Contract Law: Principles and Context presents the development of contract law through a considered selection of cases that are both authoritative and used as factual examples to explain the law. The text introduces readers to the nature and range of contracts, the process for making a contract, rights and duties, adjustments to contracts, vitiating factors and unfair conduct, ending contracts, and remedies and restitution. The text considers the historical development of contracts through case law and legislation, then takes the reader to particular issues with contracts as they might arise in real life and navigates a legal pathway through them. Written in a clear and engaging style, Contract Law provides a fresh, topical and accessible account of the Australian law of contract, and is an invaluable resource for contract law students and practitioners.


The immunoglobulin heavy-chain variable region (IGHV) mutational status is a strong determinant of remission duration in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The aim of this work was to compare the multidrug resistance (MDR) signature of IGHV mutated and unmutated CLL cells, identifying biochemical and molecular targets potentially amenable to therapeutic intervention. We found that the mevalonate pathway-dependent Ras/ERK1–2 and RhoA/RhoA kinase signaling cascades, and the downstream HIF-1α/P-glycoprotein axis were more active in IGHV unmutated than in mutated cells, leading to a constitutive protection from doxorubicin-induced cytotoxicity. The constitutive MDR phenotype of IGHV unmutated cells was partially dependent on B cell receptor signaling, as shown by the inhibitory effect exerted by ibrutinib. Stromal cells further protected IGHV unmutated cells from doxorubicin by upregulating Ras/ERK1–2, RhoA/RhoA kinase, Akt, HIF-1α and P-glycoprotein activities. Mevalonate pathway inhibition with simvastatin abrogated these signaling pathways and reversed the resistance of IGHV unmutated cells to doxorubicin, also counteracting the protective effect exerted by stromal cells. Similar results were obtained via the targeted inhibition of the downstream molecules ERK1–2, RhoA kinase and HIF-1α. Therefore, targeting the mevalonate pathway and its downstream signaling cascades is a promising strategy to circumvent the MDR signature of IGHV unmutated CLL cells.


We report the first precision QHR measurements at SP using a graphene chip. We compare the results of a resistance calibration using GaAs based chips with the results using a graphene chip. The results agree within a few parts in 109 for calibrations of 100 Ω and 10 kΩ resistors. Consistency checks indicate that the uncertainty is lower with the graphene chip, and the noise level is slightly lower. The measurements with the graphene chip were performed exclusively at 4.2 K, which simplifies the calibration procedure considerably compared with GaAs chips.


: Protein components of the membranous foamy tissue collected from the swimbladder of Coryphaenoides acrolepis, a continental slope/deep sea grenadier fish, were partially fractionated and characterized by procedures used successfully for erythrocyte membrane proteins. Methods involving pH and ionic strength adjustment in the presence of EDTA and beta-mercaptoethanol resulted in some protein fractionation but no distinct separation or isolation of membrane proteins. Gel filtration by Sephadex G-100 and Sepharose 2B in the presence of dodecyl sulfate partially fractionated protein species between 18,000 and 150,000 molecular weight (as confirmed by dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis). Low molecular weight proteins were resolvable into a few diffuse and streaky bands by dodecyl sulfate and chloral hydrate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, the former giving superior reso-ution. A major fraction of large molecular weight protein (greater than or equal to 40 X 10(6)) was not resolved by any method. A possible explanation for these unusual findings is that decompression due to rapid ascent of the fish from deep ocean caused irreversible alteration of swimbladder membrane proteins.


The acoustic correlates of prosody, energy, duration, and fundamental frequency are easy to extract from the speech signal. Yet, prosody has virtually been ignored in large vocabulary speech recognition. Many systems use energy and its time derivatives in addition to spectral information, and some systems use phoneme duration models. However, those cannot truly be referred to as prosodic models. There are many reasons why it has been difficult to successfully use models of prosody in speech recognition: (a) Speech recognition models are based on phoneme‐sized acoustic units, while prosodic information spans several levels, ranging from subphonetic, to phrase level; (b) speech recognition assumes quasistationarity and primarily deals in terms of absolute values, while prosodic models are susceptible to such effects as speaking rate and the speakers F0 range, requiring analysis in terms of relative values, which can cause problems in one‐pass real‐time systems; (c) the benefits of prosodic modeling in speec...


