This study delves into the patterns of urban expansion in Kabul, using Landsat and Sentinel satellite imagery as primary tools for analysis. We classified land use and land cover (LULC) into five distinct categories: water bodies, vegetation, barren land, barren rocky terrain, and buildings. The necessary data processing and analysis was conducted using ERDAS Imagine v.2015 and ArcGIS 10.8 software. Our main objective was to scrutinize changes in LULC across five discrete decades. Additionally, we traced the long-term evolution of built-up areas in Kabul from 1973 to 2020. The classified satellite images revealed significant changes across all categories. For instance, the area of built-up land reduced from 29.91% in 2013 to 23.84% in 2020, while barren land saw a decrease from 33.3% to 28.4% over the same period. Conversely, the proportion of barren rocky terrain exhibited an increase from 22.89% in 2013 to 29.97% in 2020. Minor yet notable shifts were observed in the categories of water bodies and vegetated land use. The percentage of water bodies shrank from 2.51% in 2003 to 1.30% in 2013, and the extent of vegetated land use showed a decline from 13.61% in 2003 to 12.6% in 2013. Our study unveiled evolving land use patterns over time, with specific periods recording an increase in barren land and a slight rise in vegetated areas. These findings underscored the dynamic transformation of Kabul's urban landscape over the years, with significant implications for urban planning and sustainability.


Abstract Health and wellbeing is defined internationally as a multi-dimensional and holistic concept, particularly within Indigenous worldviews. However, in Australia there is a lack of detailed frameworks supporting such definitions that are founded on Aboriginal knowledges. This study aimed to explore Aboriginal perspectives of child health and wellbeing in an urban setting. Qualitative interviews with 25 care-givers of Aboriginal children living in Melbourne, Australia were conducted. Aboriginal people and community controlled organisations were collaborative partners in all stages of the research. A conceptual framework of Aboriginal child health and wellbeing in an urban setting was developed comprising four main themes: Strong Culture; Strong Child; Strong Environment; and Strengths and Challenges. Aboriginal conceptions of culture are considered central to Aboriginal child health and wellbeing in an urban context. A holistic framework that privileges Aboriginal knowledge of child health and wellbeing has not previously been available. Further exploration of socio-ecological models within Aboriginal child health and wellbeing contexts is needed. This study identifies dimensions for further exploration in research, policy and practice.


STKE
Cells monitor how well the synthesis of proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is going, and when stressful conditions cause the accumulation of unfolded proteins, the unfolded protein response (UPR) is initiated. Ito et al. used a microarray screen to detect genes whose products were expressed specifically in response to an agent causing ER stress. They identified stanniocalcin 2 ( STC2 ), which is related to a hormone originally described in fish that functions to prevent hypercalcemia. Expression of STC2 was increased in cultured cells undergoing the UPR after exposure to thapsigargin, an inhibitor of the sarco(endo)plasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase. Like other UPR genes, STC2 was also expressed in rat brain tissue after transient cerebral ischemia. Expression of STC2 appears to require signaling from the PERK serine-threonine kinase, a known mediator of the UPR, to the transcription factor ATF4, because mouse embryo fibroblasts lacking PERK or ATF4 failed to increase expression of STC2. Increased synthesis of STC2, which was secreted from cells undergoing ER stress, appears to contribute to signaling mechanisms that help protect cells under stressful conditions. — LBR

Mol. Cell. Biol. 24 , 9456 (2004).


Background and aims Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is a group of uncommon demyelinating disorders characterised mainly by myelitis and opticus neuritis together with highly specific anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies. Case reports of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and NMOSD have been reported. Though myelitis and opticus neuritis are well described, they are rare manifestations of SLE and it is not known to what extent NMOSD contributes to these symptoms. We investigated the occurrence of NMOSD in a large cohort of patients with SLE. Methods We identified all cases of myelitis and opticus neuritis in a single centre cohort comprising 610 SLE patients, identified during the period 1995–2014. Medical files were reviewed and frozen serum samples from patients with these symptoms were investigated for the presence of anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies. Results 3 of 5 patients with myelitis and 0 of 1 patient with opticus neuritis were positive for IgG anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies. All patients positive for anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies presented with longitudinal extended transverse myelitis; lesions extending for more than three spinal segments. Conclusions Among 6 cases with SLE and typical NMOSD symptoms we detected anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies in 3/5 patients with myelitis but not in any of the opticus neuritis cases. NMOSD seems to be a fairly common cause of SLE associated myelitis, accounting for 60% of SLE cases with myelitis in our study. SLE patients with engagement of the spinal cord or optic nerve should be screened for anti-aquaporin-4 antibodies. This is important since rituximab rather than cyclophosphamide is the preferred treatment for NMOSD


In this paper we review the relationship between inflation rates, nominal interest rates and rates of growth of monetary aggregates for a large group of OECD countries. We conclude that the low-frequency behavior of these series maintains a close relationship, as predicted by standard quantity theory models. We show in an estimated model those relationships to be relatively invariant to alternative frictions that can deliver very different high-frequency dynamics. We argue that these relationships are useful for policy design aimed at controlling inflation. JEL Classification: E41, E51, E52.


This paper presents a new methodology for evaluating the failure probability of fluid bearings which are sensitive components for the design of machine rotors, mechatronic systems and high precision metrology. The static and dynamic behavior of a fluid bearing depends on several parameters, such as external load, bearing dimensions, supply pressure, quality of the machined surfaces, fluid properties, etc. In this paper, the characteristics of a simple geometry thrust bearing are calculated analytically in order demonstrate the usefulness of the proposal methodology and its pertinence to bearing design.


Background. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is commonly managed in primary care but there is poor awareness of evidence-based guidelines and the quality and interpretation of spirometry is suboptimal. Objectives. The aims of this qualitative study were to explore how an intervention involving case finding and management of COPD was implemented, and the extent to which the GPs and practice nurses (PNs) worked in partnership to diagnose and manage COPD. Methods. Semi-structured interviews with PNs (n = 7), GPs (n = 4) and patients (n = 26) who had participated in the Primary care EarLy Intervention for Copd mANagement (PELICAN) study. The Theoretical Domains Framework was used to guide the coding and analysis of the interviews with PN and GPs. The patient interviews were analysed thematically. Results. PNs developed technical skills and understood the requirements for good-quality spirometry. However, many lacked confidence in its interpretation and felt this was not part of their professional role. This was reflected in responses from the GPs. Once COPD was diagnosed, the GPs tended to manage the patients with the PNs less involved. This was in contrast with PNs' active role in managing patients with other chronic diseases such as diabetes. The extent to which the GPs and PNs worked in partnership to manage COPD varied. Conclusions. PNs improved their skills and confidence in performing spirometry. Beliefs about their professional role, identity and confidence influenced the extent to which PNs were involved in interpretation of the spirometry results and managing the patient in partnership with the GP.


Article history: Received 02.06.2017 Accepted 13.03.2018 The biomass yield, nutritional composition and content of secondary metabolites in grain and germinated cereals were evaluated. The treatments were: T1 yellow maize; T2 white corn; T3 capio corn; Barley T4; T5 galeras wheat; T6 sumatambo wheat and T7 oat. The yield of biomass, protein and energy was obtained by weighing the grain before and after the germination, as well as the content of phenols, saponins, alkaloids and steroids. Analysis of variance and comparison of means were performed using Duncan's test. The results obtained for biomass production indicated differences (p <0.05). T7 presented the highest fresh yield with 236.34%, and the values for the remaining treatments ranged between 170.80 and 218.65%. On dry basis T7 presented the highest (p <0.05) yield with 119.86%, while the lowest was registered in T4 with 70.6%. There were differences (p <0.05) recorded for proteins. In fresh germinated grains this component varied between 4.29% and 5.72%, on a dry basis it fluctuated between 9.79% and 13.4%. In the grain, the values ranged from 6.96% to 9.14% indicating an increase in germination with respect to the dry grain that had values ranging from 8 to 10.5%. A higher protein yield was obtained in fresh germination of T3, while it was lower in T4. There were differences (p <0.05) in the energy content of germinated grains, obtaining 81% in T7 to 95% of NDT in T2 and T3. The values in grains ranged from 78% for T4 to 85% of NDT on T7. Positive energy yields were observed in all the treatments, except for T4.


This document reports on a March 2015 dialogue among businesses, NGOs, and federal and state conservation agencies focused on Endangered Species Act listing decisions and programs in the southeastern United States. Over the next decade, a large fraction of the nation's species listing decisions will be made in the Southeast, where a large number of aquatic species may be at risk. Also, private sector land and water use plays a particularly important role in both potential threats to species and opportunities for conservation and recovery in the region. Participants described the volume and timing of Region 4 listing decisions, identified science gaps pertinent to those decisions, identified ways to maximize the decision relevance and benefits of science investment given limited financial resources and tight time frames, and assessed the possibility and virtues of science collaboration within the private sector and between the private sector and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.


