This study aims at investigating key factors that determine competitive advantage in Tanzania using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) method. The study uses cross-section survey design and non-probability sampling method; and data were collected from Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Tabora using a case study of textile and apparel industry. The sampling unit used were the employees of the industry knowledgeable on industry dynamics and with at least college education. The study proposes two inter-related micro and macro competitive advantage models. In the first place, exploration of the key underlying dimensions of both models was done using Exploratory Factor Analysis. Thereafter, based on the extracted principal components, SEM method using Confirmation Factor Analysis was used to find out whether the parameters of the micro model that involve Porter's Five Forces, Value Chain Management practices and Core Competencies; and macro model involving Porter's Diamond Model, produces significant CFA fit indices. The major findings are that, both the micro and the macro models are confirmed to be determinants of competitive advantage in Tanzania, as predicted by the theory. Furthermore, the results demonstrate linkage among the determinants. The diamond conditions, value chain management practices and core competency are indeed measures of competitive advantage. The determinants are considered to be key inputs for the strategic fit in the design of sustainable competitive advantage strategies for firms. Furthermore, the textile and apparel industry and government need to collaborate to improve diamond conditions to provide enabling environment necessary for competitive advantage. Lastly, with some adjustment, the model can also be replicated to other industries as well, in improving their competitive advantage.


Abstract The overall post-Soviet and post-Cold War transformation of the five Central Asian countries is multifaceted and complicated. New geopolitics has penetrated into almost all critically important spheres of post-Soviet transformation. Geopolitics even influences spheres such as national self-identification, which is traditionally regarded as having nothing to do with geopolitics. That is why one can assume that geopolitics stipulates regional integration as well. More precisely, regional integration for Central Asia is its response to geopolitical pressure from outside the region and its way of creating its new geopolitical status from within.


User-focused design and an implementation of a computer-based Information System (IS) or Information Technology (IT) are considered to play a key role in enhancing adoption, supporting activities and contributing to the sector specific sustainability goals. However, there are general concerns over the practical applications derived from records of failure rates of IS/IT projects in the developing world. This paper aggregates and analyzes stakeholders' perceived usefulness criteria that were documented from water basin focusing on IS and related projects in Southern Africa. Systematic literature reviews and meta-analysis were adopted for data collection and analyses. Literature with academic, practice and hybrid viewpoints was collected from five water basins in Southern Africa. Designed data collection flow chart guided the search for appropriate literature. Analyses of the data were performed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Results of the search were classified and presented basing on the domain, yearly waves from 2000 to 2015, trans-basin nature and basin of focus. Literature was distributed across the classes at different magnitudes. The study has found out that relevance criteria as measure of usefulness have been incorporated in designing and implementing the IS/IT projects in the river basins. However, incorporation of relevance criteria was periodically increasing with technological advancement and increasing complexity of managing the water basins. In general, it was responsive to increasing challenges of water resources in the developing countries. This anticipated better results at the levels of output, outcome and impacts of IS/IT projects in the Southern Africa. The study concludes that the current trends of incorporation of the relevance criteria in designing and implementing the IS/IT projects on water resources are potential for impact-based interventions in Southern Africa.


Trypanosomatid protozoa are parasites of considerable medical and economical importance because they are the causative agents of chronic human and livestock diseases endemic in developing countries. Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagasdisease, present in most of Latin America. The biology of this parasite presents some unusual features, one of which is the mechanism employed for the addition of sialic acid units to its own glycoproteins, the mucin- like molecules, or to exogenous glycoconjugates. This is mediated by a transglycosylase for sialic acid known as trans- sialidase and located on the external surface of the parasite, rather than by an intracellular CMP-sialic acid-dependent sia- lyltransferase. The Trypanosoma cruzi trans-sialidase is thought to play an important role in the pathogenesis of Chagas' disease, and it represents a potential therapeutic target.


In recent years, bacterial geneticists and microbiologists have begun moving away from the view that the clonal cell populations they study in the lab are homogeneous lots of identical, autonomous individuals and toward one that was suggested decades ago [1], in which social and even multicellular attributes of bacteria are recognized. Bacterial clones display differentiation, development, cell–cell communication, aging, and even apparent apoptosis, and not just the species with visually appreciable phase variations of surface proteins, spore formation, or variation between swimming and sessile cell types. These features appear to be ubiquitous, applying even to Escherichia coli, which has been long regarded as a laboratory model for producing homogeneous cell clones.

Cellular behaviors seem "multicellular" when they appear to confer a group benefit. For example, in many circumstances, bacterial cell–cell communication prevents isolated cells from running cellular programs that work only in groups, like production of light, or attacking a host with toxin proteins [2]. Similarly, many (perhaps all) bacteria differentiate subpopulations that take risks, while the remaining cells stay aloof, hedging the clone's bets—a process called bistability [3],[4]. For example, stress responses instigate the turning up of mutation rate in a small subpopulation of starving E. coli cells (reviewed in [5]). This is clearly a dangerous game for most of the cells whose genomes are mutated, but it is one that may provide a shot at producing a rare better-adapted mutant from a clone that is maladapted to its environment, i.e., one that is stressed. Similarly, small cell subpopulations of starving bacteria of many species take up foreign DNA, thus altering their genomes. In Bacillus subtilis, the same stress response activates competence for transformation in the subpopulation as increased mutation rate under stress [6], perhaps offsetting the dangerous mutagenic pathway with the ability to regain favorable alleles from (albeit dead) neighbors. Similarly, many bacteria continuously differentiate small subpopulations of temporarily growth-impaired "persister" cells that will lose in a race to colonize new territory rapidly, but can survive a transient blast of antibiotics that will kill their rapidly growing siblings, ensuring some survivors in a clone [3],[4].

Perhaps the most surprising of multicellular-sounding bacterial behaviors is the differentiation of a cell subpopulation slated for programmed cell death. In developing vertebrates, apoptosis kills a layer of eyelid cells so that eyelids may open [7]. In bacteria, many death programs are known but few are understood at this level of "organismal" function (see [8] for an example understood in the program of bacterial sporulation).

In this issue of PLoS Genetics, Amitai and colleagues probe the mechanism of programmed cell death caused by the MazF gene in E. coli [9]. Many bacteria have death genes as part of toxin/antitoxin (TA) gene modules. These are gene pairs usually co-transcribed in operons. The toxin is a stable, deadly protein but is bound and inactivated by the more labile antitoxin. Cells are safe until some circumstance reduces expression of the operon. This shifts the balance in favor of the stable toxin, causing cell stasis or death. Stressors that induce this shift include various antibiotics, heat shock, starvation, DNA damage, possibly phage infection, and others. Several bactericidal antibiotics appear to kill E. coli, because they activate the MazEF system.

Why do cells have TA systems? First discovered in plasmids, TA systems kill cells that lose the plasmid, causing "plasmid addiction". However, TA pairs are abundant in bacterial chromosomes; E. coli has at least five pairs, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis may have 60 or more [10]. What are they doing in chromosomes? TA pairs might be selfish genetic elements, apoptosis genes, genome-stabilizing modules that effectively prevent deletion of a chromosomal region [11], genes used for resisting plasmid addiction (by protecting against a plasmid-borne toxin with a chromosomal antitoxin [12]), or inducers of subpopulations of cells in stasis that transiently resist antibiotics (persister cells). The article by Amitai and colleagues offers surprising new details about the mechanism of MazF-mediated killing, and in doing so illuminates what this TA system might be doing for E. coli.

Toxins can kill cells by several routes. Many are RNases, including MazF, which cleaves mRNAs containing the ACA sequence [13]. MazF expression results in a dramatic decrease in cellular protein levels, which was thought to be the cause of MazF-mediated cell death. Amitai et al. revisited the effect of MazF on total cellular protein levels and report the surprising discovery that although the levels of most proteins decrease, levels of some proteins actually increase after MazF overproduction (Figure 1). Amitai et al. displayed the proteomes of the MazF-treated cells on 2D gels and saw that cellular levels of most large proteins (over 20 kDa) decreased while many smaller than 20 kDa increased. They recovered 13 of the up-regulated proteins, identified them with mass spectrometry, then deleted the genes encoding each and tested their effects on MazF-dependent cell death after antibiotic treatment. Surprisingly, all of these proteins contained ACA sequences in their mRNAs, implying that some mechanism, which is not yet understood, protects these mRNAs specifically.

Figure 1

MazF RNase toxin promotes loss of most proteins but selective increase of some small proteins with functions in the MazEF death-and-survival program.

Six of the up-regulated proteins were required for MazF-dependent death, suggesting an active death mechanism. One of the "death proteins," the ClpP protease, was already known to degrade the MazE antitoxin, acting upstream in the pathway that ultimately unleashes the MazF RNase. It will be interesting to examine whether the rest of the death proteins also allow MazF action, or whether death requires something more than destruction of most of the cell's mRNAs.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, three of the 13 up-regulated proteins, plus another two candidate proteins they tested, are required for survival of a small subpopulation of the cells when most of the cells are killed. This is the first indication that there are "survival proteins" that actively protect a subpopulation when the main population dies. This is reminiscent of bistable populations. In this case one (large) subpopulation is slated for death while a second smaller subpopulation survives, as if there are both death and survival programs activated (in different cells) by MazF. The implication is that the main population is killed so that the subpopulation may survive, supporting the view that MazEF-mediated death serves a multicellular or at least social purpose.