We have reached a time where the understanding of development should not be pursued in isolation but should best be interfaced with nature for an improved and sustained quality of life. The pursuit of green economy requires a considerable change in our approach to development wherein the greening of the sectors needs to be planned at the very outset of the process. This paper, has conceptualized, and discusses strategic thrust, sectoral integration, management dynamism and institutional and policy regime as a basic embodiment in a green economic framework. It may involve mobilisation of additional resources but is worth an investment for all smiles in near future. Green Economy Framework is a critical stepping in leading to sustainable development which is indeed an ability to transform from one phase of the timeline to the other phase. Administrative and Management Review Vol. 24, No. 2, August 2012, Page 77-90


A brief review of an instrument landing system is given to show where the localizer antenna fits into the over-all scheme. The localizer-antenna requirements are stated, and definitions that apply to this antenna are given. A description of an antenna that meets the specified requirements is given, including curves that show its performance over a ground plane. Patterns taken in flight on a twin-engine transport plane are included.


A tetradentate Pt(II) complex, Pt2O2-p2m, which exhibits both efficient monomer and excimer emission, was synthesized. Through rational device design to broaden the recombination zone, an OLED device employing Pt2O2-p2m demonstrated an impressively high peak external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 21.5% and a warm white emission with a color rendering index of 71 and Commission Internationale de L'Eclairage coordinates of (0.409, 0.458). Moreover, a reduced efficiency roll-off was also observed to retain high EQE values of 20% EQE at 1000 cd/m2 and 17% EQE at 5000 cd/m2, and an LT70 (time to 70% initial luminance) was estimated to be over 150 h at 1000 cd/m2 under constant operation at accelerated driving conditions.


Dataset includes all Indiana river reaches on the Nationwide Rivers Inventory (NRI) listed by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). The file was created using 1:100,000 scale data from the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), therefore, the lines remain in the NHD reaches, resulting in multiple line segments for each NRI listing. The line segments have NOT been dissolved. The start and end point of each listing segment is approximate and located by described landmarks. The following excerpt from the NPS, NRI website describes the eligibility for a river to be listed- In order to be listed on the NRI, a river must be free-flowing and possess one or more Outstandingly Remarkable Values (ORVs). Thus, the eligibility analysis consists of an examination of the river's hydrology, including any man-made alterations, and an inventory of its natural, cultural, and recreational resources. There are a variety of methods to determine whether certain resources are so unique, rare or exemplary as to make them outstandingly remarkable. The determination that a river area contains ORVs is a professional judgment on the part of the interdisciplinary study team (IDT), based on objective, scientific analysis. Input from organizations and individuals familiar with specific river resources should be sought and documented as part of the process. In order to be assessed as outstandingly remarkable, a river-related value must be a unique, rare, or exemplary feature that is significant at a comparative regional or national scale. Dictionary definitions of the words "unique" and "rare" indicate that such a value would be one that is conspicuous example from among a number of similar values that are themselves uncommon or extraordinary. Only one such value is needed for eligibility."


OBJECTIVE--To analyse critically the use of the Jarman underprivileged area index in health care planning and distribution of resources. DESIGN--The original derivation of the score was examined and evidence to support criticisms of the use of underprivileged area scores examined. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--Discrepancies between areas classified as deprived according to the index and areas known to require government funding; the extent of the bias towards family practitioner areas in London; and how the results of using the Jarman index compared with those when another deprivation index based on different indicators was used. RESULTS--The use of electroal wards as geographical areas for which deprivation payments are made is unsatisfactory as the wards vary considerably in size. Of the 20 district health authorities with the highest underprivileged area scores in England, 12 were in London, and four of the six family practitioner committee areas with the highest scores were in London. No health authority or family practitioner committee area in the Northern region had one of the top 20 or 10 scores respectively. When an alternative deprivation index was used to determine the allocation of resources to doctors there was considerable variation compared with the Jarman index. CONCLUSION--The Jarman index underprivileged area score is an inappropriate measure to use for health care planning and distribution of resources. There is a need for a revised measure for allocating deprivation payments to general practitioners.