A general fact about language is that subject relative clauses are easier to process than object relative clauses. Recently, several self-paced reading studies have presented surprising evidence that object relatives in Chinese are easier to process than subject relatives. We carried out three self-paced reading experiments that attempted to replicate these results. Two of our three studies found a subject-relative preference, and the third study found an object-relative advantage. Using a random effects bayesian meta-analysis of fifteen studies (including our own), we show that the overall current evidence for the subject-relative advantage is quite strong (approximate posterior probability of a subject-relative advantage given the data: 78–80%). We argue that retrieval/integration based accounts would have difficulty explaining all three experimental results. These findings are important because they narrow the theoretical space by limiting the role of an important class of explanation—retrieval/integration cost—at least for relative clause processing in Chinese.


Recently, hashing based approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search has attracted much attention. Extensive new algorithms have been developed and successfully applied to different applications. However, two critical problems are rarely mentioned. First, in real-world applications, the data often comes in a streaming fashion but most of existing hashing methods are batch based models. Second, when the dataset becomes huge, it is almost impossible to load all the data into memory to train hashing models. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to handle these two problems simultaneously based on the idea of data sketching. A sketch of one dataset preserves its major characters but with significantly smaller size. With a small size sketch, our method can learn hash functions in an online fashion, while needs rather low computational complexity and storage space. Extensive experiments on two large scale benchmarks and one synthetic dataset demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.


The effect of aging on the induction of IL-2 transcription by concanavalin A was studied in spleen lymphocytes isolated from young (4-6 months) and old (24 months) male Fischer 344 rats. The induction of IL-2 mRNA levels and IL-2 transcription were 40 to 50% lower for spleen lymphocytes isolated from old rats compared to spleen lymphocytes isolated from young rats. Because the transcription factor NFAT (nuclear factor activating IL-2 transcription) plays a major role in the regulation of IL-2 transcription, the DNA binding activity of NFAT in nuclear extracts of concanavalin A-stimulated lymphocytes was measured using a gel shift assay. The ability of nuclear extracts isolated from either total spleen lymphocytes or T cells to bind the NFAT oligonucleotide decreased 50 to 60% with age. Therefore, the age-related decrease in the expression of IL-2 appears to occur at the level of transcription and involves the transcription factor NFAT.


Information fusion is becoming increasingly human-centric. While past systems typically relegated humans to the role of analyzing a finished fusion product, current systems are exploring the role of humans as integral elements in a modular and extensible distributed framework where many tasks can be accomplished by either human or machine performers. For example, "participatory sensing" campaigns give humans the role of "soft sensors" by uploading their direct observations or as "soft sensor platforms" by using mobile devices to record human-annotated, GPS-encoded high quality photographs, video, or audio. Additionally, the role of "human-in-the-loop", in which individuals or teams using advanced human computer interface (HCI) tools such as stereoscopic 3D visualization, haptic interfaces, or aural "sonification" interfaces can help to effectively engage the innate human capability to perform pattern matching, anomaly identification, and semantic-based contextual reasoning to interpret an evolving situation. The Pennsylvania State University is participating in a Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program funded by the U.S. Army Research Office to investigate fusion of hard and soft data in counterinsurgency (COIN) situations. In addition to the importance of this research for Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), many of the same challenges and techniques apply to health and medical informatics, crisis management, crowd-sourced "citizen science", and monitoring environmental concerns. One of the key challenges that we have encountered is the development of data formats, protocols, and methodologies to establish an information architecture and framework for the effective capture, representation, transmission, and storage of the vastly heterogeneous data and accompanying metadata -- including capabilities and characteristics of human observers, uncertainty of human observations, "soft" contextual data, and information pedigree. This paper describes our findings and offers insights into the role of data representation in hard/soft fusion.


The photoelectrochemical performance of rutile TiO2 mesocrystals has been demonstrated to be significantly improved by a chelating-assembly of poly-dopamine on the surface of the TiO2 mesocrystals. The formed benzoquinone groups on poly-dopamine could act as electron receivers to take over the photo-induced electrons of TiO2 mesocrystals, thereby constituting a self-reinforced functionality transducing interface to enhance the cathode photocurrent. Herein, zearalenone as a representative mycotoxin was used as a model analyte to assist the immunoassay establishment. The bioconjugates of secondary antibody integrated ordered mesoporous Co3O4 were introduced through immunoreaction. The Co3O4, as a powerful scaffold, could load more bioactive molecules due to its mesoporous structure. Owing to the inevitable steric hindrance caused by the bioconjugates, the photo-initiated electrons in the TiO2 mesocrystals/poly-dopamine composite were inaccessible to reduce the oxygen in the electrolyte, thus depressing the photocurrent density. Meanwhile, partial exciting light found it difficult to arrive at the TiO2 mesocrystals due to Co3O4 with a felicitous band gap of 2.07 eV which consumed the partial light energy. Under optimal conditions, this immunosensor had a wide linear range from 10−6 to 20 ng mL−1 for zearalenone detection. The specificity, precision, and reproducibility were satisfactory for this biosensor, which offered a valuable and versatile protocol in photoelectrochemical immunoassay development.


This study sought to find out the role of communication in maternal and child healthcare outcomes in Machakos County, Kenya. The objectives of the study were to (i) examine the basic levels of knowledge on maternal and child healthcare among women of reproductive age, (ii) identify the existing modes of communication between maternal and child healthcare providers and the women of reproductive age and finally, (iii) determine the effectiveness of various types of communication used in maternal and child health communication in Machakos County. The study used Social Cognitive Theory, Health Belief Model and the Uses and Gratification theories to explain perceptions, knowledge, attitudes, practices and behaviour change in maternal and child health. The research utilized mixed-methods design, which utilizes the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative data from respondents. Interviewer-guided questionnaires were used for the quantitative data while interviews were used for qualitative data. The study target population was of women of reproductive age between 15-44 years, with a sample size of three hundred respondents. A total of five interviewees were selected through purposive sampling technique for the in-depth interviews. From the findings, the researcher can categorically state that women of reproductive age in Machakos County were aware about maternal and child health care. Most women of reproductive age were in the age cohort of 20-24 and had attained at least secondary school level education and were therefore able to comprehend maternal and child healthcare matters communicated to them. The study established that there were existing modes of communication between maternal and child healthcare providers and the women of reproductive age, the most frequent being the use of healthcare workers (doctors and nurses) on one-on-one discussions. The respondents preferred this as healthcare workers took adequate time to interact with them, at any time or when necessary. From the study, it can be deduced that healthcare workers using one-on-one communication was the most effective mode of communication in maternal and child healthcare. This is attributed to the interpersonal nature of communication, use of a language that the woman will be conversant with and an interactive engagement between the healthcare worker and the woman. The most communicated aspect of maternal and child healthcare according to this study findings were matters relating to antenatal care, family planning, and exclusive breastfeeding. The research recommends that healthcare workers ought to have regular training and capacity building in order to equip them with relevant up to date information that they would relay to the women during clinic visits and other forums of interaction. The study also recommends that healthcare workers ought to do more preemptive programs on health communication and education, not just when there is need like during disease outbreaks. The study therefore recommends that more emphasis should be laid on strengthening the healthcare workers' communication skills and on updating their knowledge on maternal and child healthcare since this was identified as the most effective mode of communication on maternal and child healthcare. Both levels of government at county and national level should have proper policies on health communication, and departments within the ministry whose focus is strengthening aspects of health communication, and not only on maternal and child health.


The structures of the human hands and feet are shaped by evolution and its effects on the brain, skeleton and other structures, and on behavior. We used measurements obtained of hands and feet from living humans in Europe, the Americas (South and North) and Australia and images of hands and feet in cave art, paintings, and photographs obtained from the Web including some from Africa. We used the ratios of the third finger/width of hand and second toe/width of foot. We hypothesized that hand ratios would not have changed over millennia whereas, because of the use of footwear and mechanical locomotion, the ratios obtained from feet could have changed significantly. Here we report that statistical analyses and modeling confirmed our initial hypothesis.


The anti-vaccination movement threatens public health by reducing the likelihood of disease eradication. With social media's purported role in disseminating anti-vaccine information, it is imperative to understand the drivers of attitudes among participants involved in the vaccination debate on a communication channel critical to the movement: Twitter. Using four years of longitudinal data capturing vaccine discussions on Twitter, we identify users who persistently hold pro and anti attitudes, and those who newly adopt anti attitudes towards vaccination. After gathering each user's entire Twitter timeline, totaling to over 3 million tweets, we explore differences in the individual narratives across the user cohorts. We find that those with long-term anti-vaccination attitudes manifest conspiratorial thinking, mistrust in government, and are resolute and in-group focused in language. New adoptees appear to be predisposed to form anti-vaccination attitudes via similar government distrust and general paranoia, but are more social and less certain than their long-term counterparts. We discuss how this apparent predisposition can interact with social media-fueled events to bring newcomers into the anti-vaccination movement. Given the strong base of conspiratorial thinking underlying anti-vaccination attitudes, we conclude by highlighting the need for alternatives to traditional methods of using authoritative sources such as the government when correcting misleading vaccination claims.


