control in visual inter-trial effects. The model evidence shows that bias regarding the current trial's most likely target color is the most critical parameter underlying the effect of selection history. Our results are consistent with the view that the 3-item color-oddball task used for POP and DPE experiments is best understood as an attentional decision making task.


This paper considers the urbanisation dynamics induced by the migration decision of workers and the locational choice of the monopolistically competitive vertically linked firms. With high interregional transport costs, manufacturing and agriculture takes place in the two regions. With lower transport costs there are multiple equilibria, some involving a unique manufacturing metropolis. In a time of regional integration, the level of urban development of European countries is preserving its balanced system of cities. The emerging urban sector of less developed countries is lead instead into disporportionate metropolitan growth, converging in relative size but diverging in pattern to that of European countries.


We present a new partition-and-bound method for multistage adaptive mixed-integer optimization (AMIO) problems that extends previous work on finite adaptability. The approach analyzes the optimal solution to a static (nonadaptive) version of an AMIO problem to gain insight into which regions of the uncertainty set are restricting the objective function value. We use this information to construct partitions in the uncertainty set, leading to a finitely adaptable formulation of the problem. We use the same information to determine a lower bound on the fully adaptive solution. The method repeats this process iteratively to further improve the objective until a desired gap is reached. We provide theoretical motivation for this method, and characterize its convergence properties and the growth in the number of partitions. Using these insights, we propose and evaluate enhancements to the method such as warm starts and smarter partition creation. We describe in detail how to apply finite adaptability to multistage AMIO problems to appropriately address nonanticipativity restrictions. Finally, we demonstrate in computational experiments that the method can provide substantial improvements over a nonadaptive solution and existing methods for problems described in the literature. In particular, we find that our method produces high-quality solutions versus the amount of computational effort, even as the problem scales in the number of time stages and the number of decision variables.


AIM To determine whether successful treatment with directacting antivirals (DAA) is associated with improvements in hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and if type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) or metabolic syndrome affects sustained virologic response (SVR). METHODS We performed a retrospective analysis of all hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System treated with varying DAA therapy between 2014-2016. Separate multivariable logistic regression was performed to determine predictors of HbA1c decrease ≥ 0.5 after DAA treatment and predictors of SVR 12-wk post treatment (SVR12). RESULTS A total of 1068 patients were treated with DAA therapy between 2014-2016. The presence of T2DM or metabolic syndrome did not adversely affect SVR12. 106 patients had both HCV and T2DM. Within that cohort, patients who achieved SVR12 had lower mean HbA1c pre treatment (7.35 vs 8.60, P = 0.02), and lower mean HbA1c post-treatment compared to non-responders (6.55 vs 8.61, P = 0.01). The mean reduction in HbA1c after treatment was greater for those who achieved SVR12 than for non-responders (0.79 vs 0.01, P = 0.03). In adjusted models, patients that achieved SVR12 were more likely to have a HbA1c decrease of ≥ 0.5 than those that did not achieve SVR12 (adjusted OR = 7.24, 95%CI: 1.22-42.94). CONCLUSION In HCV patients with T2DM, successful treatment with DAA was associated with a significant reduction in HbA1c suggesting that DAA may have a role in improving insulin sensitivity. Furthermore, the presence of T2DM or metabolic syndrome does not adversely affect SVR12 rates in patients treated with DAA.


Two conjugated D–π–A organic molecules, one fluorene-ethylene dioxythiophene (FL-E) based and another phenothiazine-hydroquinone (PT-Hq) based, were synthesized and observed to form 1-dimensional microstructures in the solid state. These two molecules when mixed with rhodamine B dye (Rh-B) and photoexcited at 411 nm generated white light with Commission Internationale d'Eclairage (CIE) coordinates (0.32, 0.33) in the solution state. Similarly, white light was also obtained in the poly(methyl methacrylate) film (0.30, 0.33) and in the gelatine gel (0.31, 0.34) for the same composition of the mixture as in the solution state. The correlated colour temperatures obtained in the three phases (6111 K in solution, 6900 K in the PMMA film and 6400 K in the gelatin gel) suggest that the system emits cool white light. In order to verify the D–π–A nature of the molecules, intramolecular charge transfer studies were conducted, which revealed that both the molecules showed positive solvatochromism. The plausible mechanism behind white light emission is Forster resonance energy transfer accompanied by simultaneous emission. This was verified through fluorescence titration experiments, lifetime studies, spectral overlap and Forster distance calculations and correlated with the results obtained from cyclic voltammetry and DFT studies. This is the first report on the emission of white light from the D–π–A system by FRET.


Background: Abdominal wall hernias constitute a significant cause of morbidity and mortality globally, but more importantly, they present a more pathetic situation in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa and other developing nations. In our setting, the rate of elective repair is still too low and many cases present late, often with complications. This study aimed at documenting the spectrum, barriers to early repair, and factors that influence the outcomes of repair. Materials and Methods: A prospective study of adult patients surgically treated for abdominal wall hernia in rural southeast Nigeria between January 2014 and December 2019. Results: Overall, 975 patients were recruited: 706 (72.4%) had simple uncomplicated hernias, whereas the rest (269, 27.6%) presented in the emergency. Inguinal hernias comprised 74.1% of the cases followed by primary midline hernias (14.5%). Delayed presentation was common, with only 2.3% presenting within three months and the main reason being financial constraint (31.0%) followed by ignorance (12.2%). A third (324, 33.2%) of the patients harbored complete inguinoscrotal/inguinolabial hernias. Nearly a quarter (240, 24.6%) had comorbid illnesses, 14.9% harbored recurrent hernias, and more than a third (43.4%) had hernias with defect sizes >5 cm. Wound infection rates were 34.6% in the emergency group, 26.2% in the elderly, 20.7% for those with recurrent hernias, and 17.1% in those with comorbidities. Morbidity rates were greater in patients with hernia defects >10 cm (37.8%), inguinoscrotal/inguinolabial hernias (18.5%), and those who received bowel resection (56.7%). Generally, elevated wound infection and high overall morbidity rates were associated with emergency presentation (P = 0.000), advancing age (P = 0.030), procedures performed by a nonspecialist surgeon (P = 0.014), and large hernia variants (P = 0.000). Overall, mortality rate was 2.9%, but it was 9.7% in those with emergency repair. The main independent predictors of mortality were intestinal resection (P = 0.000), delayed presentation (0.003), advanced age (0.020), and comorbidities (P = 0.002). Conclusion: Delayed presentation, often in an emergency setup, is common among patients with abdominal wall hernias in our rural practice. Financial impediments and ignorance were the main barriers to early presentation and elective repair. Consequently, morbidity and mortality rates were high, especially in the setting of advancing age, delayed presentation, coexisting medical conditions, and bowel resection.


The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of the oral administration of type II collagen (CII) on pro‐inflammatory mediator production by synoviocytes in rats with adjuvant arthritis (AA). Sprague‐Dawley rats were fed with bovine CII either before immunization with Complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA) or after initiation of arthritis. Hind paw secondary swelling was measured and synoviocytes were harvested. Sera from portal vein of oral tolerized rats were collected and in vitro synoviocytes culture or synoviocytes‐Peyer's Patches (PP) cells coculture system were developed. Interleukin (IL)‐1 activity was measured by a mouse thymocyte activation assayed by MTT dye reduction and tumour necrosis factor (TNF) activity was measured by an L929 cytotoxicity bioassay. Nitric oxide (NO) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were measured by biochemical methods. We found that feeding with CII (5, 50 and 500 µg/kg) for 7 days before immunization significantly suppressed hind paw secondary swelling measured at day 16, 20, 24 and 28 (all P < 0·01) and pro‐inflammatory mediator (IL‐1, TNF, NO and MDA) production by synoviocytes (all P < 0·01) in rats with AA. Feeding with CII (5, 50 and 500 µg/kg) for 7 days after initiation of arthritis had a similar effect. CII (1, 10, 100 µg/ml) had no effect on IL‐1 and TNF production by synoviocytes in vitro, but CII 10 µg/ml suppressed IL‐1 and TNF production by synoviocytes‐PP cells coculture system (P < 0·01), which was antagonized by anti‐TGF‐β antibody (10 µg/ml) (P < 0·01). Portal serum (1 : 10) from oral tolerized rats suppressed IL‐1 and TNF production by synoviocytes (P < 0·01), which was also antagonized by anti‐TGF‐β antibody (10 µg/ml) (P < 0·01). We conclude that oral administration of CII had prophylactic and therapeutic effects on AA and over‐production of IL‐1, TNF, NO and MDA by synoviocytes was suppressed. Bystander active suppression may be the main mechanism of oral CII in the suppression of synoviocyte function.