A case history is presented describing the use of expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam blocks to treat an unstable roadway embankment slope involving clayey soils. The selection of the geofoam treatment was based upon its ability to be constructed and have the least impact on both the environment and adjacent homeowners. The site subsurface conditions, engineering properties of EPS, design analysis, and construction phases are reviewed. Potential traffic safety problems associated with differential icing of roadways caused by the presence of geofoam blocks beneath the pavements were minimized by using a thicker subbase layer in the geofoam-treated area. Data from an instrumentation program consisting of an inclinometer, extensometers, and thermistors are presented. Pavement temperature readings collected from areas with and without geofoam treatment are compared to investigate potential differential icing on the roadway.


Deep brain stimulation has become a popular treatment modality for medically resistant movement and neuropsychiatric disorders. As the procedure becomes more widely used, complications are being more clearly understood. Postoperative venous infarction is one of the newly introduced complications. We present a postoperative venous infarction case of deep brain stimulation of subthalamic nucleus, used in an advanced Parkinson's disease patient. Conservative approach was successful in resolving the signs and symptoms of the patient. Clinicians dealing with DBS should recognize this problem and should make intervention(s) to prevent unwanted consequences in a timely fashion.


Support for files is an abstraction provided by the operating system, and does not entail any real resource management. If disk space is available, it is used, else the service cannot be provided. There is no room for manipulation as in scheduling (by timesharing) or in memory management (by paging and swapping). However there is some scope for various ways to organize the data when implementing the file abstraction. The most important characteristics are being named and persistent A file is a named persistent sequential (structured) data repository. The attributes of being named and being persistent go hand in hand. The idea is that files can be used to store data for long periods of time, and specifically, for longer than the runtimes of the processes that create them. Thus one process can create a file, and another process may re-access the file using its name. The attribute of being sequential means that data within the file can be identified by its offset from the beginning of the file. As for structure, in Unix there simply is no structure. There is only one type of file, which is a linear sequence of bytes. Any interpretation of these bytes is left to the application that is using the file. Of course, some files are used by the operating system itself. In such cases, the operating system is the application, and it imposes some structure on the data it keeps in the file. A prime example is directories, where the data being stored is file system data; this is discussed in more detail below. Another example is executable files. In this case the structure is created by a compiler, based on a standard format that is also understood by the operating system. Other systems may support more structure in their files. Examples include: • IBM mainframes: the operating system supports lots of options, including fixed 139 or variable-size records, indexes, etc. Thus support for higher-level operations is possible, including " read the next record " or " read the record with key X ". • Macintosh OS: executables have two " forks " : one containing code, the other labels used in the user interface. Users can change labels appearing on buttons in the application's graphical user interface (e.g. to support different languages) without access to the source code. • Windows NTFS: files are considered as a set of attribute/value pairs. In …


The utilization of 'captured' CO2 as a feedstock in the chemical industry for the synthesis of certain chemical products offers an option for preventing several million tons of CO2 emissions each year while increasing independence from fossil fuels. For this reason, interest is increasing in the feasibility of deploying captured CO2 in this manner. Numerous scientific publications describe laboratory experiments in which CO2 has been successfully used as a feedstock for the synthesis of various chemical products. However, many of these publications have focused on the feasibility of syntheses without considering the ancillary benefits of CO2 emissions reduction if the CO2 is sourced from effluent or the potential profitability of this process. Evaluating these environmental and economic benefits is important for promoting the further development of benign CO2 applications. Given the multitude of CO2 utilization reactions in the laboratory context, an initial assessment must be undertaken to identify those which have the most potential for future technical exploration and development. To achieve this, 123 reactions from the literature were identified and evaluated with the help of selection criteria specifically developed for this project. These criteria incorporate both the quantitative potential of reducing CO2 and possible economic benefits of these syntheses. The selected reactions are divided into bulk and fine chemicals. Of the bulk chemicals, formic acid, oxalic acid, formaldehyde, methanol, urea and dimethyl ether, and of the fine chemicals, methylurethane, 3-oxo-pentanedioic acid, 2-imidazolidinone, ethylurethane, 2-oxazolidone and isopropyl isocyanate, mostly fulfil the selection criteria in each category.