Immune checkpoint inhibitors are agents that act by inhibiting the mechanisms of immune escape displayed by various cancers. The success of immune checkpoint inhibitors against several tumors has promoted a new treatment strategy in clinical oncology, and this has encouraged physicians to increase the number of patients who receive the immune checkpoint therapy. In the present article, we review the main concepts regarding immune checkpoint mechanisms and how cancer disrupts them to undergo immune escape. In addition, we describe the most essential concepts related to immune checkpoint inhibitors. We critically review the literature on preclinical and clinical studies of the immune checkpoint inhibitors as a treatment option for thyroid cancer, ovarian carcinoma, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, adrenocortical carcinoma and neuroendocrine tumors. We present the challenges and the opportunities of using immune checkpoint inhibitors against these endocrine malignancies, highlighting the breakthroughs and pitfalls that have recently emerged.


The Quarto Cagnino district, like other Milanese social housing settlements, has a distinctly marked identity and, as with any other archi- tectural work, its framework calls for formulating a well-founded judgement based on the understanding of its context and the reasons that led the designers towards specific choices in form. The district designed for 1100 dwellings (approximately 5000 inhabitants) was built in two distinct phases between 1964 and 1973. Regarding the settlement plan, the Quarto Cagnino appears as a largely scaled construction organised into one main building, to which are connected four aligned buildings, perpendicular to the main body and alternately placed on either side. Quarto Cagnino faces with the problem of the integration of the dwellings providing an adequate amount of services, of which the scarcity had been one of the deficiencies of large popular districts. The image of the large dam, referring also explicitly to the theme of city walls, was associated with the idea of a constant permeability. The stereometric and Cartesian volumes of the buildings are built upon a powerful base of reinforced concrete that seems to lift itself from the ground thanks to a grid of cylindrical pillars. The open plan of the ground floor is an obvious reference to Le Corbusier and his Unité d'habitation quoted almost literally. The open ground floor enables se- condary roads to be drawn underneath the buildings, emphasizing the image of the great structure that connects with communication ne- tworks and guarantees a good development of service activities: some to the scale of the district such as primary and secondary schools, gymnasiums and the church, others to the scale of the building itself such as common spaces in which to gather.


This study examined the effectiveness of banner ads at game portals. It was predicted that the recall and recognition of banner ads would be low, due to the amount of attention needed to play the game. As predicted, recall and recognition of banner ads were very low. Participants could hardly remember one banner ad in the free and cued recall tasks. Recognition of banner ads turned out to be very poor as well, participants could only recognize one third of the banner ads being showed. Besides examining the effectiveness of banner ads, this research also explores the role of attention in recall of banner ads. By manipulating gaming experience and type of game, an attempt was made to find out differences in attention. It was predicted that in a skill game experienced players would score higher on recall and recognition tasks than novice players, due to the levels of attention in both conditions. It was also predicted that there would be no differences in recall and recognition between the experienced and novice players in the brain game condition. Results indicate that experienced participants in the skill game condition indeed recognized more banner ads than participants in the novice condition. These differences could not be found in scores of the recall tasks. As predicted, in the brain game condition, no differences in gaming experience were found. Results showed that attention plays an important role in memorizing banner ads on game portals


Identifying and localising tumor hypoxia in cancer patients is a challenge in oncology imaging. There are many ongoing clinical trials using conventional positron emission tomography (PET) scans and PET agents as cellular markers for detection of tumour hypoxia depending on the concept of the basic physics of 2gamma annihilation. However, Kacperski and Spyrou (2004) proposed, for the first time, to use 3gamma annihilation as a new PET molecular imaging modality, where the positronium and its annihilation, could serve as an oxygen-sensitive marker. The effective yield of 3gamma annihilation depends on the rates of formation and quenching. The formation of positronium is not only sensitive to the physics parameters, but also behaves as an active chemical particle. A hypoxic cell is a microenviromnent which has an inadequate amount of oxygen. Oxygen is known to be a strong positronium quencher where 2gamma annihilation replaces the 3gamma process. It is thus possible for hypoxic cells to be characterised by higher 3gamma rates than those cells which are well oxygenated. The measurement of 3gamma annihilation to differentiate between oxygenated and non-oxygenated biological samples in order to extract useful information in PET for oncology is a challenging project. It opens up very interesting applications in nuclear medicine imaging as the 3gamma yield has not been measured before in biological tissue and in particular hypoxic tumour cells. The project is multidisciplinary involving physics, biology and chemistry. There are many factors which affect the dissolved oxygen in mineral water, defibrinated horse blood and serum samples. These factors and the challenges to prepare in-vitro hypoxic samples have been experimentally measured using polarography with different chemical reactions e.g. carbon dioxide, nitrogen and AnaeroGen(TM). Results have shown that polarography was more suitable than colorimetery in the measurement of dissolved oxygen in blood due to the high absorption characteristic of blood. AnaeroGen(TM) is the method of choice, unlike carbon dioxide or nitrogen treatment, for preparing hypoxic samples due to the good agreement of the behaviour of the oxygen reduction as in the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve which is caused by a decrease in pH, an increase in partial pressure of carbon dioxide and an increase in temperature. The 3gamma yield was measured in normoxic and hypoxic environments using the triple coincidence measurement of three high-energy resolution detectors (HPGe). The AnaeroGen(TM) was used to generate a hypoxic environment. The percentage of the coincidence events qualified as 3gamma was 26.5% higher in the hypoxic environment. This reseach work is a step towards the application of the novel modality of 3gamma PET which in conjunction with conventional 2gamma PET could serve as a non-invasive oxygen sensitive marker. The combination of 3gamma and 2gamma coincidences in nuclear medicine imaging systems may contribute important information for the development and validation of appropriate hypoxia markers. The relative 3gamma/2gamma yield was measured for a positron emitter 22Na with the new generation of scintillator LaC13:Ce and LaBr3:Ce detectors, which had been characterised together with NaI(Tl) and HPGe detectors. The experimental focus was on measuring the relative 3gamma/2gamma yield in different samples by applying the peak-to-peak and the peak-to-valley methods. The value of the ratio 3gamma/2gamma depends on the specimen and is of the order of 10-2. The relative 3gamma/2gamma yields obtained for the peak to peak method in the silica sample were, for example, (3.41+/-0.18)x10 -2, (2.98+/-0.13)x10-2, (4.01+/-0.16)x10 -2 and (2.12+/-0.14)x10-2 for LaBr3:Ce, LaCl3:Ce, NaI(Tl) and HPGe detectors, respectively. The results show that the lanthanum based crystals, LaBr3:Ce and LaCl3:Ce, have the potential to replace NaI(Tl) and HPGe due to both good energy resolution and good detection efficiency and can be the scintillator of choice for determining the yield of 3gamma. The peak-to-valley method was applied to measure the relative yield of 3gamma/2gamma positron annihilation using 18F in 11 haematological samples of different oxygenation levels. The relative 3gamma/2gamma yield was found to vary as much as 11% between the components investigated.


Most analyses of electromagnetic (EM) railguns for military applications assume that the current will be supplied to the gun breech and that it will be constant, or as nearly so as the power supply can provide. A constant current provides a constant EM accelerating force and produces the minimum barrel length for a given muzzle energy. However, there are other potential applications, such as launch to very high velocities, where very long barrels may be needed. In such barrels, the rail resistive losses become large and a distributed power feed arrangement becomes necessary. Since the back electromotive force (EMF) of the barrel increases as the projectile velocity increases, high velocity guns that could accelerate large masses may require a back EMF of tens of kilovolts. When combined with a current of MA, the power systems feeding each stage may have to provide power levels of tens to hundreds of gigawatts. One way to mitigate these requirements is to design a system that operates with constant power instead of constant force. A simple description of such a system is provided here and compared with the constant force system for an example where high masses are launched to high velocities. In this way, the power requirements can be substantially reduced compared with the constant force case but this benefit necessitates an increase in launcher length. A simple numerical method of estimating the barrel length increase is provided.


PURPOSE
This review aimed to synthesize qualitative literature exploring inpatient hospital staff experiences of their relationships with people who self-harm.

METHODS
Nine studies were identified from a systematic search of five research databases. Papers included the experiences of physical health and mental health staff working in inpatient settings. The studies employed various qualitative research methods and were appraised using an adapted quality assessment tool (Tong, Sainsbury, & Craig, 2007). A meta-synthesis was conducted using traditional qualitative analysis methods including coding and categorizing data into themes.

RESULTS
Three main themes derived from the data. 'The impact of the system' influenced the extent to which staff were 'Fearing the harm from self-harm', or were 'Working alongside the whole person'. A fear-based relationship occurred across mental health and physical health settings despite differences in training; however, 'Working alongside the whole person' primarily emerged from mental health staff experiences. Systemic factors provided either an inhibitory or facilitative influence on the relational process.

CONCLUSIONS
Staff experiences of their relationship with people who self-harm were highlighted to have an important impact on the delivery and outcome of care. Increasing support for staff with a focus on distress tolerance, managing relational issues, and developing self-awareness within the relationship may lead to a more mutually beneficial experience of care. Equally, structure, clarity, and support within inpatient systems may empower staff to feel more confident in utilizing their existing skills.