The present study does not distinguish which cells, surviving or dying, make which proteins. Previous work showed that the death program requires cell–cell communication. A secreted pentapeptide, which signals high cell numbers and cellular stress, must be sensed for the program to run [14]. An intriguing question raised here is whether the death proteins are suicide proteins made by the dying cells or assassins sent from those surviving?

Two of the survival proteins protect cells against oxidative damage and can be understood in the context of this group's previous finding that one of the ways that MazF promotes cell death requires oxidative stress—i.e., it can be quenched by any of several means of scavenging reactive oxygen species [15]. These survival proteins are presumably made and used in the surviving cells. How and where the remaining survival proteins work remains to be revealed.

Bacteria lead more coordinated lives than bacterial geneticists initially appreciated. Viewed as groups of individuals, bacteria would seem to be enacting Hamlet- or Macbeth-like tragedies with systems like MazEF. But they may be viewed more usefully, though no less dramatically, as "simply" multicellular.


In gathering material for a study of Sir William Osler's influence on medical librarianship, 1 I frequently ran across delightful accounts of Osler's son, Revere, and then sad references to his death as a soldier in Flanders and the oppressive grief it caused his parents. My purpose here is to tell this story. Probably nothing else ever gave the Oslers so much satisfaction as the birth of Edward Revere Osler on Dec 28, 1895. This was during his father's Johns Hopkins period, and ten years before the Oslers left for Oxford, where Dr. Osler was to assume the Regius professorship in medicine. As mentioned by Edith Gittings Reid,* all the Baltimore colleagues, students, and friends who so greatly enjoyed the company of Dr. and Mrs. Osier were properly appreciative of the new arrival. His parents' delight is preserved in a selection from a letter of the baby's mother—a descendant of


Two means by which commodity producers can reduce their exposure to quantity risk are share contracting and futures hedging. This paper explains the coexistence of these arrangements by showing that these will normally be complementary means of transferring risk. Share contracting by a purchaser with many producers can help diversify imperfectly correlated quantity risks. Futures contracts, on the other hand, hedge the systematic but not the idiosyncratic components of output risk. Thus, futures hedging helps to ameliorate the main disadvantage of multiple share contracting, an excessive loading of systematic risk on the purchaser.


The increasing volume of remote sensing data with improved spatial and temporal resolutions generates unique opportunities for monitoring and mapping of crops. We compared multiple single-band and multi-band object-based time-constrained Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) classifications for crop mapping based on Sentinel-2 time series of vegetation indices. We tested it on two complex and intensively managed agricultural areas in California and Texas. DTW is a time-flexible method for comparing two temporal patterns by considering their temporal distortions in their alignment. For crop mapping, using time constraints in computing DTW is recommended in order to consider the seasonality of crops. We tested different time constraints in DTW (15, 30, 45, and 60 days) and compared the results with those obtained by using Euclidean distance or a DTW without time constraint. Best classification results were for time delays of both 30 and 45 days in California: 79.5% for single-band DTWs and 85.6% for multi-band DTWs. In Texas, 45 days was best for single-band DTW (89.1%), while 30 days yielded best results for multi-band DTW (87.6%). Using temporal information from five vegetation indices instead of one increased the overall accuracy in California with 6.1%. We discuss the implications of DTW dissimilarity values in understanding the classification errors. Considering the possible sources of errors and their propagation throughout our analysis, we had combined errors of 22.2% and 16.8% for California and 24.6% and 25.4% for Texas study areas. The proposed workflow is the first implementation of DTW in an object-based image analysis (OBIA) environment and represents a promising step towards generating fast, accurate, and ready-to-use agricultural data products.


An execution model based on concurrent frame signature file (CAT) is proposed for full text retrieval. The proposed method places emphasis on creating opportunities for concurrent access to the signature file, which resides on disks, without resorting to redundant storage. Thus, the advantage of low space overhead availed by signature file methods is retained, while the response time of retrieval is significantly improved when implemented on a multiprocessor with multiple disks. Performance of the proposed method is measured by analysis and experiment. Results from a simulation study on the BBN Butterfly TC2000 multiprocessor shows the speed of the proposed method is very promising in both relative and absolute terms.<<ETX>>


The beyond-Horndeski gravity has recently been reformulated in the dark energy paradigm—which has been dubbed, Unified Dark Energy (UDE). The evolution equations for the given UDE appear to correspond to a non-conservative dark energy scenario, in which the total energy-momentum tensor is not conserved. We investigate both the background cosmology and, the large-scale imprint of the UDE by probing the angular power spectrum of galaxy number counts, on ultra-large scales; taking care to include the full relativistic corrections in the observed overdensity. The background evolution shows that only an effective mass smaller than the Planck mass is needed in the early universe in order for predictions in the given theory to match current observational constraints. We found that the effective mass-evolution-rate parameter, which drives the evolution of the UDE, acts to enhance the observed power spectrum and, hence, relativistic effects (on ultra-large scales) by enlarging the UDE sound horizon. Conversely, both the (beyond) Horndeski parameter and the kineticity act to diminish the observed power spectrum, by decreasing the UDE sound horizon. Our results show that, in a universe with UDE, a multi-tracer analysis will be needed to detect the relativistic effects in the large-scale structure. In the light of a multi-tracer analysis, the various relativistic effects hold the potential to distinguish different gravity models. Moreover, while the Doppler effect will remain significant at all epochs and, thus can not be ignored, the integrated Sachs-Wolfe, the time-delay and the potential (difference) effects, respectively, will only become significant at epochs near z = 3 and beyond, and may be neglected at late epochs. In the same vein, the Doppler effect alone can serve as an effective cosmological probe for the large-scale structure or gravity models, in the angular power spectrum—at all z.


This paper focuses on a neglected—horizontal—dimension of social stratification. It examines the patterns of social differentiation in the Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) and attempts to assess changes in the social structure at the subnational level. Social structure changes are explained within the context of broader socio-economic development. The main analyses performed in this study are based on EUSILC micro-data covering 2006–2016 and offer a comprehensive perspective on the patterns of social-stratification development at the regional level utilising three dimensions: social class (proxied by the European Social-Economic Classification), highest attained education level, and income. The results indicate different trajectories in social differentiation across the four countries, although some of the patterns identified are similar. The results indicate that the working class is shrinking and the salariat is growing, and that there are declining shares of people with at most primary or secondary education and increasing numbers with tertiary education. Income inequalities remained relatively stable over the observed period across the Czech and Slovak regions, but fluctuated in Hungarian regions, and the initially greater income inequalities in Polish regions have tended to decline over time. The findings suggest that the least favourable patterns in the development of regional social differentiation are found in the Hungarian regions.


Tight junctions are essential components of epithelial tissues connecting neighboring cells to provide protective barriers. Albeit their general function to seal compartments is well understood, their role in collective cell migration is largely unexplored. Here, the importance of the tight junction proteins ZO1 and ZO2 for epithelial migration is investigated employing video microscopy in conjunction with velocimetry, segmentation, cell tracking, and atomic force microscopy/spectroscopy. The results indicate that ZO proteins are necessary for fast and coherent migration. In particular, ZO1 and 2 loss (dKD) induces actomyosin remodeling away from the central cortex towards the periphery of individual cells, resulting in altered viscoelastic properties. A tug-of-war emerges between two subpopulations of cells with distinct morphological and mechanical properties: 1) smaller and highly contractile cells with an outward-bulged apical membrane, and 2) larger, flattened cells, which, due to tensile stress, display a higher proliferation rate. In response, the cell density increases, leading to crowding-induced jamming and more small cells over time. Co-cultures comprising wildtype and dKD cells display phase separation based on differences in contractility rather than differential adhesion. This study shows that ZO proteins are necessary for efficient collective cell migration by maintaining tissue fluidity and controlling proliferation.


Widespread anoxic events affected the Tethys Ocean during the Mesozoic. The Ocean Anoxic Event 1a (Early Aptian), expressed as the Selli Level or Goguel Level (GL) in European basins. The GL was deposited in the French Vocontian Basin, a semi‐enclosed basin connected to the Tethys Ocean. This study presents an integrated approach (Rock Eval, clay minerals, grain‐size, inorganic geochemistry and molecular biomarkers), applied to four sections in the basin distributed along a proximal‐distal transect. This study shows that the GL was perturbed by turbidites. In particular, the results demonstrate: (a) a homogeneous redox status of the basin that experienced oxic to suboxic conditions, according to trace element distributions and (b) low organic matter contents (total organic carbon ca 1 wt%) in the three sections where turbiditic deposits are observed. The distal, condensed section exhibits the highest organic matter contents (total organic carbon >3 wt%). In addition, the presence of gammacerane and isorenieratene derivatives in the distal sections suggests that the water‐column was intermittently stratified, with hypoxia developing in the photic zone. This stratification did not result from strong surface productivity but more likely from: (a) limited renewal of deep water in the basin; (b) reputedly high surface‐water palaeotemperatures during the Early Aptian; and (c) the influx of waters, possibly depleted in free oxygen and in some dissolved trace elements, into the basin. The turbiditic inputs, in addition to organic matter dilution in the sediments and a brief rupture of the water‐column stratification in the proximal areas of the basin, ventilated the sea floor and more specifically re‐oxidized the sediment‐water interface as well as underlying sediments. Such episodes of benthic re‐oxygenation could have altered the long‐term palaeoredox record, even in the distal sections where reducing conditions prevailed during deposition. In the area deprived of turbiditic input, sedimentary condensation, coupled with low oxygen conditions, furthered organic matter preservation and concentration.