With the exponential increase in the number of images that are shared online every day, the development of effective and efficient learning methods for image privacy prediction has become crucial. Prior works have used as features automatically derived object tags from images' content and manually annotated user tags. However, we believe that in addition to objects, the scene context obtained from images' content can improve the performance of privacy prediction. Hence, we propose to uncover scene-based tags from images' content using convolutional neural networks. Experimental results on a Flickr dataset show that the scene tags and object tags complement each other and yield the best performance when used in combination with user tags.


Total magnetic intensity and seismic refraction are used to define tectonic features on the inner shelf beneath Block Island and Rhode Island Sounds. Magnetic lineaments suggest a tectonic pattern of rhombo-hedral basement blocks controlled by northwest and north-northeast to northeast fault sets. Similar patterns predominate in the basement complexes of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

From the geophysical data, the Narragansett Basin is inferred to continue at least 16 to 22 km off the Rhode Island coast. Here grabens or half grabens, filled with Pennsylvanian(?) metasediments may lie on either side of a central basement horst. Another Carboniferous basin may exist farther seaward on the Long Island platform.

The Narragansett Basin probably evolved in early Carboniferous time as a pull-apart basin between en echelon zones of left-lateral northeast-trending faults. Later episodes affecting the basin include a Permian compressional event, the consequence of a regional change to dextral shear along the same fundamental faults; a second phase of east-west extension in Late Triassic–Jurassic time; and a post-Cretaceous event during which regional fracture systems were reactivated by vertical movements.


The existence and unity of a discipline called economics reside in the eye and mind of the beholder. The perception of economics as unity and disciplinarity, itself, arises in some, but not all, of the different schools of thought that we would loosely categorize as economic. Indeed, as we hope to show, the presumption of unity and disciplinarity-the idea that there is a center or 'core' of propositions, procedures, and conclusions or a shared historical 'object' of theory and practice-is suggested in the concepts and methods of some schools of economic thought, but is opposed by others. Further, we argue that the portrayal of economics as a discipline with distinct boundaries is often a discursive strategy by one school or another to hegemonize the field of economic discourse. In this way, the issue of the existence of an economics discipline and its principles of unity or dispersion is in part a political question. Its effects are felt in the hiring and firing of economic professors and practitioners, the determination of what comprises an economics curriculum, the determination of what is legitimate economic argument and what is not, the dispensation of public and private grant monies, and the differential entry into or exclusion from ideological, political, and economic centers of power and decision making. Our view is that no discipline of economics exists. Or, rather, no unified discipline exists. The 'discipline' of economics is actually an agonistic and shifting field of fundamentally different and often conflicting discourses. The dispersion and divisions that exist between the schools of thought we discuss here as 'economic' may have some regularities. But we do not see closer contiguity of these economic


(03/04/2019)  Online correction of scanning probe microscopes with pixel accuracy In this project ''Online Control of Scanning Probe Microscopes with Pixel Accuracy'', the development of an algorithm is described that enhances the measurement uncertainty of software controlled SPM by one order of magnitude from 2% to 0.2 %. The SPM is globally used as a metrological instruments for dimensional and length measurements. The sample surfaces are scanned 3-dimensionally, typically within the ranges up to 150 μm x 150 μm x 6 μm. This is done by moving a sharp tip systematically across the sample while simultaneously recording the height of the tip. Typically, the tip has a radius of curvature of 10 nm and an opening angle of 30.0 °. Even atomic resolution can be achieved. The scan movement of the tip is not linear however. This is caused by the propelling device of the SPM for the scan motion a piezoelectric ceramic. The two major non-linear responses o f the piezo to the applied control voltage are rateindependent hysteresis betwe en the scanner's position and the voltage and time-dependent creep of the cerami c. Hysteresis leads to a non-linear mapping of distances while creep changes the actual sensitivity of the ceramic. The nonlinearity of a hysteresis loop is in the order of 2-20% depending on the piezo material used and the scan range. The change in sensitivity is up to 20% as well, depending on the scan frequency. Current software controlled SPM are equipped with an algorithm that changes the shape of the control voltage online in a way to produce a linear piezo movement. The algorithm typically contains 5 7 parameters which have to be calibrated manually. Still, non-linear errors remain in the order of 1-2%. One pixel in a 512x 512 image corresponds to 0.2% per direction. This goal of measurement accuracy i s reached with the algorithm developed in this thesis. Three different SPM are analyzed for their non-linearity. Two commercial tube sc anners are applied with a maximum scan range in x and y of 40.0 μm and 160.0 μm as well as one specially designed stack scanner with a maximum range of 5.0 μm. For the tube scanners, a 1-dimensional line pattern with a reference period of 3 .0 μm and a 2-dimensional grating with a reference pitch distance of 200.0 nm are applied as length standards. The non-linearity of the scanner is then traceable to the distances on the samples. The stack scanner is equipped with capacitive sensors that measure the position of the scanner during the scan process. The s ignal of the sensors can be used as closed loop feedback signal. At first a model is set up to describe the measured hysteresis. An ordinary linear differential equation proves to yield the desired accuracy of 0.2% when simulating the measured hysteresis. This is done with 5 model parameters and verified for 99% of the scan range of the SPM. In addition to this, the model is not restricted to a periodic scan movement in the lateral plane as most online models are. It is flexible enough to even describe the random rate-independent movement in the z-direction. After simulating the hysteresis, the model is enhanced in order to describe time-dependent creep during the scan motion. The new model contains 7 parameters and yields the desired accuracy of 0.2% for a large choice of scan ranges and scan frequencies. The parameters are determined in a numerically optimum way by using a least-squares-fitting technique. After having successfully simulated the measured non-linearities, the model is inverted in order to form an algorithm for online correction during the scan process. Also the online algorithm is tested on two different scanners. The residual non-linearity of online corrected images is in the order of 0.2 % for both scanners: The error in length changes between ± 1% from experiment to experiment. Within one experiment however, the variation of the errors is 0.3%. Therefore it is concluded that the online algorithm is stable within the set goal of 0.2% measuring uncertainty, but the piezo changes arbitrarily in the its sensitivity. Further results of this thesis include the simulation of transient hysteresis as occurs at a change of scan conditions. This is also applied to the z-direction. Here an overshoot at a large step is qualitatively simulated and explained by hysteretic behaviour.


Purpose: The purpose of the article is to build an analytical framework for measuring the geopolitical potential of the states in the Three Seas Initiative region and, on this basis, to infer which states are leaders in the region. The article integrates theoretical principles of geoeconomics with practical indicators that, in the authors' opinion, can serve as analytical tools to determine the geoeconomic power of states in international relations and security implications. Design/Methodology/Approach: The methods used in this study are comparative analysis and inductive method to build general theorems. The above methods consist of research procedures such as describing, defining, classifying. Classification and taxonomy of variables were used to analyze the potential of countries. The spectrum of methods used guarantees the objectivity of the results obtained. Findings: Geoeconomics as a paradigm of international security research meets the cognitive requirements of security and political sciences. It has the appropriate theoretical foundations necessary for conceptualization and enables the construction of a cognitive framework relating to socio-economic facts. Practical implications: Geoeconomics represents a new quality of potentiometric cognition applicable to international relations. It makes it possible to discern the potentials of states, to identify leaders, and to relate states and regions to general properties of international order (geopolitics and geostrategy) in the context of international security studies.


Background: Calcium dobesilate is an angioprotective agent that has positive effects on hemorheologic al parameters. It is an antioxidant that increases endothelialderived vasodilator substance secretion, there are none that analyze its effects during the postoperative period of patients undergoing myocardial revascularization. Objective: We aimed to determine the effects of calcium dobesilate on hemorheological parameters, such as reduced glutathione and malondialdehyde in patients with ischemic heart disease undergoing myocardial revascularization in the postoperative period. Methods: One hundred and thirty-four patients operated for coronary hear t disease were included in this study. Hemorheological, oxidant and antioxidant parameters were measured two days after surgery and after a period of treatment with calcium dobesilate. Then, 500 mg of calcium dobesilate was given twice a day to one group of 68 patients for three months. The control group was composed of 66 patients who did not receive this medication. Results: The increase in the erythrocyte deformability index was found to be significant compared with both the pretreatment values and with the 1 st and 2 nd values of the control group after calcium dobesilate administration, whereas there were no significant changes in blood viscosity, glutathione (GSH) or malondialdehyde (MDA) values after the calcium dobesilate administration. The same improvement in the CCS class was observed in patients regardless of they received the calcium dobesilate treatment. Conclusion: In the present investigation, the same improvement in the CCS class was observed in patients regardless of they received the calcium dobesilate treatment. Improvements with calcium dobesilate were statistically significant only in the increase in er ythrocyte flexibility.