PRACTITIONER POINTS
Working with people who self-harm can be emotionally challenging and how staff cope with this can significantly impact on the engagement of staff and patients. Increasing the skills of staff in managing relational issues and tolerating distress, as well as providing support and reflective practice groups may be useful in managing emotional responses to working with people who self-harm. Refining the supportive, procedural, and environmental structures surrounding the caregiving relationship may help enable better integration of physical and mental health care.


Because the process of healing chronic wounds is more challenging and requires more comprehensive treatment, patients with diabetes mellitus are at a higher risk of infection in their feet due to recurrent trauma and inadequate cleanliness. This can lead to a chronic problem. Hyaluronic acid (HA) is a component of the extracellular matrix in connective tissue that can help the wound healing process, thus providing the right conditions for the tissue regeneration process. Topical use of HA is considered effective in treating chronic wounds. The anti-inflammatory effect of HA works by inhibiting TNF-alpha, thereby preventing the increase in IL-6 and IL-8, which are pro-inflammatory cytokines. Patients with diabetic foot ulcers have higher plasma IL-6 levels compared to patients without diabetic foot ulcers. IL-6 is also an inflammatory marker that can differentiate infected diabetic foot ulcers (IDFU) from non-infected diabetic foot ulcers (NIDFU). Disturbance in the IL-6 pathway can cause delayed wound healing. Normally, IL-6 decreases significantly in the remodeling phase. This article was created to see how the effects of hyaluronic acid on reducing the time it takes for diabetic foot ulcers to heal and decreasing blood interleukin-6 levels from several studies that had been done previously.


Solar water heaters are good tools for saving fuel. The main component of these water heaters is collectors, which are responsible for absorbing solar energy and transferring it to the working fluid with the least heat dissipation. The present study is an experimental study of the performance of the solar semispherical collector with 1 m2 of absorber area at different volumetric flow rates. Water was used as the working fluid with the volumetric flow rate between 0.005-0.0166 kg/s, and the experiment was conducted in the ASHRAE 93 standard conditions. The results showed that the efficiency of semispherical solar collector increased as the flow rate of the working fluid increased, such that the highest efficiency, which is 67%, belonged to mass flow rate 0.0166 kg/s. In addition, the difference between outlet and inlet temperatures decreased due to the system being closed during the test. In addition, according to the experiments, the reduction of radiation and wind speed did not have any significant effect on the efficiency and outlet temperature of the collector. Finally, parameters such as inlet and outlet temperature of collector, ambient temperature, ambient radiation intensity and their effect have been investigated empirically on the collector efficiency graph.


This article discusses the recent European Commission's Proposal for a Directive on procedural safeguards for children suspected and accused in criminal proceedings and the protection that it offers to juvenile suspects during interrogations. Given the importance of the interrogations for the outcome of a case and its sensitivity for the personality of vulnerable suspects, understanding how the Proposal protects children in this stage of proceedings seems a required step in the overall assessment of the quality of the proposed legislation. The Proposal's evaluation is conducted in light of the preliminary findings of an on-going EU funded research project that the authors are currently coordinating. After a critical assessment of the scope and relevant definitions of the Proposal, the attention will turn to some specific safeguards related to (pre-trial) interrogations such as the right to legal assistance, the right to an appropriate adult and the right to an individual assessment. By referring to the current legal status quo in a selection of EU Member States, the article challenges some aspects of the Proposal such as its relatively narrow scope, the lack of definitions of certain concepts and the fact that the complexity of the vulnerability of juvenile suspects is not adequately taken into account by some of the proposed rules. With this critical evaluation and by emphasizing the importance of taking full account of the complexity of the matter, the authors hope to offer a contribution to the future debate and negotiations on how to effectively strengthen the protection of juvenile suspects.


In recent years, learning-based control in robotics has gained significant attention due to its capability to address complex tasks in real-world environments. With the advances in machine learning algorithms and computational capabilities, this approach is becoming increasingly important for solving challenging control problems in robotics by learning unknown or partially known robot dynamics. Active exploration, in which a robot directs itself to states that yield the highest information gain, is essential for efficient data collection and minimizing human supervision. Similarly, uncertainty-aware deployment has been a growing concern in robotic control, as uncertain actions informed by the learned model can lead to unstable motions or failure. However, active exploration and uncertainty-aware deployment have been studied independently, and there is limited literature that seamlessly integrates them. This paper presents a unified model-based reinforcement learning framework that bridges these two tasks in the robotics control domain. Our framework uses a probabilistic ensemble neural network for dynamics learning, allowing the quantification of epistemic uncertainty via Jensen-Renyi Divergence. The two opposing tasks of exploration and deployment are optimized through state-of-the-art sampling-based MPC, resulting in efficient collection of training data and successful avoidance of uncertain state-action spaces. We conduct experiments on both autonomous vehicles and wheeled robots, showing promising results for both exploration and deployment.


We present a method to improve subpixel signal detection in airborne or orbital image sequences. The proposed technique recognizes stable interest point features in multiple overlapping frames. It estimates motion between consecutive frames and tracks candidate detections over time. The final detection decision combines signal strengths from multiple views to improve sensitivity. The algorithm is computationally tractable for real-time use on autonomous robotic platforms and spacecraft. Additionally, the interest points enable image-relative localization, obviating the need to transmit the entire image and reducing transmission bandwidth requirements by one or more orders of magnitude. This permits higher acquisition rates and potentially improved coverage for remote monitoring. Ground-based systems can reconstruct absolute positions from landmarks without measurements of sensor pose. We demonstrate the algorithm using airborne 4- μm imagery from multiple overpasses of a controlled wildfire.


Intrauterine development influences the susceptibility to cardiovascular disease in adulthood, although the underlying molecular mechanisms are vastly unknown. We have recently shown that the prenatal mouse heart has an impressive regenerative capacity in response to tissue mosaicism for mitochondrial dysfunction caused by a heart specific knockout of holocytochrome c synthase (Hccs) - an X-linked gene required for mitochondrial respiration. In heterozygous Hccs knockout (Hccs+/-) embryos, hyperproliferation of healthy cardiomyocytes compensates for the functional loss of 50% of Hccs deficient cells, ensuring formation of a normally contracting heart at birth. In order to uncover molecular mechanisms enabling compensatory growth of the prenatal myocardium, we performed microarray RNA expression analyses on neonatal Hccs+/- and control hearts. These data revealed numerous genes involved in amino acid metabolism and protein homeostasis being differentially expressed in the neonatal Hccs+/- myocardium. We, therefore, hypothesized that amino acid availability is crucial for compensatory growth of Hccs+/- hearts to build a regularly sized organ and allow normal postnatal function. Thus, we studied the effects of in utero amino acid restriction on growth and development of Hccs+/- hearts by feeding dams a low protein diet (LPD) throughout pregnancy and keeping the offspring on LPD until adulthood. On standard protein diet heart weight to body weight ratio of Hccs+/- mice (n=26) born at gestational age 20.5 dpc does not differ compared to littermate controls (n=21). In contrast, Hccs+/- offspring on LPD (n=20) were found to have a significantly reduced heart weight to body weight ratio compared to control animals (n=19) at postnatal day 1. Importantly, cardiomyocyte size and proliferation were unaffected in neonatal Hccs+/- hearts on LPD, suggesting that amino acid restriction rather inhibits prenatal cardiac growth. This was in line with normal heart size and function in adult LPD Hccs+/- mice, confirming normal postnatal development. In conclusion, metabolic adaptations regulating amino acid availability might be required for growth plasticity of the fetal heart to prevent postnatal dysfunction after impaired intrauterine development.


Paper deals with an extensive experimental activity carried out in Italy by ENEA Research Lab on Low impact vehicles and by the Energy engineering group of the University of L'Aquila about the energy efficiency of quick vehicle battery charging using a DC CHAdeMO compliant recharging 50 kW infrastructure. Both the charger and the vehicle (a Nissan Leaf) battery were fully monitored to gather detailed information about their behaviour at different power loads. The performances of the battery pack equipping the vehicle have also been monitored and evaluated through an extensive campaign, both on typical urban and extra-urban uses, and on vehicle rolling test bench.


Property-grabbing from widows and orphans began long before the HIV and AIDS pandemic. However, the scale of HIV infection rates, stigmatisation, and the social and economic vulnerability of widows and orphans have worsened the situation. Targets of psychological and physical harassment, dispossessed of their property and evicted form their homes, women and children are left destitute. Too often, the personal stories of both hardship and resilience in the face of adversity are lost in the statistics and dry overviews of national policies and epidemiological trends. Excluded from statistics, these women and children become invisible. This collection of narratives from southern and East Africa aims to raise awareness not only about the heavy impact of HIV and AIDS in the region but also about the active steps being taken by many grassroots organizations to respond to the crisis. It is evident that, while the pandemic is biting deeply into the social fabric of communities, it is also galvanising ordinary women and men to respond with compassion and conviction, and to find innovative ways of defending and promoting the rights of HIV-affected women and children. These stories expose the immense human cost of discriminatory laws and practices, and pointing to the social, policy and legislative changes that are necessary to combat the pandemic effectively.