Abstract Melittosphex burmensis (Melittosphecidae) is an important apoid fossil from middle Cretaceous (∼100 Ma) amber from Myanmar (Burma). Melittosphex exhibits a combination of wasp and bee features making it an important transitional form linking bees with crabronid wasps. The presence of branched hairs suggests that it was a pollen-collector and many aspects of the morphology suggest that it is more closely related to bees than to any fossil or extant group of wasps. Here we report additional morphological information on Melittosphex burmensis. This specimen remains the earliest body-fossil evidence that pollen-collecting Apoidea (bees) were present approximately 20 million years after the origin of the eudicots (∼120 Ma), the major angiosperm lineage with extensive reliance on bee pollination.


Compiler-directed locality optimization techniques are effective in reducing the number of cycles spent in off-chip memory accesses. Recently, methods have been developed that transform memory layouts of data structures at compile-time to improve spatial locality of nested loops beyond current control-centric (loop nest-based) optimizations. Most of these data-centric transformations use a single static (program-wide) memory layout for each array. A disadvantage of these static layout-based locality enhancement strategies is that they might fail to optimize codes that manipulate arrays, which demand different layouts in different parts of the code. We introduce a new approach, which extends current static layout optimization techniques by associating different memory layouts with the same array in different parts of the code. We call this strategy "quasidynamic layout optimization." In this strategy, the compiler determines memory layouts (for different parts of the code) at compile time, but layout conversions occur at runtime. We show that the possibility of dynamically changing memory layouts during the course of execution adds a new dimension to the data locality optimization problem. Our strategy employs a static layout optimizer module as a building block and, by repeatedly invoking it for different parts of the code, it checks whether runtime layout modifications bring additional benefits beyond static optimization. Our experiments indicate significant improvements in execution time over static layout-based locality enhancing techniques.


During the 18th century, Faizābād and Lucknow became strategic centres of painting production in Northern India. Encouraged by the patronage of European collectors, but most probably by unnamed Indian patrons as well, the region experienced an intense period marked by the large number of albums and paintings in circulation. Based on the in-depth analysis of a selection of albums, paintings, and manuscripts, this article aims to highlight the evolution of compilation practices and painting productions. Full-page flower paintings, in particular, became increasingly popular in muraqqaʿ, to the point where calligraphic panels were completely replaced by colourful plants. Floral designs also appear in the margins, and the repetition of motives and patterns on several pages of different dimensions revealed an extensive commercialization based on a standardized production. In addition, the collections of European collectors such as Antoine-Louis Polier and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil bear the traces of commercial transactions between European and Indian collectors, as well as prices and possession marks. Together with their writings, correspondences, and memoirs, they bring new information on previously unknown Indian collectors, and more generally on the dynamism of the 18th-century book market.


The Wilms' tumor suppressor gene product (WT1) regulates expression of growth control genes. Microarray analysis of gene expression profiles of hormone-treated LNCaP prostate cancer cell lines transfected with either wild-type WT1 or a zinc finger mutant form, DDS (R394W), revealed significantly altered patterns of expression. Validation studies using quantitative real-time PCR confirmed the differential expression of the tumor progression gene, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). WT1-LNCaP cells had significantly reduced levels of VEGF mRNA when compared to vector control cells; in contrast, DDS-LNCaP cells showed elevated levels of VEGF transcripts. To address a functional role for WT1 overexpression, we investigated whether induction of VEGF expression, by the synthetic androgen R1881, would be disrupted in wild-type or mutant WT1-transfected LNCaP cells. Hormone treatment failed to elevate VEGF transcript levels above uninduced baseline levels in WT1-LNCaP cells, despite 48 h of treatment with 5 nM R1881. Consistent with our quantitative real-time PCR analysis, immunofluorescent staining of VEGF protein was reduced in WT1-LNCaP cells in both the presence and absence of R1881 treatment. Conversely, VEGF levels increased in vector control and DDS-LNCaP cells treated with 5 nM R1881. Not only do these studies point out the regulatory potential of WT1 for VEGF, but they also indicate an altered function for the mutant DDS isoform. Because VEGF is associated with neovascularization and promotion of metastasis in a variety of solid tumors including prostate cancer, a better understanding of the regulation of VEGF expression by transcription factors, such as WT1, is important for halting disease progression.


What is the structure of the political space in which decision-making actors operate in the European Union? Are there consistent alignments of actors? This article addresses these questions by examining a new data set containing information on the pref- erences of the Commission, the Member States and the European Parliament on 174 issues raised during talks on 70 recent Commission proposals. To a limited extent, the preference alignments can be described in terms of two underlying dimensions. However, these con- ceptual structures are weak. The first dimension is defined by the position of the European Commission and European Parliament at one end and the reference point at the other; the second dimension by a division between the Northern and Southern Member States. The meaning of these dimensions is investigated by identifying the substance of the policy issues on which these actor alignments are found. The Commission-reference point dimension is interpreted in terms of policy change rather than, as has previously been suggested, the level of integration. The North-South dimension corresponds to diverging views on the use of regulatory versus market-based solutions to policy problems. The weakness of these con- ceptual structures, it is argued, is due to the sectoral nature of European Union decision making. This lack of structure is likely to have a positive effect on support for the system among its members, since the benign effects of ideology at the national level cannot be expected to apply at the European Union level.


Following the general trend, the amount of digital information in the stored electronic health records (EHRs) had an explosion in the last decade. EHRs are not anymore used, as in the past, to store basic information of the patient and administrative tasks, but they may include a range of data, including the medical history of the patient, laboratory test results, demographics, medication and allergies, immunization status, radiology images, vital signs. At the present, the problem has shifted from collecting massive amounts of data to understanding it, i.e. use EHRs for turning data into knowledge, conclusions and actions. EHRs were not designed to forecast disease risk or disease progression or to determine the right treatment, but if they are combined with artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm this issue became possible. The need for tools allowing to construct predictive models capturing disease progression is a priority. In the recent past EHRs were analyzed using traditional machine learning techniques, whereas recently the progress in the field of deep learning let to the application of deep learning techniques to EHRs. This paper reports a brief overview of some recently developed deep learning tools for EHRs.


The potential application of ultrasonics as a pretreatment process to enhance saccharification of starch in corn-to-ethanol plants is evaluated in this paper. Due to energy intensive use of steam in hydro-cooking, ultrasonics poses a promising alternative as a pretreatment method. Two independent ultrasonic experiments were conducted at a frequency of 20 kHz; batch and continuous flow treatment. Corn slurry was obtained from a nearby ethanol plant and sonicated in batch mode at amplitude of 144µmpeak-to-peak (p-p) for 90 s using a catenoidal horn with a 10 mm diameter face. In the continuous flow treatment, corn slurry was pumped through a reactor equipped with a Branson Ultrasonics "donut horn". Jet-cooked samples were obtained from the same ethanol plant and analyzed for comparison in fermentation yield. Ethanol yields in sonicated samples were comparable to jet-cooked samples. The glucose levels decreased with consumption during the initial stage of the fermentation and suddenly dropped after 6 h as the ethanol increased. An economic comparison was also conducted on jet cooking and ultrasonics pretreatment methods. The analysis showed that capital cost for the ultrasonics system was higher compared to the capital cost of hydrocooking. However, due to the relatively large energy demand of jet cookers, the operating costs of the hydrocooker suggest that it is cost effective to use ultrasonics.