Cytochrome c oxidase subunit VIIa is specified by two nuclear genes, one ( COX7AH ) producing a heart/muscle-specific isoform and the other ( COX7AL ) a form ex- pressed in all tissues. We have isolated both genes to examine their transcriptional regulation. Here, we char- acterize the core promoter of COX7AL and show that a 92-base pair region flanking the 5 (cid:42) -end promotes most of the activity of this gene. The 92-bp basal promoter con- tains sites for the nuclear respiratory factors NRF-1 and NRF-2, which have been shown to contribute to the tran- scription of a number of nuclear genes involved in mitochondrial respiratory activity, and also at least four Sp1 motifs. We show that both the NRF-1 and NRF-2 binding sites are functional in COX7AL and present ev- idence suggesting that interaction between the NRF-1 site and an upstream element contributes to expression. electrons


For-profit art galleries are making news for the donations they provide to nonprofit art organizations to support exhibitions of artists represented by such galleries. Yet nonprofit art organizations are committed to advancing art for the public interest, not for private profit. This Article examines whether there are any meaningful limits on gallery donations that support art exhibitions at nonprofit arts organizations, focusing on the legal framework governing federal tax-exempt status, as well as the self-regulatory rules and informal norms of the art industry. Does the existing regime allow gallery-supported art exhibitions or are they activities that do not further nonprofit art organizations' missions? What short-term and long-term solutions are available and appropriate in light of the causes and context of gallery-supported art exhibitions? These questions are animated by the broader dialogue about equitable access to publicly funded resources, with the answers having important implications for what it means to promote art that is representative of American society.


Abstract  The mental health‐care system in Japan remains hospital‐based, and has the largest number of psychiatric beds per capita in the world. However, serious discussion about deinstitutionalization has recently begun. This study attempts to determine the proportion of inpatients that would benefit from community‐based programs, as judged by hospital psychiatrists, and to evaluate the need for community resources for their community placement. Inpatients with schizophrenia from 139 hospitals were randomly selected. Data on the psychiatrists' judgment of discharge and required resources for community placement were obtained for 2758 subjects. Among the subjects, 1097 (39.8%) were judged to have the possibility of being discharged using community resources (possible discharge group; PDG). Provided that the proportion of PDG was 40%, controlling for the hospital background variables, the number of schizophrenia inpatients with a hospital stay of ≥1 year who could be discharged from psychiatric hospitals in Japan was estimated to be 66 000. For the PDG, the required community resources, including accommodation, daytime activity, and daily living support services, were calculated. The numbers of governmental targets for community resources, including community accommodation, daytime activities, and daily living support services may have been underestimated.


Martian meteorites are the only direct samples from Mars, thus far. Currently, there are a total of 262 individual samples originating from at least 11 ejection events. Geochemical analyses, through techniques that are also used on terrestrial rocks, provide fundamental insights into the bulk composition, differentiation and evolution, mantle heterogeneity, and role of secondary processes, such as aqueous alteration and shock, on Mars. Martian meteorites display a wide range in mineralogy and chemistry, but are predominantly basaltic in composition. Over the past 6 years, the number of martian meteorites recovered has almost doubled allowing for studies that evaluate these meteorites as suites of igneous rocks. However, the martian meteorites represent a biased sampling of the surface of Mars with unknown ejection locations. The geology of Mars cannot be unraveled solely by analyzing these meteorites. Rocks analyzed by rovers on the surface of Mars are of distinct composition to the meteorites, highlighting the importance of Mars missions, especially sample return. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will collect and cache—for eventual return to Earth—over 30 diverse surface samples from Jezero crater. These returned samples will allow for Earth‐based state‐of‐the‐art analyses on diverse martian rocks with known field context. The complementary study of returned samples and meteorites will help to constrain the evolution of the martian interior and surface. Here, we review recent findings and advances in the study of martian meteorites and examine how returned samples would complement and enhance our knowledge of Mars.


We describe a specialized dynamic programming algorithm for factory crane schedul- ing. An innovative data structure controls the memory requirements of the state space and enables solution of problems of realistic size. The algorithm finds optimal space- time trajectories for two factory cranes or hoists that move along a single overhead track. Each crane is assigned a sequence of pickups and deliveries at specified locations that must be performed within given time windows. The cranes must not interfere with each other, although one may yield to the other. The state space representa- tion permits a wide variety of constraints and objective functions. It is stored in a compressed data structure that uses a cartesian product of intervals of states and an array of two-dimensional circular queues. We also show that only certain types of trajectories need be considered. The algorithm found optimal solutions in less than a minute for medium-sized instances of the problem (160 tasks, spanning four hours). It can also be used to create benchmarks for tuning heuristic algorithms that solve larger instances.


Decadence eludes definition, but critics tend to concur on the movement's transgressive and uncommercial status in the British literary field. This essay questions those associations by exploring a current of archetypal decadent French novels translated by and marketed to a mainstream Anglophone audience: Joris-Karl Huysmans's En Route (1895, trans. 1896) and La cathédrale (1898, trans. 1898) and Pierre Louÿs's Aphrodite: Mœurs antiques (1896, trans. 1900 and 1906) and La femme et le pantin (1898, trans. 1908). By reading letters, memoirs, and prefaces alongside periodical reviews and a publisher's archive, the essay sheds light on the novels' invisible translators and reveals the fiscal and legal viability of "domesticated decadence." Doing so models how translation studies and book-historical methods can revise deep-set tenets of literary history. These "poisonous" epitomes of the fin de siècle in fact circulated freely across the Channel, reaching more than the happy few.


People with Down syndrome (DS), caused by trisomy of chromosome 21 have a greatly increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). This is in part because of triplication of a chromosome 21 gene, APP. This gene encodes amyloid precursor protein, which is cleaved to form amyloid-β that accumulates in the brains of people who have AD. Recent experimental results demonstrate that a gene or genes on chromosome 21, other than APP, when triplicated significantly accelerate amyloid-β pathology in a transgenic mouse model of amyloid-β deposition. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that cysteine cathepsin activity influences APP cleavage and amyloid-β accumulation. Located on human chromosome 21 (Hsa21) is an endogenous inhibitor of cathepsin proteases, CYSTATIN B (CSTB) which is proposed to regulate cysteine cathepsin activity in vivo. Here we determined if three copies of the mouse gene Cstb is sufficient to modulate amyloid-β accumulation and cathepsin activity in a transgenic APP mouse model. Duplication of Cstb resulted in an increase in transcriptional and translational levels of Cstb in the mouse cortex but had no effect on the deposition of insoluble amyloid-β plaques or the levels of soluble or insoluble amyloid-β42, amyloid-β40, or amyloid-β38 in 6-month old mice. In addition, the increased CSTB did not alter the activity of cathepsin B enzyme in the cortex of 3-month or 6-month old mice. These results indicate that the single-gene duplication of Cstb is insufficient to elicit a disease-modifying phenotype in the dupCstb x tgAPP mice, underscoring the complexity of the genetic basis of AD-DS and the importance of multiple gene interactions in disease.


Adhesion complexes (ACs) are large macromolecular complexes of integrins and associated proteins that connect the actin cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix. In migrating cells, ACs are highly dynamic -- forming and maturing at the cell front and disassembling at the cell rear. The turnover of ACs enables and localises the necessary traction forces required for cell migration. There is evidence for the spatiotemporal recruitment of specific proteins during AC maturation or disassembly; however, a holistic understanding of the compositional changes to ACs during these states is lacking. To this end, we sought to characterise the dynamic changes that occur at ACs during turnover using a mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics approach. A major challenge in studying AC turnover is the desynchronised nature of AC formation, maturation and disassembly within a population of cells. Therefore a nocodazole-washout assay was used to synchronise microtubule-induced AC maturation and disassembly. To study the dynamics of AC turnover by MS, an AC isolation method was optimised for use with the nocodazole-washout assay. Subsequently, the maturation of ACs by the loss of microtubules was studied by MS-based proteomics, and it was found that this resulted in the overall accumulation of adhesion proteins, and also the conversion of fibrillar adhesions to focal adhesions. Studying the dynamic process of AC disassembly requires a sensitive MS quantification method; as such, label-free quantitative methods were compared, and it was found that LC-MS peak ion intensity quantification performed better than spectral counting. Using optimised methodologies for isolation of ACs and MS quantification, the dynamics of AC disassembly was analysed over the course of the nocodazole-washout assay. It was found that in general, microtubules were enriched around ACs, whereas many structural AC proteins decreased over time. In summary, we have optimised methods for the study of ACs by MS-based proteomics, and applied these methods to the study of AC turnover.