Pattern retrieval is a fundamental challenge in machine learning but is often subject to the problem of gathering enough labeled examples of the target pattern, and also to the computational complexity inherent to the training and the evaluation of complex classifier functions on large databases. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical top-down processing scheme for pattern retrieval in high-volume high-resolution optical satellite image repositories. We learn via a multistage active learning process a cascade of classifiers working each at a certain scale on a patch-based representation of images. At each stage of the hierarchy, we seek to eliminate large parts of images considered as nonrelevant, the purpose being to set the focus at the finest scales on more promising and as spatially limited as possible areas. Our scheme is based on the fact that by reducing the size of the analysis window (i.e., the size of the patch), we better capture the properties of the targeted object. The cascaded hierarchy is introduced to compensate for the extra computational burden incurred by diminishing the size of the patch, which causes an explosion of the number of patches to process. Unlike most other retrieval methods, which require large training sets and costly offline training, we propose a cascaded active learning strategy to build a classifier at each level of the hierarchy, and we provide a new Multiple Instance Learning algorithm to propagate automatically the training examples from one level of the hierarchy to the other. Two study cases are performed for validation. The first is a test on a database of 61-cm resolution QuickBird panchromatic images and the second is an example of temporal pattern retrieval from a database of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image time series. These tests show that our method achieves a reduction in the number of computations of two orders of magnitude, while keeping the same accuracy level as recent state-of-the-art methods.


This paper gives an overview of the searchable online French-Greek parallel corpus (SOURCe), which aims to serve the needs of students of French as a foreign language and also to facilitate future linguistic research. This project is led by Fryni Kakoyianni-Doa and is fully funded by the University of Cyprus. We included different registers (Biber 1993), so that students may compare the results and the use of each word or phrase in different contexts (e.g., literature, scientific, official, technical and journalistic language). In general, the corpus comprises of a fiction and a non-fiction part. In this article, we describe the design principles and the properties of this French and Greek linguistically annotated corpus, we also report on tools used for the collection, sentence and word alignment, dictionary extraction and POS tagging for the parallel corpus. Finally, we outline its future perspectives and applications, including ongoing work on adverbs and their properties.


The cause of the age-related impairment of arterial baroreflex function remains ill-defined; moreover, it is unknown whether this impairment results from aging per se or from an inactive lifestyle associated with aging. In this study, we sought to: 1) determine whether elderly individuals who maintained an active lifestyle had an enhanced carotid baroreflex function as compared with their sedentary counterparts; and 2) determine whether this difference was due in part to altered function of the arterial baroreceptor and/or altered central modulation. Eight healthy, sedentary (SED, 68 ± 2 yr) and eight physically active (ACT, 68 ± 1 yr) elderly men with peak O2 consumption 25.5 ± 1.2 vs 35.7 ± 2.4 ml/min/kg (P < 0.01), respectively, were assessed with carotid baroreceptor (CBR) function using 5s pulses of neck pressure or suction (ranging from +40 to −80 Torr) delivered to the carotid sinus region at rest and during lower body negative pressure (LBNP) of −15 and −40 Torr. Changes in heart rate (HR) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were assessed for CBR-HR and CBR-MAP gains, respectively. Overall CBR-HR gains in a range of ∼ 120 mmHg of carotid sinus pressure were greater (P < 0.01) in ACT than SED at rest and during LBNP. The derived peak CBR-HR slopes between ACT and SED at rest were −0.32 ± 0.07 vs −0.11 ± 0.02 bpm/mmHg (P = 0.007), respectively. However, there was no statistical difference (P = 0.37) in CBR-MAP gains between the groups. Neither CBR-MAP (P = 0.08) nor CBR-HR (P = 0.41) gain was augmented by LBNP in the elderly. Conclusion: Active lifestyle enhances the CBR-HR reflex sensitivity as a result of the improved vagal-cardiac function in elderly people. Aging is associated with an absence of central autonomic interaction in the control of blood pressure regardless of physical fitness.


The negative effect of distance on bilateral trade is one of the most robust findings in international trade. However, the underlying causes of this negative relationship are less well understood. This paper exploits a temporary shock to distance, the closing of the Suez canal in 1967 and its reopening in 1975, to examine the effect of distance on trade and the effect of trade on income. Time series variation in sea distance allows for the inclusion of pair effects which account for static differences in tastes and culture between countries. The distance effects estimated in this paper are therefore more clearly about transportation costs in the trade of goods than typical gravity model estimates. Distance is found to have a significant impact on trade with an elasticity that is about half as large as estimates from typical cross sectional estimates. Since the shock to trade is exogenous for most countries, predicted trade volume from the shock can be used to identify the effect of trade on income. Trade is found to have a significant impact on income. The time series dimension allows for country fixed effects which control for all long run income differences. Because identification is through changes in sea distance, the effect is coming entirely through trade in goods and not through alternative channels such as technology transfer, tourism, or foreign direct investment.


Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is an innovative manufacturing process, which is used to join two pieces of metal with frictional heating and plastic deformation due to stirring action. Melting is avoided during the process, therefore problems related to microstructure phase transformation (i.e., cooling from the liquid phase) are avoided. The temperature distribution in the weld zone, as a function of the heat generation, highly affects the evolution of the residual stresses in the work piece, hence the performance of the final product. Therefore, thermal models play a crucial role in detailed analysis and improvement of this process. In this study, a previously developed and validated three-dimensional steady state thermal model of FS welding of AA2024-T3 plates has been used for evaluating the quality of the candidate solutions. It should be noted that this is a computationally expensive model and closed form formulations (i.e. analytical equations) for the underlying physics are not available, which forces us to use them sparingly during the optimization procedure. A mathematical correlation model, a surrogate in other words, is iteratively constructed to replace the FSW simulations and guide the search towards feasible and promising regions. A new surrogate-based optimization algorithm named EICTS, Expected Improvement with Constrained Tournament Selection has been developed. The striking difference of EICTS from other surrogate based constrained optimization methodologies that it needs to construct only two surrogates, i.e. one for the objective function and another one to handle all constraint functions (i.e., instead of approximating each of them individually). EICTS is first tested on some well-known engineering problems with multiple constraints and finally on the FSW problem briefly mentioned above. Its runtime and convergence performances are compared with EIPF (Expected Improvement with Probability of Feasibility) method and found very promising.


The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of different tumor types within a large cohort of cats with intracranial neoplasia and to attempt to correlate signalment, tumor size and location, and survival time for each tumor. Medical records of 160 cats with confirmed intracranial neoplasia evaluated between 1985 and 2001 were reviewed. Parameters evaluated included age, sex, breed, FeLV/FIV status, clinical signs, duration of signs, number of tumors, tumor location(s), imaging results, treatment, survival times, and histopathologic diagnosis. Most of the cats were older (11.3 +/- 3.8 years). Primary tumors accounted for 70.6% of cases. Metastasis and direct extension of secondary tumors accounted for only 5.6 and 3.8% of cases, respectively. Twelve cats (7.5%) had 2 or more discrete tumors of the same type, whereas 16 cats (10.0%) had 2 different types of intracranial tumors. The most common tumor types were meningioma (n = 93, 58.1%), lymphoma (n = 23, 14.4%), pituitary tumors (n = 14, 8.8%), and gliomas (n = 12, 7.5%). The most common neurological signs were altered consciousness (n = 42, 26.2%), circling (n = 36, 22.5%), and seizures (n = 36, 22.5%). Cats without specific neurological signs were common (n = 34, 21.2%). The tumor was considered an incidental finding in 30 (18.8%) cats. In addition to expected relationships (eg, meninges and meningioma, pituitary and pituitary tumors), we found that lesion location was predictive of tumor type with diffuse cerebral or brainstem involvement predictive of lymphoma and third ventricle involvement predictive of meningioma.


Intracellular trafficking and delivery of nucleic acids is an area of growing interest, particularly as it relates to therapeutic applications. Spectroscopic methods have been used to observe and quantitatively measure the delivery of oligonucleotides both in vitro and in vivo. Herein we demonstrate the use of a new fluorophore labeled surfactant presenting a solvatochromatic chromophore for tracking the assembly and degradation of a hybrid biomaterial we refer to as a nucleic acid nanocapsule (NAN). We show that the surfactant enables critical micelle concentration determination, monitoring of NAN disassembly in vitro, and the ability to track the cellular movement and activity of surfactant–oligonucleotide conjugates in cells when coupled with quantitative PCR analysis.