The thesis consists of two separate studies on two enzymes which have potentially useful applications in the biochemical study of various human diseases. In Part 1, the activity of the enzyme, is citrate dehydrogenase, in serum of patients with diseases involving the liver or biliary tract, was studied and compared with established biochemical tests of liver function, in order to assess its application to the differential diagnosis of jaundice. Particular attention was paid to results on patients with obstructive jaundice as previous authors have reached differing conclusions of the ultimate usefulness of this enzyme, due to the equivocal results shown in these cases. Very high values were found in severe, acute breakdown of liver cells. Those coincided with large increases in activity of two other enzymes used in the diagnosis of acute hepatic damage - serum giutamic-oxalacetic transaminase and serum glutamic-pyruvic transaminase. The serum isocitrate dehydrogenase was extremely sensitive in detecting liver cell damage, even at a subclinical level, and was comparable and perhaps slightly superior to the serum transaminases in this respect, while all three enzymes were very much more sensitive than other conventional tests of liver function. In chronic liver damage, variable values for serum isocitrate dehydrogenase were found, with only small to moderate increases which could not be related to the clinical state of the patient. Higher values were found in biliary cirrhosis than in portal cirrhosis. The enzyme results were significantly correlated with the transaminase results, but not with the other liver function tests. In obstructive jaundice, the enzyme was elevated in the serum of over 50% of the cases, and particularly high values were associated with secondary involvement of the liver in malignant oases, and acute inflammation of the biliary tract in benign obstructive jaundice. The enzyme could not be used to differentiate malignant from non-malignant cases, and was not related to the severity or duration of the biliary retention. In these cases, the enzyme was not closely related to serum transaminase values. It was concluded that the enzyme did not offer great advantages in the differential diagnosis of jaundice due to the abnormal values which may be found in obstructive jaundice. However, it was an easily estimated enzyme, very sensitive for detecting and assessing acute damage to liver cells, and could be a useful adjunct or alternative to the serum transaminasess Part R involved the study of the enzyme, p-glucuronidase, in various biological material taken from patients with carcinoma of the cervix uteri. Biopsy specimens of cervical carcinoma wore obtained and fractionated by homogenisation and differential centrifugation into three cytoplasmic fractions - mitochondria, miorosomes and soluble supernatant. p-Glucuronidase activity was measured in each fraction and the results compared with specimens eV non-malignant corvix treated in the ammo way. The activity of the carcinoma specimens was found to be considerably higsher than non-malignant specimens in the majority or caeca. Xneroasee in p-glucurenldase activity were mainly in the soluble supernatant fraction and not in particle enzyme even though tho enoyme had previously boon doocribod no located mainly within cytoplasmic particles. There was no correlation with the enzyme activity and dearie of malignancy of the cervical lesion. Sample of cervical carcinoma were taken before and aft treatment oi the lesion by irradiation from radium implant at and their 0.glucuronidase activity compared. There was not a uniform change in enzyme activity following radiation duo to larao unexplained increases and decreases being observed. The excretion of p-gluecuronidase in urine of patient with cervical carcinoma receiving radiotherapy was followed over the Pu11 course of treatment. Pronounced increase in excretion of the enzyme following radium treatment wove obaorvod in the majority of patients studied and the pattern of 0.61ucuronidaso excretion could be related to the enzyme activity of the tissue being irradiated. There was also increase in p-glucuronidase activity of the serum in these patients, and the results indicated that radiation of the lesion caused mobilisation or the enzyme into the patient circulation, which was then cleared by the kidneys into the urine.


This study illustrates and interprets changes in pension plan retirement formulas and benefit provisions over the last two decades, using extensive information on private sector pension plans gathered by the U.S. Department of Labor since 1980. Data generated from the Employee Benefits Survey (EBS) of medium and large firms shows that pension provisions have changed a great deal in companies that have traditionally been the most consistent providers of employer-sponsored retirement benefits in the US. In the defined benefit environment, vesting rules were loosened somewhat; plans have eased access to normal retirement; and pension benefit formulas have moved toward final rather than career earnings, with increased weight on straight-time pay. In addition, these plans became more integrated with social security, but the form of this integration has changed substantially. Defined benefit pension replacement rates appear to have fallen over time, though the time series is not complete. In addition, benefit caps remain in place, generally by limiting years of service in the formula; disability benefit provisions have also become more stringent; and it is increasingly possible to take a lump sum from one's defined benefit pension. The defined contribution environment has also seen substantial change, as documented in the BLS series. Participation and vesting rules appear most lenient for workers in 401(k) plans; most employees must contribute to their plans, generally as a function of earnings; and employee access to pension fund assets appears to be on the upswing over time. Participants in these plans have also gained access to diversified stock and bond funds, with fewer permitted to invest in own-employer stock, common stock funds and guaranteed insurance contracts. We conclude with a discussion of how future data collection efforts could be improved.


Dr. Oded Bar-Or was a giant in the area of pediatric exercise science and made numerous contributions to the health of children around the world. He also had a significant impact on a relatively new area of pediatric exercise science -- pediatric exercise immunology. Under his supervision, some aspects of the immunobiology of exercise have been unravelled from a pediatric perspective. In general, healthy children experience less inflammatory stress in response to standardized exercise, while demonstrating an exercise-induced elevation in the anabolic cytokine IL-8. Mechanisms for the maturity- and age-dependent changes in cytokine responses to exercise are unknown, but may involve oxidative stress. Studies of oxidative stress and exercise in children are scant, but preliminary data suggests that, like the inflammatory cytokine response to exercise, children may experience less oxidative stress in response to intense exercise. We propose that the links between exercise, inflammatory and oxidative stress, and growth factors will be important to understand in the context of how exercise contributes to optimal growth and development during childhood. This understanding will be particularly relevant for childhood diseases that restrict growth.


Background and Study Aims. The presence of an implantable electromechanical cardiac device (IED) has long been considered a relative contraindication to the performance of video capsule endoscopy (CE). The primary aim of this study was to evaluate the safety of CE in patients with IEDs. A secondary purpose was to determine whether IEDs have any impact on images captured by CE. Patients and Methods. A retrospective chart review of all patients who had a capsule endoscopy at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ, USA, or Rochester, MN, USA, (January 2002 to June 2010) was performed to identify CE studies done on patients with IEDs. One hundred and eighteen capsule studies performed in 108 patients with IEDs were identified and reviewed for demographic data, method of preparation, and study data. Results. The most common indications for CE were obscure gastrointestinal bleeding (77%), anemia (14%), abdominal pain (5%), celiac disease (2%), diarrhea (1%), and Crohn's disease (1%). Postprocedure assessments did not reveal any detectable alteration on the function of the IED. One patient with an ICD had a 25-minute loss of capsule imaging due to recorder defect. Two patients with LVADs had interference with capsule image acquisition. Conclusions. CE did not interfere with IED function, including PM, ICD, and/or LVAD and thus appears safe. Additionally, PM and ICD do not appear to interfere with image acquisition but LVAD may interfere with capsule images and require that capsule leads be positioned as far away as possible from the IED to assure reliable image acquisition.


The (R)- and (S)-enantiomers of 2-amino-3-[1-(2-[ 18 F]fluoroethyl)-1H-[1,2,3]triazol-4-yl]propanoic acid (4) were synthesized and evaluated in the rat 9L gliosarcoma brain tumor model using cell uptake assays, biodistribution studies, and micro–positron emission tomography (microPET). The (R)- and (S)-enantiomers of [ 18 F]4 were radiolabeled separately using the click reaction in 57% and 51% decay-corrected yields, respectively. (S)-[ 18 F]4 was a substrate for cationic amino acid transport and, to a lesser extent, system L transport in vitro. In vivo biodistribution studies demonstrated that (S)-[ 18 F]4 provided higher tumor uptake and higher tumor to brain ratios (15:1 at the 30- and 60-minute time points) compared to the (R)-enantiomer (7:1 at the 30- and 60-minute time points). MicroPET studies with (S)-[ 18 F]4 confirmed that this tracer provides good target to background ratios for both subcutaneous and intracranial 9L gliosarcoma tumors. Based on these results, the 1H-[1,2,3]triazole-substituted amino acid (S)-[ 18 F]4 has promising PET properties for brain tumors and represents a novel class of radiolabeled amino acids for tumor imaging.


The effects of stress on the 2-D permeability tensor of natural fracture networks were studied using a numerical method (Universal Distinct Element Code). On the basis of three natural fracture networks sampled around Dounreay, Scotland, numerical modelling was carried out to examine the fluid flow in relation to the variations in burial depth, differential stress and loading direction. It was demonstrated that the permeability of all the networks decreased with depth due to the closure of aperture. The permeability approached the minimum value at some depth below which little further variation occurred. Also, differential stress had a significant effect on both the magnitude and direction of permeability. The permeability generally decreased with increasing major horizontal stress for a fixed minor horizontal stress, but the various networks considered showed different behaviours. A factor, termed the average deviation angle of maximum permeability (Am), was defined to describe quantitatively the deviation degree of the direction of the major permeability component from the applied major stress direction. For networks whose behaviour is controlled by set(s) of systematic fractures, Am is significantly greater than zero, whereas those comprised of non-systematic fractures have Am close to zero. In general, fractured rock masses, especially those with one or more sets of systematic fractures, cannot be treated as equivalent porous media. Specification of the geometry of the network is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for models of fluid flow. Knowledge of the in situ stress, and the deformation it induces, is necessary to predict the behaviour of the rock mass.


Many signals obtained from the real world, including the ones captured from the human body, present different events repeated recurrently. When these events possess some common features repeated in time, we call them "temporal patterns". Examples of these temporal patterns can be the electrocardiogram waveform or the accelerations of the human body during the gait. This thesis proposes different techniques to model these temporal patterns and to detect their presence in a given signal. Due to the fact that these signals usually present a high variability in its shape and duration, we have applied different concepts and techniques from Soft Computing since they are able to deal with this variability. In general terms, two different approaches has been studied in this thesis:

• Prediction-Error-Classification approach. It consists of generating a signal predictor for each pattern and using the errors produced by each predictor to determine the class of a given signal.
• Fuzzy Finite Automata approach. The pattern is considered as a sequence of events which are modelled by an automaton.
Afterwards, this automaton is used to detect patterns in a given signal.

The performance of our proposed techniques has been tested on synthetic signals and on the analysis of the movements of human body.


We present a new, integrated all-optical multiplexer for wavelength grooming of many WDM channels into a single TDM channel. The chips were realized in a novel generic InP foundry process. For design and mask layout of the multiplexer circuits, we developed a simple equivalent circuit, representing the incorporated wavelength converter. With the chips realized, successful WDM to TDM transmultiplexing is demonstrated, as well as multiplexing of clock and NRZ data.