Overnight consolidation processes are thought to operate in a selective manner, such that important (i.e. future-relevant) memories are strengthened ahead of irrelevant information. Using an online protocol, we sought to replicate the seminal finding that the memory benefits of sleep are enhanced when people expect a future test [Wilhelm et al., 2011]. Participants memorised verbal paired associates to a criterion of 60 percent (Experiment 1) or 40 percent correct (Experiment 2) before a 12-hour delay containing overnight sleep (sleep group) or daytime wakefulness (wake group). Critically, half of the participants were informed that they would be tested again the following day, whereas the other half were told that they would carry out a different set of tasks. We observed a robust memory benefit of overnight consolidation, with the sleep group outperforming the wake group in both experiments. However, knowledge of an upcoming test had no impact on sleep-associated consolidation in either experiment, suggesting that overnight memory processes were not enhanced for future-relevant information. These findings, together with other failed replication attempts, show that sleep does not provide selective support to memories that are deemed relevant for the future.


Important statistics of polymerization reactions, whether of the condensation or addition type, can be calculated rather simply and in a standardized way, by an adaptation of Good's stochastic theory of cascade processes. Examples of such statistics are the various molecular weight averages, the gel point, and the sol fraction. The use of generating functions in the theory greatly reduces the use of probability theory and it allows the direct calculation of the required statistics without the need of explicit expressions for the distributions concerned, or for the summations required in calculating their moments. The generating functions required are mostly combinations of powers of the basic form (1— α) θ1 + αθ2 where θ1 and θ2 are dummy variables (or unity) and α some parameter measuring the conversion of a functionality. Ordinary (non-vectorial) generating functions suffice when the system contains essentially one type of repeat unit, but for copolymers (in a broad sense) generalization to vectorial generating functions is required. Calculations of the former type, useful in describing the principles involved, include the calculation of new sol-fraction equations for simple polycondensation reactions, and a somewhat more exact sol-fraction equation for the vulcanization of chains initially distributed randomly in length. Copolymerization systems are then exemplified by calculating the weight-average molecular weight and sol fraction for the system glycerol/adipic acid from general formulae derived. Exact allowance is made for the statistical effects due to complete or partial elimination of water and to the difference in rate of esterification of primary and secondary hydroxyls. The gel-point condition for a system involving copolymerization of s different units is generally found by equating to zero a determinant of order s. The mechanism of polycondensation reactions could be elucidated by comparing experimental measurements of the statistical parameters with those calculated from postulated kinetic schemes using the unified and comparatively simple theory here presented.


Aluminium powder has been mechanically milled using different amounts of process control agent (PCA). Mechanically alloyed aluminium powder (MA Al) was prepared by attrition milling in the presence of 1.5 and 3wt.% of an EBS wax. Milling was carried out in vacuum during 10 h. Milled powders were consolidated by a press-and-sintering method. This consolidation method is not usually employed with MA Al powders. The amount of dispersed carbides formed in the Al powder increases with the percentage of PCA. These carbides restrain Al grain growth during sintering, resulting in consolidated compacts with a grain size of about 550 nm. Thus, these PM materials can be considered ultrafine grained materials. Due to grain refinement and dispersion strengthening, the tensile strength of MA Al specimens is increased remarkably.


The interferon (IFN)-induced enzyme 2-5A synthetase was elevated in mononuclear cells from both serum IFN-positive and -negative systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. This suggests that a much higher percentage of patients than previously thought produce endogenous IFN. These results may partly explain findings that mononuclear cells from SLE patients are deficient in IFN production in vitro in response to certain IFN inducers. Although normal lymphocytes can produce an acid- labile alpha IFN after stimulation with C. parvum in vitro, the reason for endogenous production of this unusual alpha IFN by SLE patients remains unknown.


BACKGROUND
Nutritional intake has been overlooked as a possible contributing factor to lower-extremity physical performance, especially in homebound elderly persons.

OBJECTIVES
Our objectives were to examine the association of a summary measure of calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, and phosphorus intakes with 1) the inability to perform lower-extremity physical performance tests and 2) declining levels of summary lower-extremity physical performance.

DESIGN
Baseline data from the Nutrition and Function Study were used to calculate a summary musculoskeletal nutrient (SMN) score as a measure of nutrient intake (factor analysis) and to examine the association of SMN intake with physical performance (multivariable regression models) among recipients of home-delivered meals who completed an in-home assessment (anthropometric measures and performance-based physical tests) and three 24-h dietary recalls.

RESULTS
Among the 321 participants, elderly age, black race, body mass index (in kg/m2) > or = 35, arthritis, frequent fear of falling, and lowest SMN intake were independently associated with being unable to perform functional tests. The lowest SMN intake and the highest BMI were both significantly associated with increasingly worse levels of lower-extremity physical performance, after adjustment for health and demographic characteristics.

CONCLUSIONS
Considering the importance of identifying short- and long-term outcomes that help elderly persons maintain adequate nutritional status and remain functionally independent at home, the results of this study suggest the need to identify intervention strategies that target the improvement of dietary intake and physical performance. Further investigation is indicated to identify the manner in which nutritional status contributes to the preservation or deterioration of physical performance in homebound elderly persons.


Abstract The college composition classroom, specifically one devoted to writing across the curriculum, is a perfect place to introduce environmental ethics as a preparation for future classes in environmental literature, After developing a basic understanding of philosophical ethics and securing basic writing skills in parallel, students can move on to engage with seminal texts of environmental ethics. Next, they can tackle specific environmental issues such as logging, nuclear power, recycling, or global warming by discussing and writing about both sides of each topic. Thus, they achieve the outcome of arguing regardless of their personal opinion as well as gathering information about nature. Finally, the basis of an environmental ethics allows the students to come to terms with belletristic environmental literature in a way that pure literature classes cannot, leaving them better writers and readers. ********** While the importance of nature in belletristic literature from the Bible to The Poisonwood Bible has almost become a commonplace, the actual basis of our engagement with the environment is not always as clear. In particular, there is no social or cultural consensus for the ethical foundation from which we evaluate our own lives as well as artistic and literary representations of the environment. The most obvious philosophical school that we might draw on here is utilitarianism. However, even weighing the benefits of actions that have an impact on the environment against their drawbacks begs the question of whether nature has any value in its own right, as opposed to its effect on humans in the present and future. For that reason, it is important that we encourage our students to question their preconceptions and develop an environmental ethics. In addition, only this philosophical foundation really provides a framework in which to evaluate environmental fictional literature, which in many classes is simply introduced into the literature curriculum without criteria for assessment. The college composition classroom is a good place to pursue these outcomes because it is an arena where students are trained in argumentation, the focus there is not exclusively on the environment, and this course usually precedes literature classes. My own success teaching a class in environmental ethics at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans was mixed, but in the experience I learned how to construct a more effective class. Writing and Argumentation As all composition teachers at the college and university level know, writing is inseparable from argument. Just as our students cannot produce good essays without knowing the basic rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar, linguistically perfect texts can never receive good grades without interesting content. Therefore, composition classes need to have subject matter. Philosophical topics particularly lend themselves to this task because they inherently require articulating arguments rather than just transmitting knowledge--most students I have taught are used to collecting information from advanced high school classes, but are not yet familiar with casting it into an argumentative form. Within the field of philosophy, the environment is especially useful because it concerns students in their daily lives. Every student drinks from aluminum cans, prints reams of paper, breathes polluted air, and eats mass-produced food and therefore has an inherent interest in environmental ethics. Of course, composition classes--which most students have to take in their first year at college--can never be exclusively dedicated to the environment since the mechanics of writing play an important part. Still, that learning cannot take place in a vacuum but can be achieved with environmental topics in mind. In any case, it is perhaps not a bad thing if nature is not the sole focus of the class, since in my experience our students perceive such a concentration as their professors trying to promote a progressive ideological agenda--the stereotype of the 'tenured radical. …


OBJECTIVE In young men (mean age 25 years) with borderline hypertension the authors have documented a reduction in systolic blood pressure and muscle sympathetic nerve activity 60 mins after 45 mins of submaximal treadmill exercise. The aim of this study was to determine if post exercise hypotension occurs in normotensive young men, and if so, if it is accompanied by a decrease in sympathetic nerve activity. DESIGN Replicating a previous protocol, the authors recorded blood pressure, heart rate, plasma noradrenaline and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (microneurography; peroneal nerve) before and 60 mins after submaximal treadmill exercise. SUBJECTS Ten healthy male volunteers (mean age 28 +/- 5 years). INTERVENTION Forty-five minutes of treadmill exercise at 70% of resting heart rate reserve. MAIN RESULTS In contrast to borderline hypertensive subjects, prior exercise had no effect on either systolic or diastolic blood pressure or muscle sympathetic nerve activity in healthy volunteers. Plasma noradrenaline concentrations were similar before and after exercise. Resting heart rate (56 +/- 3 versus 70 +/- 3 beats/min; P less than 0.002), and sympathetic burst frequency (10 +/- 4 versus 20 +/- 2 bursts/min; P = 0.026) were lower in normal than in borderline hypertensive men. CONCLUSIONS At rest, discharge to muscle sympathetic nerves is increased in young borderline hypertensive men; and blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity are decreased after exercise in borderline hypertensive but not normotensive men. These observations suggest that the depressor response to prolonged rhythmic exercise in young men with borderline hypertension may be due in part to transient suppression of augmented central sympathetic outflow.