In this work, a new glass-ceramic coating has been developed and applied, as a single coat without prior chemical treatment of the surface, using the dipping technique on metal substrate. the coating are designed for application on varies grades of low alloy steel, the selected substrate was low carbon low alloyed steel with (0.2)%C. Various heat treatments at temperatures ( 500,550, and 600 ̊C ) at different times (60 & 120)min and with quartz addition in the range (0-15)% were used to obtain a glass-ceramics that have the optimum coating properties. These coating have been characterized by x-ray diffraction analyses and the results showed presence of a number of microcrystalline phases which are formed during the heat treatments. The results showed the suitability of this coating for protection the metal substrate which was used in present work. The results of tests also indicated that the mechanical properties ( hardness, adhesion strength, and thermal stability) of resultant coating were greatly improved by both addition of quartz into enamel frit and heat treatments for all cases, this is attributed to the formation of complex network from crystalline phases(Li2SiO3, Li2TiSiO5, NaAlSi2O6, and SiO2) which are the main phases in the resultant glass-ceramic coating. It has been found that the heat treatment at 600 ̊C for 120min with 15% quartz addition brought the optimum values for ( hardness, adhesion strength, and thermal stability) of resultant coating which are improved by (70.58%, 33.84%, and 39.68%) respectively. Mathematical modeling is implemented and regression equations are obtained using ( SPSS ) software to predict the experimental data for mechanical properties of resultant coating. Comparing the predicted and measured values gives high prediction accuracy. The accuracy of prediction has been (98%, 98.5%, and 97.4%) for ( hardness, adhesion strength, and thermal stability) respectively.


In this study, we examine CSF testing in febrile young infants with a positive urinalysis and the probability of delayed meningitis if treated without lumbar puncture. BrightcoveDefaultPlayer10.1542/6138651485001PEDS-VA_2018-3979 Video Abstract BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To determine factors associated with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) testing in febrile young infants with a positive urinalysis and assess the probability of delayed diagnosis of bacterial meningitis in infants treated for urinary tract infection (UTI) without CSF testing. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study using data from the Reducing Excessive Variability in Infant Sepsis Evaluation quality improvement project. A total of 20 570 well-appearing febrile infants 7 to 60 days old presenting to 124 hospitals from 2015 to 2017 were included. A mixed-effects logistic regression was conducted to determine factors associated with CSF testing. Delayed meningitis was defined as a new diagnosis of bacterial meningitis within 7 days of discharge. RESULTS: Overall, 3572 infants had a positive urinalysis; 2511 (70.3%) underwent CSF testing. There was wide variation by site, with CSF testing rates ranging from 64% to 100% for infants 7 to 30 days old and 10% to 100% for infants 31 to 60 days old. Factors associated with CSF testing included: age 7 to 30 days (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 4.6; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.8–5.5), abnormal inflammatory markers (aOR: 2.2; 95% CI: 1.8–2.5), and site volume >300 febrile infants per year (aOR: 1.8; 95% CI: 1.2–2.6). Among 505 infants treated for UTI without CSF testing, there were 0 (95% CI: 0%–0.6%) cases of delayed meningitis. CONCLUSIONS: There was wide variation in CSF testing in febrile infants with a positive urinalysis. Among infants treated for UTI without CSF testing (mostly 31 to 60-day-old infants), there were no cases of delayed meningitis within 7 days of discharge, suggesting that routine CSF testing of infants 31 to 60 days old with a positive urinalysis may not be necessary.


Many studies have investigated how people perceive others' self-presentation styles (such as enhancement and effacement) in forming first impressions and how culture influences the process. Most of those studies have, however, investigated self-presentation styles in the context of informal and intimate interpersonal relations. Few studies have examined the perceptions of self-presentation styles in formal communication contexts such as instruction in classrooms. This study examines how college students from different cultures perceive professors' self-presentation styles in terms of competence and likability with the samples from the Mainland USA, Hawaii, and South Korea. The results from the latent mean analyses showed that professors with self-enhancement were perceived as more competent but less favorable in the Mainland USA and Hawaii, but not in South Korea – self-promoter's paradox was not found, while trade-offs between competence perception and likability seemed to exist. Structural equation models showed that, in explaining the variances of self-presentation perceptions, self-construals were significant variables in the Mainland USA and Hawaii, but not in South Korea. Academic motivations, on the contrary, appeared as significant variables in South Korea only. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of cultural differences through self-construals in perceiving others' self-presentation styles.