Nanocomposite WC-10Co powder produced by spray pyrolysis-continuous reduction & carbonization technology and cubic boron nitride (CBN) plated with titanium by vacuum vapor deposit were used, and this paper adopted spark plasma sintering (SPS) process to prepare CBN enhanced ultrafine WC-10Co cemented carbide cermets composite material. The microstructure and mechanical properties of CBN-WC-10Co composites were investigated. The results show that CBN-WC-10Co composites consolidated by spark plasma sintering can reach 95.0 % relative density, and transverse rupture strength (TRS) is 1050 MPa, the average grain size of cermets matrix is less than 420 nm, and CBN-WC-10Co composites with excellent properties are achieved. The CBN still remains very good crystal shape after 1240°C spark plasma sintering, and there is not obvious clearance between CBN plated with titanium and the cermets matrix, the coated titanium layer can not only improve the thermal stability of CBN, but also increase the properties of CBN-WC-10Co composites.


Since the beginning of environmental movement, academicians and policy makers have been focusing on the institutions of higher learning. The first document on campus sustainability, the Talloires Declaration, which was ratified by 413 universities, including University Malaya, addressed the concept of community aspect of Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) sustainability. This article is a position paper with the objective to highlight the importance of community in the sustainability of Malaysian Higher Learning Institutions (MHLE). In carrying out this study, the archival and document analysis method was employed, whereby different scholars' articles, dissertations, and tools were reviewed. Further validation of the findings was accomplished by employing the questionnaire survey method. Various documents were analysed thoroughly to figure out how the issue of community and the effects on campus sustainability were addressed. Besides a literature review, observation and interview were also utilized to figure out the challenges faced by Malaysian Higher Educational Institutions. The results indicated that community and campus sustainability have a linear relationship. In the context of MHEI, ethnical polarization, poor command of English and imbalance distribution of gender are the challenges. Likewise, the community is one of the most important aspects and is given high priority. Thus, the findings of this study could serve as a reference for researchers, institutions, and universities that are working on topics related to sustainability in higher education.


Because of the unequivocally fundamental role of SCF ubiquitin ligase in many biological functions within a living cell including regulating DNA repair, cell cycle progression, and inflammation, we have analyzed the role of domain interactions in determining particular types of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) that are known or predicted to occur involving subunit components of the SCF-ligase complex. We focus on the prediction and analysis of obligate and non-obligate SCF-ligase complexes by using sequence domains from the Pfam database. After extracting different types of feature vectors, the prediction is performed via a support vector machine (SVM). The numerical results demonstrate that most of the interactions of SCF-ligase complexes are mediated by at least one domain. Moreover, domain-domain interactions dominate in obligate complexes whereas non-obligate complexes exhibit more domain-peptide chain interactions. Also, the computational results show that the best prediction accuracy of 80.46% is achieved using the combination of feature vectors of domain-domain type, domain-peptide chain type and no-domain interactions.


In the run-up to Paris, individual countries and multilateral banks made new promises to provide millions of dollars for adaptation (and mitigation) action in developing countries, with a view to reaching the usd 100 billion target announced in Copenhagen and confirmed in Paris. But where are all these funds going to? To what extent do they reach the poorest and most vulnerable, those most in need of support? The focus of this paper is on bilateral aid for adaptation to climate change. Using oecd data on adaptation aid, we examine how donors allocate this aid—and to what extent they indeed prioritise those 'particularly' vulnerable to climate change. To understand donor behaviour, we build on the large literature on aid allocation in general, and on adaptation aid in particular. Yet, as opposed to traditional dyadic analyses, we conceptualise aid allocation as a network, in which the provision of adaptation aid is a network tie. This network approach, we argue, is better able to capture interactions between donors, for the allocation decisions of others likely influence a donor's allocation decision. Donors on the one hand coordinate their allocation, but on the other hand also compete for political and economic influence through the provision of aid, including aid for adaptation. In order to capture these coordination dynamics in addition to the dyadic relationships between donors and recipients we employ Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models. Our analysis indicates that donors consider recipient need and recipient merit when de-ciding on how to allocate adaptation aid: more vulnerable and more democratic countries are more likely to receive adapation aid. More importantly, however, donors consider their own economic and political interests: trading partners and former colonies are much more likely to receive adaptation aid. Finally, we also find evidence for donor coordination: countries that already receive adaptation aid from other countries are less likely to form additional ties, that is, they are less likely to also receive adaptation aid from additional donors.


Combined lead, sulphur and oxygen isotopes have been analysed in ore (galena and sphalerite) and
associated (quartz, barite) minerals from the Mazarambroz Pb-Zn mineralization. Lead isotopic model ages
in galenas cluster around 121 ± 8 Ma in good agreement with previously suggested mesozoic age of this
Pb-Zn mineralization estimated by apatite fission tracks in mylonitic wall-rocks. Isotopic composition of
Mazarambroz mineralization suggests a high rock (metamorphic/granitic)/fluid interaction with minor
participation of meteoric waters. These fluids circulated deeply along fragile cracks of the major shear zone
of Toledo.


Current endeavors in community detection suffer from the resolution limit problem and can be quite expensive for large networks, especially those based on optimization schemes. We propose a conceptually different approach for multi-resolution community detection, by introducing the kernels from statistical literature into the graph, which mimic the node interaction that decays locally with the geodesic distance. The modular structure naturally arises as the patterns inherent in the interaction landscape, which can be easily identified by the hill climbing process. The range of node interaction, and henceforth the resolution of community detection, is controlled via tuning the kernel bandwidth in a systematic way. Our approach is computationally efficient and its effectiveness is demonstrated using both synthetic and real networks with multiscale structures.


Variegated shales in the Lower Eocene hemipelagic deposits of the Subsilesian Series, Polish part of the Western Carpathians, have yielded rich radiolarians with common representatives of the genus Buryella. Two new radiolarian species, Buryella spina sp. nov. and Buryella hannae sp. nov., are described, and two other species have been recognized: Buryella tetradica Foreman and Buryella clinata Foreman. Specimens have been measured, grouped and interpreted using cluster analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and canonical variates analysis (CVA). Species attributed to Buryella have three or four segments, a fusiform or lobate outline, and a constricted, rather than flared, aperture. The cephalis always possesses an apical horn of varying length with a distinct vertical pore at the collar stricture. All specimens possess a pronounced vertical tube, rounded or elongate, that might extend to the base of apical horn. Near the base of the cephalis the parallel ridges observed on the external wall of the cephalis are ridges from the horn that diverge and extend to the collar stricture except ventrally, where two ridges rejoin to enclose the vertical pore and form an upwardly directed tube. These structure might be evidence of the presence of arches (A-Vbl, A-Vbr) and bars (Vbl, Vbr), which form the vertical tube.


This study examines transitions from Nazism to socialism in Brandenburg between 1945 and 1952. It explores the grassroots responses and their relative implications within the context of both punitive and rehabilitative measures implemented by the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) and the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The present study is based on archival and oral history sources and addresses two main research questions: First, in what ways did people at the grassroots attempt to challenge the imposition of punitive measures, and did their responses have any effect on the manner in which these policies were implemented at a grassroots level? These punitive measures were designed to remove remnants of Nazism and included punitive Soviet practices, Soviet NKVD camps and denazification and sequestering. Second, to what extent did grassroots Brandenburgers participate in political organisations which were designed to integrate East Germans during the rehabilitative stage and what impact did these responses have on the post-war transition? This study focuses on the National Democratic Party and the Society for German-Soviet Friendship as well as examining wider factors which may have impeded and facilitated the processes of post-war transitions. Two main arguments are proposed. First, the imposition of wide-ranging punitive measures often posed an existential threat at a grassroots level, and therefore at times elicited grassroots actions, albeit severely restricted by practical and political constraints. In turn, these grassroots responses could occasionally have some local impact and somewhat affect the manner in which policies were implemented at a grassroots level in Brandenburg. Second, it is argued that the rehabilitative stage, despite some challenges, generally provided a favourable system for grassroots integration in which the needs of the policy makers and a significant proportion of grassroots individuals somewhat converged, eventually contributing to the partial stabilisation of the emerging East German socialist state.


This paper provides a reappraisal of the ongoing ICT revolution in historical perspective. Our starting point is the literature on "long waves" and "general purpose technologies" which is still widely used to characterize the long run trends of technological change and economic development since the first industrial revolution. Notwithstanding providing some useful insights, it is argued that this approach is rooted in a too rigid historical chronology linking technological development to economic outcomes. On these grounds, the paper suggests that an interpretative framework based on the notion of first, second and third industrial revolution may offer a more accurate historical account and be more useful for policy analysis.


AIM
To report the development and psychometric testing of the Behavioral Health Care Competency survey, designed to measure hospital nurse perceptions of behavioral healthcare competency.

BACKGROUND
Hospital nurses working in general or other non-psychiatric units may lack behavioral healthcare competency to manage disruptive behaviours associated with mental illnesses.

DESIGN
Instrument development.

METHOD
A nurse study team including clinical experts and nurse researchers from three community hospitals in southern California (USA) reviewed content validity of each item and the 31-item instrument and created a behavioral health care competency conceptual model based on the nursing process. Separate institutional review board permissions were obtained from each hospital. The study team collaborated in the timing of survey administration (November 2010), analysis of the results and survey validation.