Prior research on Internet advertising has focused on the input and process components of banner ad design, but fail to address the influence of visual display principles on the output component of banner ad design. This may account for the decreasing online banner ad click-through rates, which are significantly below 1%. Motivated by the lack of research on the influence of visual display principles on banner ad design, we have developed the Extended Advertising Network Model. The theoretical background for the Extended Advertising Network Model is the visual perception theories. The Extended Advertising Network Model provides guidelines on how to effectively design advertising network firms and banner ads. Also, the model encourages banner ad designers to pay equal attention to all the components that are involved in banner ad design in order to draw the attention of web users, thus increasing merchants and vendors' revenues and online banner ad click-through rates.


This is a comprehensive and authoritative reference source for students of Japanese. It has a 16,000 word basic vocabulary for all levels of study, easy-to-find romanized entries listed in alphabetical order and sample sentences in romanized and standard Japanese script and English translation. With a copy of this dictionary in hand, students of Japanese have an up-to-date and practical reference that they can depend on as they progress through their studies. Until now, even beginners have had to struggle with inadequate materials that require at least a basic


We examine the role of managerial talent and its interaction with managerial practices in determining firm performance. We build a matched firm-director panel dataset for the universe of limited liability companies in Italy, tracking individuals across different firms over time. We define managerial talent as management's capacity to boost firms' total factor productivity, estimated using a two-way fixed effects model. Combining the data with survey information on a representative sample of firms, we then document that our measure of talent correlates with ex-ante and ex-post indicators of ability, i.e. managers' educational attainment and their forecast precision with respect to the firm's future performance. Most important, we leverage information on the adoption of managerial practices within the firm to examine potential synergies between managerial talent and structured managerial practices, thus bridging two separate strands of the literature. While talent and structured practices do boost firm productivity on their own, there is evidence of complementarities between the two. These findings hold both in a cross-sectional setting and in a panel analysis that accounts for time-invariant firm heterogeneity. Overall, our results indicate that the effectiveness of managerial practices depends on managers' ability to implement them.


We propose that the concept of liquids characterized by a given locally preferred structure (LPS) could help in understanding the observed phenomenon of polyamorphism. "True polyamorphism" would involve the competition between two (or more) distinct LPS, one favored at low pressure because of its low energy and one favored at high pressure because of its small specific volume, as in tetrahedrally coordinated systems. "Apparent polyamorphism" could be associated with the existence of a poorly crystallized defect-ordered phase with a large unit cell and small crystallites, which may be illustrated by the metastable glacial phase of the fragile glassformer triphenylphosphite; the apparent polyamorphism might result from structural frustration, i. e., a competition between the tendency to extend the LPS and a global constraint that prevents tiling of the whole space by the LPS.


This paper aims to present the steps, methods and technologies used to create the new management module of the automatic allocation of students' optional assignments for mid-term projects, homework and graduation thesis, using a virtual education system. The Easy-Learning platform provides a framework for any type of on-line or off-line activity in distance/virtual learning, which is useful for tutors and students at any level of education and training. To achieve this new integrated module within the platform, PHP5, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 technologies, MariaDB database and REST, Android, Apache (web server) services were used, as well as a number of methodologies for securing communication between a server application and a client application. The paper presents in detail the new proposed procedure and emphasizes the achieved benefits and progress, with numerous examples to illustrate the methodology of design, implementation and use of this module.

The Easy-Learning platform is a complex e-learning system running on a web server (local or remote) and was created with dynamic web pages using Symfony framework, based on the object-oriented side of the PHP web programming language. Among other features, the platform uses MariaDB as a database management system for storing and retrieving information. The main reason to choose the development environment is given by the minimum requirements needed for the applications (running on the server).

Initially, the allocation of optional assignments (for mid-term projects, homework or graduation thesis) was difficult due to numerous, simultaneous and frequently overlapped requests received by tutors from different students and to the fact that the records and the allocation process were not dynamically displayed, so that a real-time evidence was impossible to achieve.

The new module proposed by the present paper automates the optimal allocation of optional assignments. The tutors are responsible for entering the system the items of the optional assignments list. The details are as follows: ID (unique item identifier); Title; Type (project/license/dissertation); Coordinator (tutor); Years of study; Series of study; Actions: details, assigned students, edit, delete. The details of an item are: Title; Description; Requirements; Type (project/license/dissertation); Years of study; Status (inactive/active).

In order to correctly complete the allocation process, an item must be assigned to a unique student. The tutor has the possibility of adding manually a student to the assigned items list. This process implies redirecting to a form where the tutor needs to select the appropriate student for a particular item.

The Easy-Learning platform has undergone many changes over the years, from a simple project that has become complex and efficient, satisfying the needs of a virtual classroom. Easy-Learning is now a tool that may help students and tutors both. It can contribute to centralize information useful to students, thus avoiding congestion situations. Nowadays, the platform has achieved a high degree of maturity, using Symfony's framework - which significantly simplifies repetitive tasks and enables automatic generation of entities - but also other modern technologies. The new procedure of automatically allocation of optional assignments benefits from all these facilities.


This doctoral thesis is focused on radiation induced oxidative dissolution of UO2, Pd-doped UO2, SIMFUEL (as model substances for spent nuclear fuel) and UN (a possible future fuel) and inhibition of the oxidative dissolution. H2O2 is assumed to be the most important oxidant for spent nuclear fuel dissolution under deep repository conditions. The dissolution of uranium has been studied by oxidation by added H2O2 and by gamma irradiation in the presence and absence of carbonate. In carbonate free solutions very low amounts of uranium are dissolved from UO2 due to formation of metastudtite, UO4·2H2O on the UO2 surface which blocks the surface from further oxidation. Metastudite formation was confirmed with Raman spectroscopy. In the presence of carbonate, the concentration of dissolved uranium increases linearly over time for UO2 and UN, due to the complex formation between carbonate and oxidized uranium. For SIMFUEL a large fraction of H2O2 is consumed by catalytic decomposition under all conditions examined. This results in very low amounts of uranium released. Metastudtite formation was not observed on SIMFUEL. The oxidation during gamma radiolysis shows a larger difference in dissolution rates between UO2 and UN in carbonate solutions compared to upon oxidation by added H2O2. UN was found to have a lower dissolution rate, most probably because 50 % more oxidant is needed to reach the soluble U(VI). It was shown that the redox reactivity of UO2 appears to increase ~1.3 times, after being irradiated at doses > 40 kGy. The effect is permanent and delayed. The presence of sulfide shows an inhibiting effect on radiation induced dissolution due to scavenging of radiolytic oxidants and reduction of U(VI). The catalytic properties of Pd (as a model for the noble metal particles containing Mo, Ru, Tc, Pd and Rh, formed by the fission products) are examined. It was found that Pd has a catalytic effect on the reaction between H2O2 and H2 and the second order rate constant is determined to (2.1±0.1)x10-5 m s-1. The reaction between UO2 and H2O2 is catalyzed by Pd. Pd also has a catalytic effect on the reduction of U(VI) by H2 both in aqueous solution, rate constant (1.5±0.1)x10-5, and in the solid phase, rate constants 4x10-7 m s-1 and 7x10-6 m s-1 for pellets with 1 and 3 % Pd respectively. These values are very close to the diffusion limit for these systems. The catalytic effect was not influenced by the presence of sulfide. The catalytic effect in the solid phase reduction shows that the expected conditions in a deep repository, 40 bar H2 and 1 % noble metal particle content, is sufficient to stop the dissolution.


ABSTRACT Recently, it has been shown that some medusae are capable of swimming very efficiently, i.e. with a low cost of transport, and that this is in part due to passive energy recapture (PER) which occurs during bell relaxation. We compared the swimming kinematics among a diverse array of medusae, varying in taxonomy, morphology and propulsive and foraging modes, in order to evaluate the prevalence of PER in medusae. We found that while PER was common among taxa, the magnitude of the contribution to overall swimming varied greatly. The ability of medusae to utilize PER was not related to morphology and swimming performance but was controlled by their swimming kinematics. Utilizing PER required the medusae to pause after bell expansion and individuals could modulate their PER by changing their pause duration. PER can greatly enhance swimming efficiency but there appear to be trade-offs associated with utilizing PER. Summary: The use of passive energy recapture is widespread among medusae and its extent is regulated primarily through the pause duration between swimming cycles.