Sections measured in the Franklin and Organ mountains show the Lower Ordovician El Paso formation to have been progressively truncated toward the north, and to be overlain disconformably by the Middle (?) and Upper Ordovician Montoya group. This group from the base up is divided into: the Cable Canyon sandstone (coarse, orthoquartzitic) replaced in the Baylor Mountains by a St. Peter sandstone equivalent; the Upham formation (dolomite or limestone) containing a Red River fauna, which is probably upper Trenton or possibly lower Cincinnatian in age; the Aleman formation (also dolomite or limestone with much chert, in bands or nodules) with a Maquoketa fauna, notably the coral Palaeophyllum thomi, which crops out in a marker bed for 140 miles; and the Cutter formation (non-cherty dolomite) with a late Ordovician fauna near its base.


Summary
Two species of flies, M. d. vicina and M. sorbens, collected from the faces of Egyptian village children from August, 1955, through June, 1956, were studied for types of internal and external bacterial flora. Enteric bacteria were found in every pool of flies, and organisms associated with respiratory infections, conjunctivitis, and pyogenic infections were frequently isolated. Although seasonal variation in total numbers of bacteria was not observed, organisms of the Micrococcus group were isolated more often than other organisms, and indicated some seasonal variation in prevalence, which was not entirely explainable on the basis of relative fly prevalence. The beta-hemolytic staphylococci and streptococci were isolated most frequently during August, while the nonhemolytic and alpha-hemolytic micrococci were found most often during April, May and June. The corynebacteria were isolated most frequently during May and June.
Bacterial types similar to those isolated from flies were obtained from both normal and diseased eyes of Egyptian children. The organisms most commonly isolated from either eyes or flies were the hemolytic micrococci, several of which produced ophthalmia in experimentally infected rabbits.


The Sallah Formation crops out in Central Saudi Arabia where it is 30 meters thick. It consists of lagoonal and inter-tidal sediments, including locally a marine fauna, which were deposited during a regional trangression above the Biyadh Sandstone. The formation is unconformably overlain by the continental clastics of the Huraysan Formation. A single ammonite recovered from the Sallah Formation is here conclusively assigned to the top of Lower to base of Upper Aptian Cheloniceras sp. and supports its correlation to the Early Aptian Shu'aiba Formation in the subsurface of eastern Saudi Arabia. The Sallah Formation forms a complete transgressive-regressive sequence and the middle Sallah unit 2 (11 meters thick) contains the maximum flooding surface MFS K80. The Late Aptian, for the most part, is interpreted as a hiatus of non-deposition associated with a major sea-level lowstand in Central Saudi Arabia. The overlying continental Huraysan Formation is correlated to the Nahr Umr Formation of Oman and the United Arab Emirates and Burgan Formation of Kuwait.


Objective: To describe the clinical course and steroid responsiveness of a patient with subacute proximal symmetric weakness, very high serum creatine kinase activity, and myopathic pattern with fibrillations in the electromyogram, whose muscle biopsy showed necrotizing myopathy, with practically no inflammation. Design: Case report. Setting: Academic research. Results: Diagnosis of muscular dystrophy was suggested; nevertheless, steroid treatment was initiated, and the patient recovered and gained normal strength. However, after a few years he stopped treatment, and all symptoms recurred. He developed severe proximal weakness of all limbs. Another biopsy showed similar findings, with no inflammation; still, he responded favorably to steroids and immunosuppressive medications. Currently on a low dose of prednisone and methotrexate, he has no neurological deficit. Conclusion: The absence of inflammation in muscle biopsy may lead to misdiagnosis of muscular dystrophy; however, if the clinical impression is that of inflammatory myopathy, an immunomodulatory treatment should be initiated. During the past century, there has been much controversy about the diagnosis of polymyositis (PM). The debate is still ongoing. We present hereby a patient with typical course and clinical features of PM who underwent two muscle biopsies, several years apart, which showed necrotizing myopathy, practically without inflammation, leading to misdiagnosis of muscular dystrophy. This report brings up the dispute regarding the role of muscle biopsy in the diagnosis of PM.


A nation's wealth is both an object of conquest to covetous aggressors and a resource to its owners for self defense. To maintain autonomy every country must mount a defense which either makes its capture (1) more expensive than any aggressor can afford, or (2) more expensive than it is worth to aggressors. Whether this condition can be satisfied for all countries simultaneously depends as shown in this paper on relative efficacy of military offense versus defense, the aggregate of wealth among nations and its distribution, and the benefits a conqueror may obtain from conquest, including the duration of these benefits. The paper shows how these factors fit together to determine the sustainability and stability of the international distribution of property as embodied in the configuration of sovereign states.