RESULTS
A total of 844 nurses completed the survey, representing approximately 23-41% of eligible nurses from each hospital. Using principal component analysis with varimax rotation, 23 items led to a factor structure with four components. Four subscales with adequate alpha coefficients were formed: Resource Adequacy, Patient Assessment, Practice/Intervention Competency, and Psychotropic Recommendation.

CONCLUSION
The 23-item hospital nurse Behavioral Health Care Competency survey is an adequate and valid newly developed instrument. Further testing with diverse samples is needed to strengthen generalizability and address unique and specialized nursing care needs.


Down- and cross-track distributions of medium magnetization are determined by the recording pole field profile and the switching dynamics. Earlier studies of the write pole footprint in perpendicular magnetic recording revealed asymmetrical media saturation caused by magnetic pole nonuniformity. In this paper, we report variable footprint shapes indicating recording pole instability. We extend our spin-stand "footprint" measurements to also evaluate recording pole instability


INTRODUCTION
Childhood injuries are the leading cause of death for children between 5 to 14 years of age in Singapore. However, there is no information or data on childhood injuries in the community in Singapore. There was a need to conduct a nationwide study on childhood injuries in Singapore in order to estimate the prevalence rate, types of injuries, and to identify the hazards in the homes of the children.

METHODS
A cross-sectional nationwide study with a two-stage stratified random sampling was conducted to obtain a representative sample of the Singapore population. Families that had children younger than 15 years of age were selected for the study. Parents and caregivers were interviewed at their homes.

RESULTS
There were 2322 children in the study, of which 452 had one or more injuries in the past one year, giving an overall prevalence rate of 19.5 percent. Of the children who had injuries, the home was the commonest place where injuries occurred (45 percent) and falls were the leading cause of injuries (77 percent). There were many hazards identified in the homes studied and it was found that the more hazards present in the homes, the more likely it is for the child to get injuries.

CONCLUSION
There is a need for educational and interventional programmes to help Singaporeans understand the need to make the home environment safe for children and to prevent home injuries.


Information is a universal and common requirement but it depends upon truth and
knowledge to be reliable. Health information now receives special attention and the
legal and ethical expectations of the right to knowledge and information are growing
as paternalism wanes. Government policies stress the need for personal responsibility
and choices in health, thus giving the consumers the impetus to obtain information.
Controversy exists as to how to meet such rising demand. Related facets need
consideration in the information process regarding the differences between providers
and receivers and how they communicate.
Information aids recovery, reduces stress and increases compliance. Recent moves in
health care from passive acceptance to active demands exist and with them a
corresponding interest. This becomes more specific when illness occurs. To meet
such rising demands the Lister Health Information Service was established in the
1970's. [Continues.]


Shopping centres are often maligned as undemocratic spaces, with a problematic
relationship between private ownership and public participation, between private
commercialization and public consumption, yet are offered here as a case study for everyday
but significant urban experiences. Shopping centre interiors provide uncanny opportunities
for public participation that can be seen to point to new concepts of citizenship. Through an
act of 'guerrilla picnicking' within a shopping centre, this paper provides a provocation for
examining the possibilities for spatial appropriation and public freedoms offered by a
neighbourhood shopping centre - opportunities for civic liberties that are often forgotten both
within discourses on quasi-public space, and in these conditional spaces of our city interiors.
By populating the quasi-public interior of a shopping centre with active citizens rather than
obedient subjects, greater opportunities for human connection and participation are offered in
an urban realm that continues to reduce and control these occurrences.


The effects of habitat fragmentation on processes within and among populations are important for conservation management. Despite a broad spectrum of lifestyles and the conservation significance of many reptiles, very little work on fine‐scale population genetics has been carried out on this group. This study examines the dispersal patterns of a rock crevice‐dwelling lizard, Cunningham's skink (Egernia cunninghami), in a naturally vegetated reserve and an adjacent deforested site. Both genotypic and genic approaches were employed, using microsatellite loci. The spatial organization of individuals with respect to pairwise relatedness coefficients and allele frequencies, along with assignment tests, were used to infer dispersal characteristics for both sexes in a natural and a cleared area. The distribution of relatedness in both habitats was spatially structured, with E. cunninghami showing high pairwise relatedness within their rocky retreat sites. Analysis of relatedness over different spatial scales, spatial autocorrelation of alleles and assignment tests, all indicated that both sexes in the cleared area show less dispersal than their counterparts in the reserve. Furthermore, deforestation may inhibit female dispersal to a greater extent than that of males. The geographical structuring of allele frequencies for adults in the cleared area, but not the reserve, indicates that habitat fragmentation has the potential to alter at least the microevolution of E. cunninghami populations.


Asthma leads to increased weight gain in nonpregnant populations, but studies have not examined this association within the context of pregnancy. This study examines the association between asthma and perinatal weight trajectories in the Breathe - Wellbeing, Environment, Lifestyle, and Lung Function Study (2015-2019). Multilevel linear spline models adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, income, marital status, education, cigarette smoking, parity, study site, and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) were used to examine differences in perinatal weight trajectories between women with (n=299) and without (n=101) asthma. Secondary analyses assessed whether associations differed by asthma phenotypes. At 40-weeks gestation, women with asthma gained 16.2 (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 14.6, 17.7) kg and women without asthma gained 13.1 (95% CI: 10.9, 15.4) kg. At 3 months postpartum, women with asthma retained 10.4 (95% CI: 8.9, 11.9) kg and women without asthma retained 8.0 (95% CI: 5.9, 10.2) kg. Among women with asthma, exercise-induced asthma and step 3 asthma medications were associated with excess gestational weight gain. This study suggests that women with asthma gain and retain more weight during pregnancy and postpartum than women without asthma.


When a relative motion occurring between liquid and solid, electric charges with opposite signs come out separately on each side by friction which phenomena is called flow electrification. As the amount of charge generated by flow electrification is small, and part of which neutralize each other at the same time, the test method of flow electrification becomes one of discussion topics for scientists of all countries. This paper introduces an experimental measurement method of flow electrification, which is a comparative method by inserting electrodes in pipelines, and acquisition amplifier circuit, with high resolution and strong anti-jamming ability. Experiments show that the measurement method could be applied to system testing for flow electrification.


In this chapter, reconfigurable antennas are reviewed for ultra-wideband (UWB) cogni- tive radio communication applications. The defected microstrip structure (DMS) has been reviewed and integrated into the UWB antennas to form the desired filtering antennas which can filter out unexpected narrowband signal interferences. Then, switches are incorporated into the filtering UWB antennas to construct the cognitive radio UWB (CR-UWB) antenna to make the antenna switch between the UWB antenna and band-notched UWB antenna. In these CR-UWB antennas, the DMSs are to give the desired notches while the switches are used for realizing the switchable characteristics. Several reconfigurable antennas and CR-UWB antennas are created and investigated. The results show that the designed CR-UWB antenna can switch between different modes, making it amazing for UWB, band-notched UWB, and multiband communica- tion system applications.


This paper presents a new method for generating configurations for application-dependent testing of a SRAM-based FPGA interconnect. This method connects an activating input to multiple nets, thus generating activating test vectors for detecting stuck-at, open, and bridging faults. This arrangement permits a reduction in the number of redundant configurations, thus also achieving a reduction in test time for application-dependent testing at full fault coverage. As the underlying solution requires an exponential complexity, a heuristic algorithm that is polynomial and greedy in nature (based on sorting) is used for net selection in the configuration generation process. It is proved that this algorithm has an execution complexity of O(L3) (where L is the number of LUTs in the design). The proposed method requires at most log2(M + 2) configurations (where M denotes the number of activating inputs) as Walsh coding is employed. Moreover, it is scalable with respect to LUT inputs. Extensive logic-based simulation results are provided for ISCAS89 sequential benchmark designs implemented on Xilinx Virtex4 FPGAs; these results shows that the proposed method achieves a considerable reduction in the number of test configurations compared with methods found in the technical literature (on average, a reduction of 49.5 percent).


Background. There is a high incidence of inconclusive cytopathology at initial EUS-FNA (endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration) for suspected malignant pancreatic lesions. To obtain appropriate preoperative or palliative chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, definitive cytopathology is often required. The utility of repeat EUS-FNA is not well established. Methods. A retrospective cohort study was conducted evaluating the yield of repeat EUS-FNA in determining a cytological diagnosis in patients who had undergone a prior EUS-FNA for diagnosis of suspected malignant pancreatic lesions with inconclusive cytopathology. The wait times to the second procedure and to decisions regarding therapy were calculated. Results. Overall, 45 repeat EUS-FNA procedures were performed over seven years for suspected malignant pancreatic lesions. Cytopathological class (I to IV) changed between first and second EUS-FNA in 32 patients (71%). Of 34 patients with an initially nonconclusive diagnosis, 20 had a conclusive diagnosis (59%) on repeat EUS-FNA. The cumulative yield after repeat EUS-FNA for definite pancreatic adenocarcinoma was 7 (16%). The median time interval between first and second EUS-FNA was 31 (7–175) days. Conclusions. A substantial number of patients had a definitive diagnosis of adenocarcinoma on repeat FNA and were, therefore, subsequently able to access appropriate care.