Flexible behaviour requires cognitive-control mechanisms to efficiently resolve conflict between competing information and alternative actions. Whether a global neural resource mediates all forms of conflict or this is achieved within domainspecific systems remains debated. We use a novel fMRI paradigm to orthogonally manipulate rule, response and stimulus-based conflict within a full-factorial design. Whole-brain voxelwise analyses show that activation patterns associated with these conflict types are distinct but partially overlapping within Multiple Demand Cortex (MDC), the brain regions that are most commonly active during cognitive tasks. Region of interest analysis shows that most MDC sub-regions are activated for all conflict types, but to significantly varying levels. We propose that conflict resolution is an emergent property of distributed brain networks, the functional-anatomical components of which place on a continuous, not categorical, scale from domain-specialised to domain general. MDC brain regions place towards one end of that scale but display considerable functional heterogeneity.


We study the subgame perfect equilibria of two player stochastic games with perfect monitoring and geometric discounting. A novel algorithm is developed for calculating the discounted payoffs that can be attained in equilibrium. This algorithm generates a sequence of tuples of payoffs vectors, one payoff for each state, that move around the equilibrium payoff sets in a clockwise manner. The trajectory of these "pivot" payoffs asymptotically traces the boundary of the equilibrium payoff correspondence. We also provide an implementation of our algorithm, and preliminary simulations indicate that it is more efficient than existing methods. The theoretical results that underlie the algorithm also yield a bound on the number of extremal equilibrium payoffs.


ABSTRACT In several Gram-positive bacterial species, the global transcriptional regulatory protein CodY adjusts the expression of many metabolic genes, apparently in response to changes in the pools of specific metabolites, i.e., the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) isoleucine, leucine, and valine (ILV) and the nucleoside triphosphate GTP. CodY not only responds to these metabolites as measured in vitro but also regulates the genes that direct their synthesis. We have constructed a set of strains lacking binding sites for the CodY protein in cis at loci coding for the ILV biosynthetic machinery, effectively overexpressing these genes in an attempt to modulate the ILV input signal to CodY. Metabolite analyses of strains derepressed for genes needed for ILV synthesis revealed more than a 6-fold increase in the valine pool and a 2-fold increase in the isoleucine and leucine pools. Accumulation of the branched-chain amino acids was accompanied by a 24-fold induction of the bkd operon (required for branched-chain fatty acid synthesis) and 6-fold hyperrepression of the CodY-regulated yhdG and yufN genes, demonstrating that CodY perceives intracellular fluctuations in at least one if its input signals. We conclude that changes in the rate of endogenous ILV synthesis serve as an important signal for CodY-mediated gene regulation.


Was the militarization of American foreign policy and the subsequent invasion of Iraq something new and unique caused by the events of September 11, 2001? Or, is militarism part of old American traditions that were in place well before the events of that day and the administration of George W. Bush? This article examines the campaign to mobilize the American public behind the Iraq War of 2003, and argues that American militarism had taken shape long before the attacks of 9/11. This militarism has deep roots in a culture that is obsessed with the military, associates militarism with morality and evangelical Christian values and finally the American South's 'Culture of Honor,' which is in favor of hawkish approaches to defense and foreign policy issues.


We present a novel approach for achieving fine phase-tuning control of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer-based photonic switch. We demonstrate the concept in a fabricated silicon photonic switch containing dual thermo-optic phase tuners driven from identical monolithically integrated low-resolution digital-to-analog converters. The delivered resolution gains and additional power overheads of the demonstrated approach are assessed through experimental measurements. Using the approach, we show a resolution improvement of more than a factor of seven with only a 1.7% increase in power dissipation.


Protein-protein interactions are very important for many biological processes as this often leads to a particular protein complex to perform particular function. Thus, to identify different protein interactions helps to understand the function performed by that protein. The interaction between obligate and non-obligate complexes with each other is a particular problem that has drawn the attention of the research community in the past few years. In this thesis, we discuss this classification problem and show an efficient model to distinguish these two types of protein complexes correctly. We used new features such as desolvation energies for atom and amino acid type to compare with some other features which have already been used to validate and evaluate our model and test the strength of our newly selected features. We also used some well-known feature selection techniques to perform classification with almost the same or higher accuracy but in time efficient manner. To achieve a better insight of this classification, we also performed some visual and postanalysis, and biochemically driven feature selection to achieve a better perspective about the reasons for interaction of these types of complexes.


The Sauer-Shelah lemma provides an exact upper bound on the size of set families with bounded Vapnik-Chervonekis dimension. When applied to lattices represented as closure systems, this lemma outlines a class of extremal lattices obtaining this bound. Here we show that the Sauer-Shelah bound can be easily generalized to arbitrary antichains, and extremal objects for this generalized bound are exactly convex geometries. We also show that the problem of classification of antichains admitting such extremal objects is NP-complete.


Digital information has become a social infrastructure and with the expansion of the Internet, network infrastructure has become an indispensable part of social life and industrial activity for mankind. The idea of using existing electronics in smart home appliances and connecting them to the Internet is a new dimension along which technologies continue to grow, and in recent years mankind has witnessed an upsurge of usage of devices such as smart phone, smart television, home health-care device, smart LED light bulbs system, etc. Their build-in internet-controlled function has made them quite attractive to many segments of consumers and smart phone has become a common gadget for social networking. There are, however, serious challenges which need to be addressed as these tiny devices are designed for specific functions and lack processing capacity required for most security software. This research explores how these internet-enabled smart devices can be turned into very dangerous spots for distributed attacks purposes by cybercriminals for various ill intensions in a pinpointed manner. It then introduces a new approach to deal with such problems by taking advantage of the anonymous communication of the Onion Router (hereafter: TOR). It compares pros and cons of using anonymous communication scheme and justifies it be an efficient countermeasure to most attack scenarios.


ABSTRACT In this study, we examined the mechanism for the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese character reading in a group of Hong Kong primary school children when they were in grade two (n = 176, mean age = 8.07) and grade three (n = 163, mean age = 9.02). The results showed that morphological awareness, morpheme family size and the interaction effect of the two were all significant predictors of character reading in concurrent and longitudinal models. The interaction effect of morphological awareness and morpheme family size indicated that for morphemes with small family sizes, morphological awareness contributed more to character reading; for morphemes with large family sizes, it contributed less to character reading. The results suggested that one mechanism for the relationship between morphological awareness and character reading in Chinese children is that morphological awareness helps children to retrieve the word-internal context during character learning.


Compared to information on nanocrystals, that on amorphous nanosolids is on the whole much less organized. On the other hand, growth of structural data in recent years on the latter, that deal with the range of atomic order (short range order and beyond), coordinations of core and surface atoms and similar aspects in amorphous nanoparticles through computer simulation and other techniques, has been very impressive. Similar generation of information is also true for physical phenomena like crystallization and melting. Finally, interesting properties revealed through experimentations point toward important applications. The present article makes a brief survey of these areas and attempts at reaching certain conclusions mostly specific for amorphous nanostructures with respect to the crystalline counterparts. The article analyzes the structural data to try and explain different properties of amorphous nanosolids and also their position in the applications scenario.


Introduction

MCL is an aggressive B-cell lymphoma with a poor overall prognosis. For patients who fail initial therapy, conventional chemotherapy achieves only short-term remissions. Ibrutinib is a first-in-class, once-daily, oral, covalent inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase that has been shown to be highly active for previously treated MCL patients (overall response rate [ORR] ~65%; complete response [CR] ~20%) in single-arm phase 2 studies. Temsirolimus has demonstrated significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS) vs investigator's choice. In this phase 3, randomized, open-label study (MCL3001 [RAY]), ibrutinib was compared with temsirolimus in patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) MCL who had received ≥1 prior rituximab-containing therapy.

Methods

Patients were randomized at a 1:1 ratio to receive oral ibrutinib (560 mg once-daily) or intravenous temsirolimus (175 mg: Days 1, 8, and 15 of Cycle 1; 75 mg: Days 1, 8, and 15 of subsequent cycles). Stratification factors were number of prior lines of therapy (1-2 vs ³3) and simplified MCL international prognostic index (sMIPI) risk (low [0-3] vs intermediate [4-5] vs high [6-11]). Patients in both arms received treatment until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Primary end point of the study was PFS, as assessed by an independent review committee (IRC). Secondary end points included ORR, overall survival (OS), time to next treatment (TTNT), time to worsening of lymphoma symptoms (measured by FACT-Lym lymphoma subscale), and safety.