This chapter highlights the necessity of establishing relationships with other companies and external agents in order to empower the creation and diffusion of knowledge, through factors such as innovation. Likewise, the influence of geographical and territorial factors will be studied in the context of this economy. SMES normally work and are immersed in particular geographical regions so this chapter will analyze the particular case of knowledge generation and sharing in SMES clusters as an essential source of competitive advantage. A new organizational form will be suggested in order to make possible the creation, transfer and sharing of knowledge in supply chain of SMES clusters. In this sense, a network functioning model is finally proposed.


Objective:To evaluate initial changes in CD4 cell count as a surrogate endpoint for clinical outcome in HIV-infected patients. Design:Meta-analysis of all relevant Phase II and III randomized clinical trials undertaken by the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group. Methods:Individual patient data were obtained from each clinical trial, and the difference between a pair of treatments in their effect on clinical outcome (AIDS or death, or death alone) during 2 years of follow-up was evaluated. The proportion of treatment effect explained (PTE) was the proportion of this difference explained by the change in CD4 cell count 6 months after starting treatment, evaluated using proportional hazards models. A weighted average PTE across treatment comparisons was obtained. The association between the difference between treatments in clinical outcome, expressed as hazard ratio, and the difference in mean change in CD4 cell count was evaluated using regression analysis. Results:There were 15 clinical trials involving 24 treatment comparisons. The weighted average PTE for both progression to AIDS or death was 0.16 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.07–0.26] and for death was 0.10 (95% CI, 0.00–0.20). There were significant associations between treatment differences in effect on AIDS or death, and on death alone, and the difference in mean change in CD4 cell count. A difference in mean change in CD4 cell count of 30 or 40 × 106/l or more in favor of the test treatment indicated with high probability that there was a corresponding difference in progression to AIDS or death. Conclusions:The small PTE suggest that other mechanisms of drug action not captured by initial change in CD4 cells are important. CD4 cell count is a weak surrogate endpoint, but has some value as an aid for screening treatments for drug development or preliminary regulatory approval.


No doubt the world without Winnie the Pooh, Pippi Longstocking, Pinocchio or Moomin Trolls would have been less colourful. Characters from fairy tales imperceptibly slip into young readers' minds and tend to stay there forever. Children accept them unconditionally and do not ask questions about their descent. Children's response to books is usually very spontaneous: a love at first sight or an immediate dislike. Therefore, it is very important that they receive "the best" – not only beautiful and wise books but also books that are skillfully translated. Discussing the role of the translator of children's literature, this article focuses on the child–translator relationship and the translator–author dichotomy. It points to different attitudes toward the translator's creativity and "visibility." It examines terminological ambiguities of such notions as "adaptation," "reconstruction," "rewriting" and "translation." Finally, it deals with translation challenges that arise from didactic, entertaining and aesthetic functions of children's books.


As firms' production activity becomes large enough to cover the whole world, price and cost cutting competition become harsher among the manufacturing firms. In order to deal with the cost competition many manufacturing firms fragment the production process into small blocs, and they move the small fragmented blocs to new location sites which provide the factories with favorable production condition and reduce production costs. In searching new location site of a fragmented production process, an industrial park is reevaluated as a location factor by the governments of the countries as well as the manufacturing firms. Because industrial parks provide the factories with various sorts of external economies and they can attract the factories from foreign industrial countries into a few specific sites in their territories. Present paper theoretically analyzes the location and production composition of industrial park: First, the paper clarifies the mechanisms in which the developer of the industrial park determines the location site of the industrial park by examining the firms' location selections. Second, this paper analyzes how external economies generated in the industrial parks influence on the production composition in the park; the combination of the business types of the factories, the numbers of the factories and their profits in the industrial park are derived. Lastly, effects on factories' profits of wage rate of workers is analyzed. It is shown in this analysis that reduction of the wage rate which is generated by an improvement of the transportation condition surrounding industrial park does not raise every factory's profit because the production composition of the park is changed due to the reduction of the wage rate.


The author suggests a new modification of operation for formation of subfascial lymphovenous anastomoses (LVA) on the dorsum of the foot in treatment of edema of the lower limbs. Sixty-two patients underwent operation. In 34 patients of the control group an epifascial LVA was formed on the dorsal surface of the foot. The operation for LVA anastomosis was combined with fenestration of the leg fascia. A positive effect of various degree was produced in the postthrombotic syndrome in 84% of the studied patients (in 29% of the controls) and in 94% of cases of II degree lymphedema (in 56% of the controls). The expediency of subfascial LVA is substantiated clinically and physiologically.


This socio-economic study aims to better understand the functioning and the evolution of timber sales held by the French public forest service. The auction system is the historical institution which has been used for timber sales in France for centuries. The recent trend to develop supply contracts through private agreements has a major impact on the French timber industry, which is criticized for its lack of competitiveness. It accurately raises questions about the timber price issue. Indeed, the auction system plays an important role in price setting. We refer to the auction theory literature to examine the features of French timber auctions: first-price sealed-bid sequential auctions of heterogeneous standing timber lots. In particular, we note that seller's reserve price is kept secret and that, contrary to the general assumption in auction theory, the seller indubitably lacks information about his own reservation value. Finally, the difficulty of defining a "fair market price" remains a central issue in public timber sales.


We propose and demonstrate a novel fiber-optic refractive index (RI) sensor using dielectric multilayer thin films (DMFs) deposited on an optical fiber end surface, which rejects the incident light with particular wavelength. We experimentally show that the center frequency of the reflected light spectrum changes in proportion to the RI of four kinds of liquids attached to the fiber end. Its coefficient of +0.61 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) agrees well with our simulation results based on characteristic-matrix technique. We also show that this sensor is applicable to the RI measurement of solids.


Mobile money services have rapidly expanded across emerging and developing economies and enabled new ways through which households and firms can conduct payments, save and send remittances. We explore how mobile money use can impact economic outcomes in India using granular data on transactions from Paytm, one of the largest mobile money service provider in India with over 400 million users. We exploit the period around the demonetization policy, which prompted a surge in mobile money adoption, and analyze how mobile money affects traditional risk-sharing arrangements. Our main finding is that mobile money use increases the resilience to shocks by dampening the impact of rainfall shocks on nightlights-based economic activity and household consumption. We complement these findings by conducting a firm survey around a phased targeting intervention which incentivized firms to adopt the mobile payment technology. Our results suggest that firms adopting mobile payments improved their sales after six-months of use, compared to other firms. We also elicit firms' subjective expectations on future sales and find mobile payment adoption to be associated with lower subjective uncertainty and greater sales optimism.


Published experimental data of several species of Drosophila using the population cage method were reexamined. The authors of these works have claimed that selection operates on polymorphic isozyme genes. Since selection coefficients (s) estimated by us for the above data, assuming overdominance, or for some cases, additivity between alleles, were too large (s greater than 0.1), we conclude that these experimental results do not reflect the effects of the single loci in question; rather, we suggest that careful experimentation and judgment are required for testing with the population cage method whether or not selection actually operates on single genes.


Mesenchymal stem or multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) have been implicated in tissue maintenance and repair and regulating immune effector cells through different mechanisms. These functions in mouse were primarily described for bone marrow (BM)-derived MSCs. To learn more about MSCs of different tissue origin, we compared the immunophenotype, differentiation ability to adipocyte and bone and immunomodulatory activity of MSCs isolated from BM, spleen, thymus and aorta wall of 14-day-old C57Bl/6 mice. The established cell lines fulfilled the requirements described for MSCs in terms of morphology, surface marker expression and differentiation potential although they were distinguishable regarding the expression pattern of the MSC markers and ability generating other cell types. Most importantly, a remarkable diversity was shown in the capacity of inhibition of mitogen- and alloantigen-induced T-cell proliferation, since BM- and spleen-derived MSCs were the most powerful aorta-derived MSCs were less effective, whereas thymus-derived mesenchymal cells were unable to block T-cell growth in vitro. Accordingly, BM, spleen and aorta, but not thymus-derived MSCs, in combination with BM hematopoietic cells were equally efficient to prevent streptozotocin-induced diabetes in vivo. These findings suggested that MSCs residing in different organs might stem from common ancestor; however, once populating into a given tissue microenvironment, they acquire specific properties mainly in the term of the immunoregulatory function.


Our nation's consumer bankruptcy system supposedly gives "honest but unfortunate" individuals "a new opportunity in life with a clear field for future effort, unhampered by the pressure and discouragement of preexisting debt." Access to bankruptcy's discharge of debt is especially important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a once-in-a-century economic crisis that is projected to increase consumer bankruptcy filings. The people who file bankruptcy will find a system that is already difficult to navigate and has long-recognized racial and gender disparities in access and outcomes. Student loan borrowers will find a system with even more barriers to relief from their education debt. These barriers are two-fold: those put up by bankruptcy laws and those put up by loan holders, including the United States Department of Education ("Department"). This Essay focuses on how the Department should update its policies for how it responds to borrowers who seek to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy. It details two options for how the Department can update its approach to handling bankruptcies to ensure that it calibrates its actions to make the promise of a fresh start more real for student borrowers. Importantly, the Department can implement the framework set forth in this Essay without substantially negatively impacting the net amount of money that it is likely to recover from borrowers who file bankruptcy and seek to discharge their student loans.