Abstract:Artificial intelligence is exerting an influence on all professions and industries. We have autonomous vehicles, instantaneous translation among the world's leading languages, and search engines that rapidly locate information anywhere on the web in a way that is tailored to a user's interests and past search history. Law is not immune from disruption by new technology. Software tools are beginning to affect various aspects of lawyers' work, including those tasks that historically relied upon expert human judgment, such as predicting court outcomes. These new software tools present new challenges and new opportunities. In the short run, we can expect greater legal transparency, more efficient dispute resolution, improved access to justice, and new challenges to the traditional organization of private law firms delivering legal services on a billable hour basis through a leveraged partner-associate model. With new technology, lawyers will be empowered to work more efficiently, deepen and broaden their areas of expertise, and provide more value to clients. These developments will predictably transform both how lawyers do legal work and resolve disputes on behalf of their clients. In the longer term, it is difficult to predict what the impact of artificially intelligent tools will be, as lawyers incorporate them into their practice and expand their range of services on behalf of clients.


Cold exposure can result in core body temperature reductions and subsequent physiological and psychological effects. While the physiological effects of core temperature cooling have been well documented, a precise method of quantification of cognitive performance during cold stress is yet to be established. We investigated the effects of a 1oC drop in rectal temperature in male subjects at two different exposure temperatures (5oC and 12oC circulated water in a liquid-cooled garment) on the P300 event-related potential waveform during a dual modality (auditory and visual) continuous performance task. Changes in waveform amplitude and latency suggested modification of task engagement or perceived difficulty, and speed of processing, respectively. Decreases in amplitude occurred in both 5oC and 12oC conditions, and increases in latency occurred in the 5oC condition compared to control subjects. It was suggested that cognitive performance suffered in terms of task engagement as rectal temperature decreased, with speed of processing slowed in the 5oC condition. The further use of event-related potential recordings in future thermal studies is discussed.


Interaction of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRNP A1) with specific single-stranded RNA and its relation to liquid-liquid phase separation were investigated in vitro by magnetic resonance based on site-directed spin labelling. An ensemble model of free hnRNP A1 in the absence of RNA was derived from distance distributions between spin labelled sites and small angle X-ray scattering. This model revealed a compact state of the low-complexity domain and interaction of this domain with the RNA recognition motifs. Paramagnetic relaxation enhancement NMR spectroscopy confirmed this interaction. The addition of RNA to dispersed solutions of hnRNP A1 induced phase separation, observed by formation of liquid droplets. The phase separation depended on the RNA concentration and sequence, with continuous wave EPR spectroscopy showing that local protein dynamics is affected by point mutations in the RNA sequence. We propose that an interplay of sequence-specific RNA binding and phase transition serves as a regulatory mechanism for RNA segregation in the stress response of cells.


A flurry of recent work suggests that, with proper training, some patients with spinal cord injuries can regain at least a limited ability to walk. The idea is buttressed by a large and growing body of evidence in cats and now in humans showing that, contrary to dogma, the adult mammalian spinal cord can perform on its own, largely independent of the brain, many of the functions necessary for walking. What9s more, recent data show that neural circuits governing locomotion in the spinal cord can "learn," by altering their connections. More work will be needed to confirm these encouraging, but early, results, and even supporters caution that no one knows how much improvement individual patients can expect from the treatment. Furthermore, many patients, including those whose spinal cords are completely severed and quadriplegics, will not benefit from the approach.


In the North and Baltic seas Atlantic cod Gadus morhua stocks collapsed as part or one of the major factors inducing large-scale ecosystem regime shifts. Determining the relative contribu- tion of overfishing and climate variability in causing these shifts has proven difficult. While facing similar climatic conditions, the Sound (i.e. a narrow strait located between the North and Baltic seas) differs from its neighbouring areas in the magnitude of fishing pressure as it is subjected to a local trawl fishing ban since 1932. By means of 3 independent multivariate analyses, we investigated the state and development of the Sound ecosystem, specifically testing for the occurrence of regime shifts and their potential drivers. By comparing the ecosystem development of the Sound with the neigh- bouring North and Baltic seas, we were able to demonstrate the positive effect of the trawl fishing ban on the resilience of the local cod stock to environmental change. The recovery and healthy con- dition of the Sound cod stock illustrate the need for adaptive marine management strategies that maximize ecosystem resilience.


Background To date, studies on inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) lack comprehensive epidemiological data. We analyzed detailed prospectively collected clinical and epidemiological data from the IBC Registry at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Methods Patients with IBC (n = 248) were consecutively diagnosed and prospectively enrolled between November 2006 and April 2013. All patients were newly diagnosed and at least 18 years old. Secondary IBC was excluded. Overall 160 variables were collected and evaluated including sociodemographics, anthropometrics, tobacco and alcohol consumption, reproductive variables, and family history data. Results Mean age at diagnosis was 51.6 (±11.5 SD) years, and the majority of patients were White (77.8%). A mean BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2, irrespective of menopausal status, was observed in 80.2% of all patients, with 82.6% of African Americans being obese. Approximately 42.2% of patients were ever smokers, and 91% reported ever being pregnant. A history of breastfeeding was reported in 54% of patients, with significant differences between ethnic groups in favor of White women (P<0.0001). Other reproductive factors such as use of birth control pills & hormone replacement therapy were also more frequently associated with White women compare to other ethnic groups (P < 0.05). In the multivariate Cox proportional hazard analysis, African American or Hispanic ethnicity, not having breastfed, higher clinical stage, and TNBC subtype were associated with shorter survival. Conclusion Our data suggest that IBC is associated with distinct epidemiological profiles. This information could assist in targeting patients with specific preventive strategies based on their modifiable behavioral patterns.


In this paper, we propose a Meta Cooperative Learning (MCL) framework for task-oriented dialog systems (TDSs). Our model consists of an auxiliary KB reasoning task for learning meta KB knowledge, an auxiliary dialogue reasoning task for learning dialogue patterns, and a TDS task (primary task) that aims at not only retrieving accurate entities from KB but also generating natural responses, which are coordinated to achieve collective success in both retrieving accurate KB entities and generating human-like responses via meta learning. Concretely, the dialog generation model amalgamates complementary meta KB and dialog knowledge from two novel auxiliary reasoning tasks that together provide integrated guidance to build a high-quality TDS by adding regularization terms to force primary network to produce similar results to auxiliary networks. While MCL automatically learns appropriate labels for the two auxiliary reasoning tasks from the primary task, without requiring access to any further data. The key idea behind MCL is to use the performance of the primary task, which is trained alongside the auxiliary tasks in one iteration, to improve the auxiliary labels for the next iteration with meta learning. Experimental results on three benchmark datasets show that MCL can generate higher quality responses compared to several strong baselines in terms of both automatic and human evaluations. Code to reproduce the results in this paper is available at: https://github.com/siat-nlp/MCL.


The aim of this study was to monitor the carry-over of melamine and its metabolite cyanuric acid from melamine-contaminated feed administered to layers into eggs. Ten experimental Isa Brown layers (36 week of age) were fed melamine-contaminated feed containing 100 mg of melamine per kg of feed. The duration of the experiment was 6 weeks. Eggs were collected during whole experiment. Analysis of eggs was done by a simple extraction of melamine and cyanuric acid residues, using a water-acetonitrile mixture and analysed by gas chromatography - triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. Melamine and cyanuric acid residues were detected in all eggs collected from the experimental layers, immediately after the first administration of melaminecontaminated feed. The mean concentrations of melamine in the egg yolk and egg white recalculated on a dry matter basis were 1.90 mg·kg-1 ± 0.158 and 10.84 mg·kg-1 ± 3.951 (P ≤ 0.01); the cyanuric acid contents were 6.54 mg·kg -1 ± 0.2.466 and 4.07 mg·kg -1 ± 0.909, respectively. Melamine and cyanuric acid were not detected in eggs from control layers. Concentrations of melamine and cyanuric acid in eggs decreased quickly after melamine feeding was stopped. Our results indicate that melamine undergoes biotransformation to cyanuric acid in the layer's body that also passed into the eggs. The results verified the presence of distribution metabolic pathway of melamine and its easiest transfer into egg yolk. Moreover, the biotransformation of melamine into cyanuric acid in eggs of layers was confirmed.


Abstract This paper investigates the dynamics of FDIs in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) by applying the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood estimation method on a gravity model. In particular, we analyze the influence of macro and spatial factors on investment stock changes and discuss whether the origin of these investments and the 2004 EU enlargement have had any effects on BSR FDIs. Our results suggest that EU enlargement has been significant for FDI activity in the region, and that FDI is basically a regional issue as it tends to be bilateral within the region. However, the same results also suggest that geographic distance is not a significant factor. We conclude that while being traditional in nature, the BSR FDI pattern is undergoing changes towards a lesser degree of geographic bias.


The month of diagnosis of hyperthyroidism in 183 patients from the area of Wellington, for the period 1977-1986 was ascertained. A significantly greater proportion of cases (58%, p less than 0.05) were diagnosed in the warmer period of the year (November to April) than in the cooler period (May to October). Although seasonal environmental factors, such as changes in iodine intake; or other unrecognised factors, such as differences among the patients themselves, may possibly play an aetiological or pathogenetic role, the significantly greater proportion of thyrotoxic patients diagnosed during the warmer 6-month period of the year is presently best explained by the fact that symptoms tend to be less tolerable in warm weather.