Results

Overall, 280 patients were randomized to ibrutinib (n = 139) or temsirolimus (n = 141). Baseline disease characteristics and demographics were generally well balanced. Median age (range) was 68 years (34-88) and median number (range) of prior lines of therapy was 2 (1-9). Approximately two-thirds of the patients had intermediate- or high-risk disease. At the time of this analysis, median follow-up was 20.0 months. Ibrutinib was superior to temsirolimus for the primary end point of IRC-assessed PFS, with a statistically significant 57% reduction in the risk of progression or death ( Figure 1 ). The median PFS was 14.6 months for the ibrutinib arm and 6.2 months for the temsirolimus arm, respectively. At a landmark of 2 years, the PFS rate is 41% in the ibrutinib arm vs 7% in the temsirolimus arm. PFS results were consistent across most assessed subgroups. Investigator-assessed PFS was consistent with the IRC results. IRC-assessed ORR was significantly higher for ibrutinib vs temsirolimus (71.9% vs 40.4%; p < 0.0001) with a CR rate of 18.7% vs 1.4%, respectively. Median OS was not reached with ibrutinib vs 21.3 months with temsirolimus, showing a positive trend toward patients in the ibrutinib arm (reduced risk of death by 24% [HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.53-1.09]). However, these results may have been confounded by 23% of patients that initially received temsirolimus crossing over to receive ibrutinib. A greater proportion of patients treated with ibrutinib vs temsirolimus avoided worsening of lymphoma symptoms throughout the study; 27% of ibrutinib patients had worsening vs 52% of temsirolimus patients. Median TTNT was not reached with ibrutinib vs 11.6 months with temsirolimus. Median treatment duration was 14.4 months for ibrutinib and 3.0 months for temsirolimus. Overall, 6.5% of subjects discontinued treatment due to AEs in the ibrutinib arm and 25.5% of subjects discontinued treatment due to AEs in the temsirolimus arm. The most common TEAEs with ibrutinib were diarrhea, fatigue, and cough, whereas with temsirolimus, thrombocytopenia, anemia, and diarrhea were most commonly observed ( Table 1 ). Grade ³3 TEAEs were reported for 67.6% of ibrutinib patients vs 87.1% of temsirolimus patients; most frequent were thrombocytopenia, anemia, and neutropenia. When adjusted for exposure, TEAE incidence was consistently lower for the ibrutinib arm vs the temsirolimus arm.

Conclusions

Ibrutinib is superior to temsirolimus for PFS and ORR, and showed preferable tolerability. The results of this phase 3 trial confirm the efficacy and favorable safety profile of ibrutinib shown in phase 2 studies. Future concepts will investigate ibrutinib-based combination approaches for patients with R/R MCL.

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Disclosures Rule: Gilead: Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Other: Travel reimbursement; JJ Roche: Consultancy, Other: Travel reimbursement. Rusconi: Roche: Honoraria. Joao: Celgene, Novartis: Consultancy; Janssen, Roche: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees. Witzens-Harig: Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding; Roche: Honoraria. Hess: Pfizer, Janssen, Roche, Mundipharma: Honoraria, Research Funding; Janssen, Roche, , Celgene, Novartis: Consultancy. Balasubramanian: Janssen: Employment, Equity Ownership; Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie Company: Equity Ownership. Bandyopadhyay: Janssen: Employment. Sun: Janssen/J&J: Employment, Equity Ownership. Goldberg: Janssen: Employment. Bothos: Janssen: Employment. Traina: Janssen: Employment. Enny: Janssen: Employment. Rizo: Janssen: Employment. Vermeulen: Janssen: Employment.

 [1]: pending:yes


ABSTRACT This paper examines the ways in which older people's residential and nursing homes can constitute heteronormative environments – social spaces in which the same-sex attractions and desires of residents are disregarded in the provision of everyday care. The aim of this discussion is to examine the synergies and differences between older lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adults' expectations for future care home provision and the expectations of care staff and managers in providing residential services to older people with diverse sexual backgrounds. We present qualitative evidence from research into the provision of care environments in Wales. In this paper, we present findings from two cohorts: first, from five focus groups with care and nursing staff and managers; and second, from 29 semi-structured interviews with older LGB adults (50–76 years) residing in urban and rural locations across Wales. We argue that residential care environments can constitute heterosexualised spaces in which LGB identities are neglected in comparison to the needs and preferences of other residents. To this extent, we discuss how care staff and managers can be more attentive and responsive to the sexual biographies of all residents and argue against the separation of care and sexual orientation in practice.


Background Baricitinib (BARI), an oral inhibitor of Janus kinase (JAK) 1 and JAK 2, is being developed for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA-BEGIN was a phase 3 double-blind, three-arm multicentre study of BARI administered as monotherapy or in combination with methotrexate (MTX) to patients (pts) with early active RA who had no or limited treatment with DMARDs. Methotrexate (MTX) monotherapy was the active comparator. Objectives To evaluate the proportion of pts with structural damage progression, defined as change from baseline (CFB) greater than the smallest detectable change (SDC) in mTSS at week (wk) 52, depending on their disease state as measured by DAS28-CRP. Methods Pts were classified into two groups based on DAS28-CRP. Group A included pts who achieved sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 at weeks 16, 20 and 24. Pts who did not achieve DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 consecutively at weeks 16, 20 and 24 and pts with missing DAS28-CRP at any of those 3 visits were included in Group B. The proportion of pts with CFB mTSS > SDC at wk 52 was estimated for each treatment arm for the two defined groups of response. The SDC in mTSS in the RA-BEGIN population at wk 52 was 1.4. Missing mTSS at wk 52 were imputed using linear extrapolation based on baseline data and the most recent radiographic data prior to the missed radiograph. No formal statistical tests were performed and comparisons are merely descriptive. All analyses were post-hoc. Results Out of the 584 pts of the modified-ITT population (all randomised pts who received at least 1 dose of study drug) in the RA-BEGIN study, 212 were classified in Group A: 21.4% (45/210), 42.1% (67/159), and 46.5% (100/215) for MTX, BARI and BARI+MTX, respectively. The odds ratios for sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 response (weeks 16, 20 and 24) to BARI and BARI+MTX vs. MTX, were respectively 2.8 (95% CI 1.7–4.4) and 3.3 (95% CI 2.1–5.1). Pts classified in Group A maintained an adequate level of response up to wk 52. Further, pts in Group A (sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2) on either BARI + MTX or BARI, were less likely to show structural progression than patients who achieved sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 on MTX. Pts in Group B on MTX or BARI monotherapy were more likely to show structural progression than patients who did not achieve a sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 response on BARI + MTX (Figure 1). Footnote: Group A: Patients who achieved sustained DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 (NRI) at weeks 16, 20 and 24 (N=212); Group B: Complement group Conclusions In patients who achieved sustained low DAS28-CRP scores, progression rates compared to MTX were reduced to a similar degree with BARI as monotherapy or in combination with MTX. Compared to MTX in patients who did not achieve sustained low DAS28-CRP scores, progression rates were reduced most markedly with combination therapy. Disclosure of Interest D. van der Heijde Consultant for: Abbvie, Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, BMS, Boeringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Daiichi Sankyo, Eli Lilly and Company, Galapagos, Janssen, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, UCB, P. Durez: None declared, G. Schett: None declared, E. Naredo: None declared, M. Østergaard Consultant for: Abbvie, BMS, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Celgene, Eli-Lilly, Centocor, GSK, Hospira, Janssen, Merck, Mundipharma, Novartis, Novo, Orion, Pfizer, Regeneron, Schering-Plough, Roche, Takeda, UCB, and Wyeth, G. Meszaros Employee of: Eli Lilly & Company, N. Bello Employee of: Eli Lilly & Company, I. De la Torre Employee of: Eli Lilly and Company, P. Lopez-Romero Employee of: Eli Lilly & Company, D. Schlichting Employee of: Eli Lilly and Company, E. Nantz Employee of: Eli Lilly and Company, R. Fleischmann Consultant for: Abbvie, Amgen, Astra Zeneca, BMS, Celgene, Janssen, Eli Lilly and Company, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, UCB


Recent reports have suggested the value of duplex Doppler sonography in the assessment of renal transplant function. Accurate diagnosis of acute rejection and its distinction from acute tubular necrosis and cyclosporine A toxicity have been claimed. We undertook a combined retrospective and prospective analysis of duplex Doppler examinations performed over a 2-year period to assess the value of such studies in evaluating renal allograft dysfunction. Seventy-seven sonographic examinations were performed on 77 renal transplants. A mean resistive index was calculated from Doppler measurements within main, segmental, and interlobar renal arteries by using the following ratio. peak systolic blood-flow velocity--minimum end-diastolic blood-flow velocity/peak systolic blood-flow velocity Forty-eight Doppler results were correlated with transplant biopsies and 29 with clinical course. Twenty-three episodes of acute allograft rejection were confirmed. When a resistive index of greater than or equal to 0.9 was used to indicate acute rejection, sonography had a sensitivity of only 9% and a specificity of 91% for this diagnosis. In one of eight cases of cyclosporine A toxicity and in three of six examples of acute tubular necrosis, the resistive index was greater than 0.9. In all six instances of chronic rejection, the resistive index was less than 0.84. None of eight patients with evidence of infection had a resistive index greater than 0.9. The resistive index range of 12 normally functioning allografts was 0.57-0.69. Correlation between the resistive index and the severity of arterial and arteriolar changes on biopsy was poor. An increased resistive index of renal transplant blood flow, as measured by duplex Doppler sonography, usually signals pathologic changes in an allograft. However, our data indicate that this test is not as sensitive or specific in identifying the cause of transplant dysfunction as has been suggested previously.