We report on the first continuous, 80-day optical monitoring of the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 carried out in mid 2017 with Kepler in the K2 configuration, when an X-ray subluminous accretion disk was present in the binary. Flares lasting from minutes to 14 hr were observed for 15.6% of the time, which is a larger fraction than previously reported on the basis of X-ray and past optical observations, and more frequently when the companion was at superior conjunction of the orbit. A sinusoidal modulation at the binary orbital period was also present with an amplitude of ≃16%, which varied by a few percent over timescales of days, and with a maximum that took place 890 ± 85 s earlier than the superior conjunction of the donor. We interpret this phenomena in terms of reprocessing of the X-ray emission by an asymmetrically heated companion star surface and/or a non-axisymmetric outflow possibly launched close to the inner Lagrangian point. Furthermore, the non-flaring average emission varied by up to ≈40% over a timescale of days in the absence of correspondingly large variations of the irradiating X-ray flux. The latter suggests that the observed changes in the average optical luminosity might be due to variations of the geometry, size, and/or mass accretion rate in the outer regions of the accretion disk.


An embedded CMOS digital dual tuner for DOCSIS 3.0 and set-top box applications is presented. The dual tuner down-converts a total of ten 6 MHz Annex B channels or eight 8 MHz Annex A channels, for a maximum data rate of 320 Mb/s in Annex B and 400 Mb/s in Annex A mode. The dual tuner exceeds all the stringent SCTE 40 specifications over the 48-1004 MHz bandwidth, without using any external components or SAW filters. Enabling technologies are a harmonic rejection front-end, a low-noise high-frequency resolution PLL, and digital image rejection. To our knowledge this is the first reported multichannel broadband tuner embedded in a DOCSIS 3.0 System on a chip implemented in 65 nm pure digital CMOS technology.


Advanced home care (ASIH) enables the patient to stay at home rather than to stay hospitalized in connection with severe medical conditions, while simultaneously this Thesis demonstrates that this is in fact not completely unproblematic and without risk. This partly because ASIH proves to be a complex form of care with many different kind of collaterally ongoing care contacts and efforts of care and concern, partly since ASIH concurrently can assume an overview over the treatment process and collaboration or cooperation between several treatment agents from different kinds of organizations and/or operations during all hours. This composes a relatively new heterogenetic and multifaceted context of care which to the professional practice means both new and less known problems within patient safety, which substantially can obstruct and rule out both the completion and the implementation of a safe home care.The Thesis is based upon an exploratory case study of problems within patient safety in correlation with an advanced home care, and where the research study has had its starting position in the professional practice with an interactive and qualitative research approach. The case study houses two part studies which show that the patient safety problems can be related to an intermediary and multi-organizational form of care, rather than an single operation. A command and control view upon the problems of patient safety, which the professional practice faces, show that missions within the frame of the care form ASIH can be regarded as either a complicated and not rarely a complex operation consistent with Alberts & Hayes (2007) and Brehmers (2008a; 2009c) terminology and where the assignments includes dynamic decision tasks. The case study reveals that the patient safety problems which concretely can obstruct and rule out the completion or implementation of the assignments in a safe way, can be considered related to the layout of the description of the assignments and also a lack of operative and tactical command and control level (of the handling and care of patients) in correlation with the different sorts of assignments that prevails – coincidentally as there is no suitable organization (forums of cooperation) and no appropriate IT-resources for the liaisons which effectively manages to promote and support the forms of cooperation that the character of the assignments also needs. The implicit system of conduct which comes forth through the analysis indicates that there is a need of improvement in order to enable effective command and control for a safer care, since the form of the system of conduct according to Brehmer´s (2006a,b; 2007a,b; 2008a,b; 2009c, 2010, 2011) model fails to satisfy the needs set by the function of command and control.The conclusion of the case study is that advanced home care should be regarded as an intermediary and multi-organizational care form which includes dynamic decision tasks and character wise complex operations contemplated per patient, thus demanding substantial command and control resources, a new point of view upon management and new auxiliary means of management in order to maintain a safe care during the implementation. The hypothesis which has been crystallized during the conclusions of the case study is that a more effective control and command and appropriate auxiliary means of command and control in real time, concerning primarily the handling of patients at the time of a change in care form, can improve the conditions of work in the professional practice and also result in more patient time, which consequently can be expected to contribute to concept of "Good care" i.g. cost effective, patient safe and dignified care.


This paper presents the design of a prototype distribution static compensator (D-STATCOM) for load compensation in an unbalanced distribution system. The D-STATCOM is intended to replace the widely used static var compensator (SVC). The compensation scheme of the D-STATCOM is derived using the symmetrical component method. In this work, the 12-pulse D-STATCOM configuration with IGBT has been designed and the graphic based models of the D-STATCOM have been developed using the PSCAD/EMTDC electromagnetic transient simulation program. Accordingly, simulation is first carried out to illustrate the use of D-STATCOM in mitigating voltage sag in a distribution system. The D-STATCOM has been developed using DSP controller to achieve excellent overall performance. Simulation results prove that the D-STATCOM is capable of mitigating voltage sag by controlling PWM of the system using DSP board


Broad Raman-multi-frequency spectra were generated from the resonant two-color excitation of the deuterium molecule rotational Raman transition (J=0?2), using ultraviolet bi-harmonic lasers with a quartz hollow fiber. Fifty pure rotational Raman spectral lines (34 lines that have intensity within 10% of the strongest spectral line) from 230 to 290 nm were generated at a gas pressure of 30 kPa. Furthermore, vibrational-rotational Raman spectral lines of almost 300 lines from 220 to 600 nm were also generated by increasing the gas pressure to 60 kPa.


Many medical and legal problems have been raised by the acquired immunodeficiency disease. While there is a large volume of literature which addresses these problems, scant attention has been paid to problems which arise when health care faculty and students are affected by this disease. Some health care administrators have discussed the propriety the routine testing of faculty and students for HIV disease, especially when invasive procedures are involved: This article discusses some of the legal issues which attend routine HIV testing in this context. Arguments for and against routine testing are presented. In addition, routine testing is distinguished from targeted testing in response to the reasonable belief that a health care worker is HIV-positive. It is argued that routine testing of health care workers is legally unwarranted. There are arguments, however, that testing of those believed to be HIV-positive is legally sound. Targeted HIV testing may be especially useful and permissible when the worker performs invasive procedures.


Objective: To determine the reference range of zinc in adult population (age range 20 to 29 years) of Lahore. Methods: It was a descriptive cross sectional study which was carried out from Jan- August 2012 in Chemical Pathology Department of University of Health Sciences, Lahore. Serum zinc concentration was measured by flame atomic absorption spectrometry in randomly selected 450 healthy adults aged 20 to 29 years. After application of exclusion criteria reference values were determined in apparently healthy subjects according to guidelines of International Federation of Clinical Chemistry. The data was entered & analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Serum Zn levels was expressed as Mean ± SD. Results: A total of 450 healthy subjects were included in this study. Out of these, 234 were females. Mean age was 25±0.13years. The mean concentration of zinc in serum of healthy individual was 24.02±7.03 µmol/L (range11.47-36.72). The mean±SD for males subjects were 22.33±6.42 µmol/L(range11.93-32.4). Similarly the mean±SD for females were 21.72±7.34 µmol/L (range9.94-36.87). Conclusion: This study presents reference range for serum zinc concentration in adult population of Lahore. The results showed that there is significant difference in serum level of zinc among different countries. This study will help us in establishing reference ranges of trace elements on larger population in future.


Single-stage high-gain inverters have recently gained much research focus as interfaces for inherent low voltage DC sources such as fuel cells, storage batteries, and solar panels. Many impedance-assisted inverters with different input stage configurations have been presented. To decrease passive component sizes, these inverters operate at high-frequency switching. The high-frequency switching optimizes the passive component sizes but introduces many challenges in the form of high-frequency inductor design, control complexity, high-frequency gate driver requirements, high semiconductor losses, and electromagnetic interferences. This article proposes a novel fundamental frequency switching operation for the conventional voltage source inverters (VSI) to operate as a single-stage high-gain inverter. As the novel operational strategy changes the behavior of conventional VSI from buck inverter to a boost inverter, it is hereafter termed as a novel inverter. By virtue of the operation strategy, switches withstand peak inverse voltage (PIV) equal to DC link voltage, unlike other impedance assisted boost inverters where PIV across switches is the amplified DC voltage. The proposed inverter can invert low-level DC voltage to high voltage AC with low total harmonic distortion (THD) in a single stage without the help of any external filter. A novel quarter-wave symmetric phase-shift controller is proposed for variable voltage and frequency control of proposed inverters tuned by a back-propagation thin-plate-spline neural network (BPTPSNN). Mathematical analysis with experimental validation is presented. Experimentation is carried out on a prototype of 2 kW for single-phase resistive load, induction motor, and non-linear loads.