Maternal placental syndromes (MPS) occur as a consequence of abnormal placental vessel formation, and refer to hypertensive pregnancy disorders (HPDs) and related placental abnormalities, such as placental abruption and infarction.1 In the affected pregnancies, adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm delivery, foetal growth retardation and intrauterine foetal demise, are common. HPDs complicate about 5–10% of pregnancies worldwide2 and cover a spectrum of conditions. Most notable among these is preeclampsia, a multisystem pregnancy-specific disorder clinically characterised by hypertension and proteinuria, and which remains a leading cause of foetal and maternal morbidity and mortality. Evidence suggests that preeclampsia is associated with the release of antiangiogenic factors by an ischaemic placenta, which, in turn, may lead to maternal endothelial dysfunction.3 ,4

In 1927, Corwin and Herrick reported an association between 'hypertensive toxemia of pregnancy', as pre-eclampsia was once called, and chronic cardiovascular disease.5 Since then, there have been multiple epidemiological studies that confirm these authors' observation. HPDs have been associated with chronic hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, venous thromboembolism and cardiovascular death6 ,7; evidence suggests that other features of the metabolic syndrome are present as well.8 Similarly, the development of an MPS has been shown to double the risk of development of cardiovascular disease later on in life.1 However, studies evaluating an association between HPDs and future arrhythmias and heart failure are limited.

In this issue of Heart Ray9 discusses these specific cardiovascular outcomes, heart failure and arrhythmias, in the context of a previous history of MPSs (see page 1136) . In this unique retrospective cohort study, using a large administrative database in Ontario, Canada, the authors evaluate the frequency of these two outcomes in women with previous MPSs, defined as placental abruption, …


Slaughterhouse waste is considered to be an emerging issue because of its disposal cost. As an alternative, it would be a great prospect for the bioeconomy society to explore new usages of these leftover materials. As per food safety rules mentioned by EU legislation, all bone waste generated by slaughterhouses ought to be disposed of by rendering. The huge quantity of worldwide bone waste generation (130 billion kilograms per annum) is an environmental burden if not properly managed. The waste animal bones can be efficiently employed as a heterogeneous catalyst to produce biodiesel. This mini review summarized the recent literature reported for biodiesel generation using waste animal bones derived heterogeneous catalyst. It discusses the sources of bone waste, catalyst preparation methods, particularly calcination and its effects, and important characteristics of bones derived catalyst. It suggests that catalysts extracted from waste animal bones have suitable catalytic activity in transesterification of different oil sources to generate a good quality biodiesel.


1. The filtered blood serum of rabbits infected with pneumococci is not toxic. 2. Extracts of pneumococci prepared by keeping emulsions of the bacteria in salt solution at 37° C. for varying periods of time may be toxic, and when injected intravenously into guinea pigs, may produce a train of symptoms followed by acute death resembling that seen in acute anaphylaxis. Such extracts, however, are not uniformly toxic and it has been impossible to discover the exact conditions under which such extracts become toxic. 3. When the centrifugalized peritoneal washings of guinea pigs infected with pneumococci are injected into the circulation of normal guinea pigs, these animals very frequently exhibit symptoms like those seen in acute anaphylaxis, and a considerable proportion of the animals die acutely. 4. When pneumococci are dissolved in dilute solutions of bile salts and the solution resulting is injected intravenously into rabbits and guinea pigs, these animals show with great constancy the same symptoms that are seen in acute anaphylaxis. The solution of pneumococci in bile may occur in ten minutes at 37° C. or in half an hour on ice. This is considered evidence that the toxicity of the solution does not result from digestion of the bacterial protein, but is due to substances preformed in the bacterial cells and set free on their solution. The toxicity of the solution is diminished or destroyed by heating to 55° C. or over.


Gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC), which modulates cell growth and differentiation, may play an important role in tumor growth. Cancer cells have dysfunctional GJIC, but it is not known whether GJIC is mechanistically involved in the carcinogenic and anticarcinogenic effects of n-6 and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) on colon tumor cells. Caco-2 cells were used as an in vitro model to study the effects of PUFAs on differentiated as well as undifferentiated human colon cells. The GJIC capacity of this cell line increased during spontaneous differentiation. However, no differential effects between n-6 and n-3 PUFAs on GJIC were observed. Short-term incubation with linoleic acid (18:2n-6), α-linolenic acid (18:3n-3), arachidonic acid (AA, 20:4n-6), and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5n-3) did not influence GJIC, while long-term incubation (>10 days) with linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid inhibited GJIC of these colon cells. Long-chain metabolites such as AA and EPA were not formed after incubation with linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid, thus excluding the involvement of prostaglandins in the observed effects. Although the exact mechanism of GJIC inhibition is unclear, cytotoxicity probably mediated by lipid peroxidation products seems to be related, because incubation with more PUFAs (AA and EPA) completely abolished GJIC.


This prospective multicenter non-randomized phase III study aims to evaluate the long-term outcome of sentinel node navigation surgery for early gastric cancer compared with conventional distal or total gastrectomy. Clinically diagnosed primary T1N0M0 gastric cancer patients with a single lesion (≤40 mm) and without previous endoscopic treatment will be enrolled in this study. Sentinel nodes are identified by dye and radioisotope tracers and are subjected to intraoperative rapid pathology. For patients with negative sentinel node metastasis, individualized surgery consisting of limited stomach resection and sentinel node basin dissection is performed, while standard gastrectomy with D2 lymph node dissection is employed for the positive sentinel node patients. A total of 225 patients will be accrued from 13 hospitals that have experience in sentinel node mapping. The primary endpoint is 5-year relapse-free survival. The secondary endpoints are overall survival, sentinel node detection rate, diagnostic accuracy for sentinel node, distribution of sentinel nodes and metastatic sentinel node/non-sentinel node, and postoperative quality of life.


Compact and accurate representations of 3D shapes are central to many perception and robotics tasks. State-of-the-art learning-based methods can reconstruct single objects but scale poorly to large datasets. We present a novel recursive implicit representation to efficiently and accurately encode large datasets of complex 3D shapes by recursively traversing an implicit octree in latent space. Our implicit Recursive Octree Auto-Decoder (ROAD) learns a hierarchically structured latent space enabling state-of-the-art reconstruction results at a compression ratio above 99%. We also propose an efficient curriculum learning scheme that naturally exploits the coarse-to-fine properties of the underlying octree spatial representation. We explore the scaling law relating latent space dimension, dataset size, and reconstruction accuracy, showing that increasing the latent space dimension is enough to scale to large shape datasets. Finally, we show that our learned latent space encodes a coarse-to-fine hierarchical structure yielding reusable latents across different levels of details, and we provide qualitative evidence of generalization to novel shapes outside the training set.


The somatic growth rate of 0+ fish of the six major species in Dutch shallow eutrophic lakes, bream (Abramis brama), roach (Rutilus rutilus), pikeperch (Stizostedion lucioperca) (planktivorous and piscivorous), perch (Perca fluviatilis), ruffe (Gymnocephalus cernuus), and smelt (Osmerus eperlanus), was analysed by using a differential equation. This equation models the instantaneous growth rate of a fish as a temperature-dependent power function of body weight. Two of the model parameters were calibrated by optimising the prediction of the growth rate of the fish. Using a new method, which included a parametric bootstrap procedure, confidence limits were estimated for these two calibrated parameters and were used to test the significance of differences between species in growth performance under natural conditions. These tests revealed four groups of species: (A) smelt, (B) roach and bream, (C) ruffe and perch, and (D) piscivorous pikeperch. Growth performance of planktivorous pikeperch mainly overlapped with roach and bream (B) but showed some overlap with ruffe and perch (C). Differences and similarities are explained from the food type (D Versus A, B, and C) and the phylogenetic constraints (A versus B versus C) of each species. [KEYWORDS: Shallow eutrophic lake; rutilus-rutilus; salmo-trutta; brown trout; body-size; tjeukemeer; patterns; bream; roach; life]


Objective: To explore the literature focusing on cultural influences in the diagnosis of adult ADHD and respective societal burden. Method: A review of the literature over the past 10 years was performed using OVID. Results: Although numerous articles focused on diagnosis and burden of adult ADHD, few focused on cultural factors influencing diagnosis. Like other mental health disorders, cultural and social perspectives contribute to our understanding of adult ADHD and may play a significant role in the diagnosis and varying acceptance of the condition. Moreover, adults with ADHD may underestimate the impact of ADHD symptoms, and in many cases have learned to compensate for ADHD related impairments by choosing lifestyles that help compensate for symptoms. Some adults with ADHD may appear to function well, however they may expend excessive amounts of energy to overcome impairments; and they may be distressed by ongoing symptoms such as restlessness, mood instability and low self-esteem. Research shows that ADHD can be detrimental to many areas of life including work, daily activities, social and family relationships and psychological and physical well-being. Patient-reported impairments in productivity due to poor time management, procrastination, and distractibility can translate into significant indirect costs and decreased quality of life. ADHD in adults is also associated with increased accidents, medical resource utilization, antisocial behaviour and drug alcohol abuse. Conclusion: The substantial societal burden of adult ADHD highlights the importance of providing a better understanding of the factors that contribute to accurate diagnosis and of improving the low recognition of the disorder in many world regions.