Wood is a renewable, versatile material with multiple applications and the largest terrestrial pool of sequestered carbon. However, it is susceptible to degradation, mainly caused by wood-decaying fungi. Since several traditional wood preservatives have been banned owing to their detrimental effects on humans and the environment, extending the lifespan of wood products using new generation natural preservatives is an imperative from the perspectives of human health and environmental protection. Several natural compounds of plant origin have been tested for their fungicidal properties, including essential oils, tannins, wood extractives, alkaloids, propolis or chitosan; and their enormous potential in wood protection has been shown. Although they are not free of limitations, the potential methods to overcome their drawbacks and enhance their bioactivity already exist, such as co-impregnation with different polymers, cross-linkers, metal chelators or antioxidants. The presence of the discrepancies between laboratory tests and the field performance, as well as legislation-related problems resulting from the lack of standards defining the quality and performance of natural protective formulations, however, create an urgent need for further thorough research and arrangements. The collaboration with other industries interested in the utilisation of natural active compounds will reduce the associated costs, thus, will facilitate the successful implementation of alternative antifungal agents.


The ability to perform long, accurate molecular dynamics (MD) simulations involving proteins and other biological macromolecules could in principle lead to important scientific advances and provide a powerful new tool for drug discovery. A wide range of biologically interesting phenomena, however, occur over time scales on the order of a millisecond - several orders of magnitude beyond the duration of the longest current MD simulations. Our research group is currently building a specialized, massively parallel machine, called Anton, which should soon be capable of executing millisecond-scale MD simulations of proteins at an atomic level of detail. Antonpsilas highly accelerated execution of such simulations is attributable in large part to specialized logic for the high-speed calculation of pairwise interactions between particles and/or gridpoints separated by no more than some specified cutoff radius.In particular, each of Anton's 512 ASICs, which are implemented using 90-nm technology,includes a "high-throughput interaction subsystem" incorporating 32 highly specialized pipelines running at 800 MHz. During every cycle, each of these pipelines produces a pairwise-interaction result that would require approximately 50 arithmetic operations to calculate on a general-purpose processor. Novel algorithms and architectural features are used to greatly reduce the requirements for inter- and intra-chip communication, allowing Anton to feed these pipelines and collect their results at a speed sufficient to take advantage of the machine's computational power. The ASIC also includes a "flexible subsystem" based on eight programmable "geometry cores", each containing eight arithmetic pipelines. This talk will provide an overview of our work on parallel algorithms and machine architectures for high-speed MD simulation, with special attention to the respective roles of specialized vs. general-purpose hardware, and to the techniques used to minimize communication at various levels within the system.


Despite the success of anti-HER2 therapy in patients with breast cancer with HER2 amplification or HER2 overexpression, the results of clinical trials on anti-HER2 therapy for lung cancer have not been satisfactory. The aim of the present study was to report a case of a non-smoker, female patient diagnosed with stage IIIA lung adenocarcinoma harboring HER2 amplification. The disease progressed despite surgery and multiple lines of chemotherapy, plus trastuzumab or lapatinib. The pan-ErbB inhibitor pyrotinib (400 mg/day) was commenced as a fourth-line regimen, and the patient achieved complete response with a time to progression (TTP) of 6 months. After the lung adenocarcinoma progressed, pyrotinib was continued, along with anlotinib and nivolumab. The patient achieved stable disease (SD) status with another 6 months of TTP. The overall survival of the patient was 28 months. Therefore, the present case suggests that the development of novel drugs may provide new and effective therapeutic regimens for lung cancer with HER2 amplification.


The characteristics of a very simple high-power pulsed RF oscillator are presented. This oscillator is based on the use of a low-pressure pulsed hollow-cathode discharge during the periods when its cathode sheath becomes unstable. A set of four different oscillators has been studied in different operating regimes for various values of load resistance. These oscillators were tested and found to produce pulsed power of over 100 kW with efficiency exceeding 20% at frequencies up to 50 MHz. The tests were performed with pulse duration of 14 /spl mu/s and repetition rate up to 100 Hz. Equivalent circuits of the oscillator for RF loading and for DC current are described. The requirements for a power supply to drive the device as well as recommendations for the oscillator usage are presented.


ed/indexed in: MEDLINE/PubMed, PsychINFO. For more information, and a full list of sources, please visit www.tandfonline.com/wger Journal of Gerontological Social Work (ISSN: 0163-4372) is published 8 times per year, by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. US Postmaster: Please send address changes to Journal of Gerontological Social Work, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Annual Subscription, Volume 60, 2017 Print ISSN 0163-4372 Online ISSN 1540-4048 Institutional subscribers: $1,947 (US), £1,489 (UK), C1,935 (EU). Personal subscribers: $341 (US), £263 (UK), C341 (EU). Institutional and individual subscriptions include access to the online version of the journal. Production and Advertising Office: 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel 215-625-8900, Fax 215-207-0047. Production Editor: Brian Maloney Subscription offices USA/North America: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 215-625-8900, Fax: 215-207-0050. UK/Europe: Taylor & Francis Customer Service, Sheepen Place, Colchester, Essex CO3 3LP, United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5544; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7017 5198. For a complete guide to Taylor & Francis Group's journal and book publishing programs, visit our website: www.taylorandfrancis.com. Copyright C 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted, or disseminated in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, grants authorization for individuals to photocopy copyright material for private research use on the sole basis that requests for such use are referred directly to the requester's local Reproduction Rights Organization (RRO), such as the Copyright Clearance Center (www.copyright.com) in the USA or the Copyright Licensing Agency (www.cla.co.uk) in the UK. This authorization does not extend to any other kind of copying by any means, in any form, and for any purpose other than private research use. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any statements of fact or opinion expressed in the published papers. The appearance of advertising in this journal does not constitute an endorsement or approval by the publisher, the editor, or the editorial board of the quality or value of the product advertised or of the claims made for it by its manufacturer. Permissions. For further information, please visit http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/permissions.asp Instructions for authors can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wger. WGER_I_60_08_COVER.indd 2 11/1/2017 11:08:28 PM


A sample of 2,886 randomly selected optometrists throughout the United States , and Puerto Rico were surveyed regarding practice satisfaction in their previous as well as current mode of practice. We received 662 responses to the survey, representing 13 modes of practice. Overall, 56.4% surveyed were very satisfied in their current mode of practice, 37.9 % were satisfied and 5.7% of optometrists were dissatisfied. SpecificaIIy, optometrists in partnerships with other optometrists were the most satisfied, whereas optometrists sharing practices with ophthalmologists had the highest rate of dissatisfaction, followed closely by optometrists working for chains and corporations. The study also inquired about practice mode satisfaction in terms of benefits offered, practice management input, patien1 management control and vacation time. Degree Type Thesis Degree Name Master of Science in Vision Science Committee Chair Willard B. Bleything Subject Categories Optometry This thesis is available at CommonKnowledge: https://commons.pacificu.edu/opt/1366


Globalization, transition, capital exchange, changing technology, economic shifts, consolidation, environmental concerns, changing resources, market shifts; these words are being used to describe the state of the pulp and paper industry. An industry in transition, a transition that will eventually lead to a completely new footprint for the industry. With this transition comes opportunity for those who see it and, at the same time, the fear that change naturally instills in people. This month TAPPI JOURNAL presents material to help tune in the transition with articles on the industry's markets. In addition, TAPPI JOURNAL's Industry News Correspondents offer a perspective of the industry from their parts of the world.