Climate change and the urgency of decarbonizing the built environment are driving technological innovation in the way we deliver thermal comfort to occupants. These changes, in turn, seem to be setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research. This article presents a literature review of major changes, developments, and trends in the field of thermal comfort research over the last 20 years. One of the main paradigm shift was the fundamental conceptual reorientation that has taken place in thermal comfort thinking over the last 20 years; a shift away from the physically based determinism of Fanger's comfort model toward the mainstream and acceptance of the adaptive comfort model. Another noticeable shift has been from the undesirable toward the desirable qualities of air movement. Additionally, sophisticated models covering the physics and physiology of the human body were developed, driven by the continuous challenge to model thermal comfort at the same anatomical resolution and to combine these localized signals into a coherent, global thermal perception. Finally, the demand for ever increasing building energy efficiency is pushing technological innovation in the way we deliver comfortable indoor environments. These trends, in turn, continue setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research for the next decades.


The application of chemical products for pest control is one of the most widely used methods in agriculture worldwide despite their adverse effects on humans and the environment. This is a topic of interest due to the growing number of chemical products and their toxicity. The objectives of this research were to identify the most commercialized pesticides in the Ayuquila-Armería River basin (Mexico) and to determine their concentration in the surface water of the basin. The hypothesis of this work was that the current system of agricultural production in the basin is causing degradation of water quality due to the presence of a wide variety of pesticides. For the f irst objective, we visited 27 outlets of pesticides located in the main municipal capitals within the basin, obtaining a total of 143 commercialized active ingredients, mainly of chemical origin. For the second objective, we carried out two samplings in the dry season and two in the rainy season, in 30 sites distributed within the basin. The sampling sites were chosen in a directed way according to the problem of existing contamination and trying to cover the largest agricultural areas within the basin. The analyses were carried out through liquid chromatography coupled to mass-mass spectrometry. The results showed that 66% of the samples contained at least one pesticide. The most frequent pesticides were ametrine, dimethoate and diazinon. The sites that presented the highest number of pesticides in the four samplings were Palo Blanco, Antes Manantlán, Tuxcacuesco and Ayuquila. The sites near the area of intensive agriculture had a higher number of pesticides than those located in areas with rainfed agriculture. This study is the f irst to analyze the presence of pesticides in surface waters of the basin.


In FY2016, an estimated 638,568 individuals received day or employment supports from state IDD program agencies. This number grew from 455,824 in FY1999. The estimated number of individuals in integrated employment services increased from 108,227 in FY1999 to 120,244 in FY2016. Despite the trend to terminate facility-based services in some states, the overall state investment continues to emphasize nonwork services, rather than integrated employment services. Figure 1 shows the trends in the percentage of people served in integrated employment and facility-based and non-work settings between FY2008 and FY2016.


Rural-urban migration is one of the most significant phenomena characterizing contemporary China. Numbering about 168 million in 2014, the rural-urban migrant population is expected to grow to 230 million by 2030. The impact of migration is such that it influences the economic, social, political and cultural development of urban China. While geographic mobility is no longer restricted by the state and migrants are free to move about the country, it is well documented that migrants face differential access to, and are excluded from, a variety of socio-economic opportunities compared to their local urban counterparts. The dominant discourse explaining the social exclusion of China's rural-urban migrants has long focused on the impact of the Household Registration System (hukou system), which historically confined individuals to their location or origin, and which continues to influence access to local social services, benefits and resources . Using data derived primarily from interviews with subject matter experts, public officials and migrant workers in the city of Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, this paper identifies, compares and contrasts major formal/legal and informal/social factors that contribute to the social exclusion of rural-urban migrants across several socio-economic dimensions, including employment, education, healthcare and housing. The results of this study demonstrate that migrant social exclusion in Xi'an is multidimensional, fragmented across socio-economic dimensions, and more complex than the prevailing hukou-based discourse would suggest.


ZnO has received great attention in many applications due to its electronic and optical properties. We report on the preparation of ZnO and gallium-containing ZnO (ZnO:Ga) nanoparticles by the precipitation method. The nanoparticles have the wurtzite structure and a high crystallinity. Gallium ions are present as Ga3+, as evidenced by the binding energies through XPS. Porosity and surface area of the powder increased under increasing gallium level, explained by the smaller particle size of ZnO:Ga samples compared with ZnO. The estimated optical band gap of ZnO was 3.2 eV, comparable to ZnO:Ga.


Changepoint analysis deals with unsupervised detection and/or estimation of time-points in time-series data, when the distribution generating the data changes. In this article, we consider \emph{offline} changepoint detection in the context of large scale textual data. We build a specialised temporal topic model with provisions for changepoints in the distribution of topic proportions. As full likelihood based inference in this model is computationally intractable, we develop a computationally tractable approximate inference procedure. More specifically, we use sample splitting to estimate topic polytopes first and then apply a likelihood ratio statistic together with a modified version of the wild binary segmentation algorithm of Fryzlewicz et al. (2014). Our methodology facilitates automated detection of structural changes in large corpora without the need of manual processing by domain experts. As changepoints under our model correspond to changes in topic structure, the estimated changepoints are often highly interpretable as marking the surge or decline in popularity of a fashionable topic. We apply our procedure on two large datasets: (i) a corpus of English literature from the period 1800-1922 (Underwoodet al., 2015); (ii) abstracts from the High Energy Physics arXiv repository (Clementet al., 2019). We obtain some historically well-known changepoints and discover some new ones.


In this study, the polyethylene sheeting method for downdrag mitigation in piles has been investigated along with the conventional bitumen coating method. A large number of concrete blocks were prepared with different arrangements of bitumens and polyethylene sheets and tested in the laboratory using direct shear apparatus. The shear resistance of the concrete-bitumen-soil specimens was susceptible to changes in temperature, strain rate, and normal stresses. Bitumen-coated specimens tested with crushed limestone exhibited the highest friction. Soil particle penetration into bitumen doubled the shear resistance of the bitumen coating. Factors that govern the shear behavior of bitumen coating were found to slightly affect the friction characteristics of the concrete-polyethylenesoil specimens. According to the laboratory results, furnishing the concrete blocks with two 6-mil (0.15-mm) polyethylene layers reduced the shear resistance by 78%. More reduction could be achieved from the two oil-lubricated polyethylene sheets. This layering arrangement provided the most effective performance (95% efficiency) for the polyethylene sheeting method.


This master thesis is a case study on software reuse within a subset of systems at the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes, Skattedirektoratet (SKD). The systems chosen for our research are the GLD systems; legacy systems which dates back to the late 1980's and early 1990's. Because of historical reasons, these systems are copied and created over and over again in an annual cycle. There are redundancies in code and data between the annual versions, but also across the different GLD systems. The consequence of this is systems with reduced maintainability and possible inconsistencies in code and data. Our objectives with this case study is to determine both the current level of software reuse within a subset of the GLD systems, and the emphasis on reuse in SKD's development process. After determining the status of as-is, we will continue with an investigation of the potential for software reuse within the context of SKD, and how they can achieve systematic software reuse. The contributions of this thesis can be divided into four main themes: * T1: Review of state-of-the-art literature on software reuse * T2: Investigation of reuse level within selected GLD systems * T3: Investigation of SKD's development process * T4: Investigation of opportunities for systematic reuse in SKD The main contributions are: * C1: Review of literature in the field of software reuse * C2: Measurement of the reuse maturity level within the selected GLD systems. * C3: Survey of the software development process and reuse aspects at SKD * C3.1: Results from SKD * C3.2: Results from SKD combined with results from previous surveys on software developers attitude toward software reuse by NTNU * C4: Process which assures reuse Keywords: Systematic software reuse, Reuse maturity, Software development, Software engineering


Abstract Since the turn of the century, there have been frequent expressions of concern about a perceived lack of creativity in UK schools, in both curriculum content and in teaching. Recently, as the emphasis on mathematics, science and technology has strengthened, serious concerns have also been expressed about the marginalisation of the arts and creativity in schools. In the light of these concerns, this paper reports in-depth, qualitative research into the pedagogies of practising artists experienced in working with young people and highly valued by the schools that employ them. We use the notion of 'signature pedagogies' to argue that the artist–teachers adopted a particular stance and set of pedagogic practices that are coherent and distinctively different to those that are currently officially promoted in UK schools, and that this distinctive pedagogy enhanced both creative practice and engagement in the arts in the schools in which the artists worked. In this paper, we identify the signature pedagogies of the artists, theorise their stance and argue that the findings of our study provide a heuristic which can be valuable to all teachers who are interested in expanding their teaching repertoires and fostering students' creativity.


STUDY QUESTION
Did the Medicare Alzheimer's Disease Demonstration with its case management and community service waivers affect the use of community-based long-term care services among people with dementia and their primary caregivers?

DATA SOURCES
Baseline and periodic caregiver interviews. Measures include client and caregiver attributes and self-reported service use.

STUDY DESIGN
The demonstration randomly assigned voluntary applicants into treatment and control groups. Treatment group cases were eligible for case management and for up to $699 per month in community care benefits. The actual monthly entitlement varied among the eight demonstration communities due to regional cost and inflation adjustments over time. Analyses are for the year after enrollment.

DATA COLLECTION
Analyses are of cases surviving six months or more in the community after enrollment (n = 5,209). Cases received baseline and semi-annual assessments.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
The intervention of case management and community service reimbursement had a strong, consistent, and positive effect on the likelihood of using home care (including homemaker/chore services, personal care services, companion services) and adult day care. Treatment group clients were at least twice as likely as control group clients to be using any of the four community-based services. A similar, but less pervasive effect was achieved with caregiver training and support group participation. Reimbursement provided by the demonstration's Medicare waiver was generally not sufficient to exceed the level of control group service acquired through private payment.

CONCLUSIONS
Reimbursement levels within the demonstration may have enabled more individuals to purchase some services, but they were not sufficient to increase the average level of use over those in the control group. No consistent differences between demonstration models were found in service use likelihood or average use among users.


To effectively assist human workers in assembly tasks a robot must proactively offer support by inferring their preferences in sequencing the task actions. Previous work has focused on learning the dominant preferences of human workers for simple tasks largely based on their intended goal. However, people may have preferences at different resolutions: they may share the same high-level preference for the order of the sub-tasks but differ in the sequence of individual actions. We propose a two-stage approach for learning and inferring the preferences of human operators based on the sequence of sub-tasks and actions. We conduct an IKEA assembly study and demonstrate how our approach is able to learn the dominant preferences in a complex task. We show that our approach improves the prediction of human actions through cross-validation. Lastly we show that our two-stage approach improves the efficiency of task execution in an online experiment and demonstrate its applicability in a real-world robot-assisted IKEA assembly.


Many applications in medical statistics as well as in other fields can be described by transitions between multiple states (e.g. from health to disease) experienced by individuals over time. In this context, multi-state models are a popular statistical technique, in particular when the exact transition times are not observed. The key quantities of interest are the transition rates, capturing the instantaneous risk of moving from one state to another. The main contribution of this work is to propose a joint semiparametric model for several possibly related multi-state processes (Seemingly Unrelated Multi-State, SUMS, processes), assuming a Markov structure for the transitions over time. The dependence between different processes is captured by specifying a joint random effect distribution on the transition rates of each process. We assume a flexible random effect distribution, which allows for clustering of the individuals, overdispersion and outliers. Moreover, we employ a graph structure to describe the dependence among processes, exploiting tools from the Gaussian Graphical model literature. It is also possible to include covariate effects. We use our approach to model disease progression in mental health. Posterior inference is performed through a specially devised MCMC algorithm.


ABSTRACT Zigerell (this issue) cites the findings of his recent reanalysis (Zigerell 2015) of the data in our 2013 study of the gender citation gap in the international relations literature to support his claim that our study showed a "preference for statistically-significant results." We thank Zigerell for so closely engaging with our work. However, we note that he is focused on how his changes to our sample affect a single model in our original paper, highlight the fact that we reported statistically insignificant results when they arose in our original analyses, and review the findings of other recent re-analyses of our data. Ultimately, while we disagree with Zigerell's conclusions about our work, we join Zigerell in calling for greater diversity in the discipline.


We provide a synthesis of the economics of groundwater with a focus on optimal management and the Pearce equation for renewable resources. General management principles developed through the solution of a single aquifer optimization problem are extended to the management of multiple resources including additional groundwater aquifers, surface water, recycled wastewater, and upland watersheds. Given an abundant (albeit expensive) substitute, optimal management is sustainable in the long run. We also discuss the open-access equilibrium for groundwater and the conditions under which the Gisser-Sanchez effect (the result that the present value generated by competitive resource extraction and that generated by optimal control of groundwater are nearly identical) is valid. From the models and examples discussed, one can conclude that optimization across any number of dimensions (e.g. space, time, quality) is driven by a system shadow price, and augmenting groundwater with available alternatives lessens scarcity and increases welfare if timed appropriately. Other rules-of-thumb including historical cost recovery, independent management of separate aquifers, and maximum sustainable yield are inefficient and may involve large welfare losses.


Prevailing microfinance interest rates can be very high (20–30 percent on average and well exceeding 100 percent in some cases). The number of faith-based (especially Christian) organizations in the field, biblical injunctions against charging interest to poor people, and increasing commercialization present acute ethical tensions. In conjunction with contemporary research, the authors examine biblical passages and reflect theologically, employing a narrative-ethical approach to the issue of interest rates in contemporary microfinance. They conclude that while prohibitions against usury are still appropriate, a broad condemnation of high interest rates in microfinance is presently unwarranted. Kenman Wong and Donovan Richards, "Commercialization and Microfinance Interest Rates: Usury or Just Prices?" Journal of Markets & Morality 17, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 381-404.


Investigative data journalists work with a variety of data sources to tell a story. Though prior work has indicated that there is a close relationship between journalists' data work practices and that of data scientists. However, these relationships and data work practices are not empirically examined, and understanding them is crucial to inform the design of tools that are used by different groups of people including data scientists and data journalists. Thus, to bridge this gap, we studied investigative reporters' data work practices with one non-profit investigative newsroom. Our study design includes two activities: 1) semi-structured interviews with journalists, and 2) a sketching activity allowing journalists to depict examples of their work practices. By analyzing these data and synthesizing them across related prior work, we propose the major phases in the data-driven investigative journalism story idea generation process. Our study findings show that the journalists employ a collection of multiple, iterative, cyclic processes to identify journalistically "interesting'' story ideas. These processes both significantly resemble and show subtle nuanced differences with data science work practices identified in prior research. We further verified our proposal through a member check with key informants. This work offers three primary contributions. First, it provides a close glimpse into the main phases of investigative journalists' data-driven story idea generation technique. Second, it complements prior work studying formal data science practices by examining data-driven investigative journalists, whose primary expertise lies outside computing. Third, it identifies particular points in the data exploration processes that would benefit from design interventions and suggests future research directions.


The rapid change at this recent global competition increases different circumstance in the market and technology. The increasing of complexity and uncertainty represent factors forming new competitive environment.  To have an adequate ability to compete in a competitive environment, it is hard to reject that company must be adaptive to the changes. Company success depends on the relationship between investment in technology and corporate strategy. But there are many determinant factors that affect corporate performance, i.e. economic conjuncture, business competition and management skills in implementing the existing strategy.


Styrofoam waste presents the environment issue because it is difficult to decompose. As an effort to recycle this pollutant, styrofoam can be utilized as an additive in asphalt concrete mixture. The use of additives aims to create a flexible pavement layer having good performance and meet the requirements. The purpose of this study is to find out whether the addition of styrofoam can improve the quality of asphalt mixtures, and look for alternative additives that can increase asphalt pavement performance. In this study, researchers used food container styrofoam as an addition and incorforated into Asphalt Concrete Wearing Course (AC-WC) mixture. The styrofoam content was 6.5%; 6.75%; 7% ; 7.25%; and 7.5% of asphalt weight. The optimum asphalt contentused is 5.5%. The value of the optimum stability was 3126,002 kg, found at 7.25% of styrofoam content. The best results of Marshall test was obtained at 6.5% of styrofoam content  with stability value  1362,045 kg, VIM value 4,96%, VMA 15,025%, VFA 67,800%, flow 3,44 mm, and MQ 416,338 kg / mm.


Collalytine, a national preparation of collagenase effect, may be used for dispersion of different organs of cattle and human fetuses. Depending on the concentration and time of treatment, this preparation permits to produce monolayer cultures of histotypic or cytotypic nature.


Gordon Lowe made major contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of enzyme action, pioneering the use in particular of novel isotopically chiral phosphate and sulphate esters. In the latter part of his scientific work he discovered new peptide nucleic acids, probed the interaction of platinum complexes with enzymes, leading to potential new antimalarial drugs, and discovered, by combinatorial methods, effective active–site enzyme inhibitors.


Energy efficiency raises significant concerns as it is one of the most promising ways to mitigate climate change. Disaggregation and identification of individual electrical appliances activities are one of the essentials for energy preservation especially for smart buildings. This paper proposes a lightweight electrical appliance activity detection approach for smart building, which leverages a single smart metering device to establish a learning and detection processing for multiple appliances. In this system, data interpolation and transition detection algorithm are proposed to effectively reduce the cost of model training and optimize the detection accuracy. The concept of appliance fingerprint is proposed and a variety of fingerprints, including appliance-based and context-based, are defined to depict fine-grained appliance characteristics. Based on these fingerprints, the paper proposes a multisource fingerprint-weighting KNN (FWKNN) classification algorithm and presents a boosting framework for continuous online learning and detection. A prototype system is implemented and demonstrated in IBM Bluemix PaaS cloud platform. Experimental result and analysis prove that FWKNN outperforms other benchmark methods in detection accuracy.