At a research University near the east coast, researchers restructured a College Algebra course by formatting the course into two large lectures a week, an active recitation size laboratory class once a week, and an extra day devoted to active group work called Supplemental Practice (SP). SP was added as an extra day of class where the SP leader has students work in groups on a worksheet of examples and problems, based off of worked-example research, that were covered in the previous week's class material. Two sections of the course were randomly chosen to be the experimental group and the other section was the control group. The experimental group was given the SP worksheets and the control group was given a questionand-answer session. The experimental group's performance was statistically significant compared to the control on a variety of components in the course, particularly when prior knowledge was factored into the data.


A high level of competition combined with food safety related risks gives cause for producers to offer and consumers to seek means of reducing the risk involved in transactions. One such means is a food labelling system. The article presents the results of research aimed at determining the awareness of the food labelling system among young people. A diagnostic survey method was used in the research and a tool constituted an anonymous questionnaire that was completed by 451 students. The awareness may be described as low. The symbol of a green leaf (called EURO-LISTEK in Polish) was recognized by a fifth of the respondents. The awareness of quality symbols was much lower. A few of the respondents named the product on which a symbol was put and the greatest difficulty was to specify the content which a given symbol delivered. The fact that the system of labelling food products is hardly known is particularly troubling since the research was conducted two years after the Agricultural Market Agency launched a campaign promoting the EU system of symbols called "Three Symbols of Taste". It is recommended that advertising campaigns are designed in such a way as to inform young consumers about the advantages of certified food products as well as to carry out educational activities targeted at young consumers.


Objectives. To determine if community pharmacists felt that diagnostic information providedwith prescriptions would (1) help provide pharmaceutical care, (2) help reduce dispensing errors, and (3) violate patient confidentiality. Methods . A mail questionnaire was distributed to 200 metropolitan community pharmacists in Arizona. The questionnaire consisted of 14 opinion statements and 6 demographic items. Results . Atotal of 75 usable questionnaireswere returned (a 38.5% response rate). Pharmacists agreed that they were responsible for providing pharmaceutical care and that diagnostic data would help them provide this care. Pharmacists believed that receiving diagnostic data with prescriptions would help reduce-dispensing errors, help them counsel patients, and help them abide by state and federal laws. Pharmacists felt that diagnostic data would not violate patient confidentiality. The majority of pharmacists (73.6%) believed that the indication for prescribing a medication was the most important information that could be included on a prescription. Conclusion . Overall, community pharmacists had positive perceptions of the value of diagnostic data being provided with prescriptions. Additional research is needed to evaluate how providing this important information will affect other members of health care teams.


Black woman in America experiences threefold strong-arming of race, sex and class. In the United States the combat for equality, mainly in the southern states, has been long and difficult, from the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's to the political deliberations still going on today. This Research will try to uplift the curtain on those harsh realities and will make readers as well as society familiar with the impulsive issues like racism, Prejudices with in society, colonial history and condition of Blacks in White Society. A thorough study on the authors work will present a realistic account of the socio-economic and cultural condition of the past, making the current generation acclimatize with the life and the times of the earlier generation and its influence on the contemporary life and to develop a sense of respect for the Women in their respective arenas and treat them with equality. The current research paper voices the struggled repression from a racialist and Chauvinist society; as how a black women attempted to create not only racial equality but also gender equality through her undaunted audacity and forbearance. The study focuses on Angelou's phenomena of resistance in the background of post colonialism through exploring the current means by which people formulate their racial identity. Her Work is a vocalization of the struggle for national, racial, and Self-identity; she addresses the irreconcilable difference between black and white community, feminism and masculinity, inferiority and superiority complex in the governing male dominated society. The odyssey of feminine experiences throughout the novel enables the researcher to discover the experiences of resistance and courage in the face of adversity ;Failure is inescapable but it is quite necessary to boost one -self again and one should always be willing "To Strike, to seek to find but not to Yield."


: Effects of volatile components of the urine (VCU) of mature male and female CBA/LacStoRap mice on proliferating bone marrow cells in young females of the same line were analyzed. To estimate the effects of VCU, cytogenetic analysis of mitotic disturbances in anaphase-telophase cells was performed. The overall frequency of mitotic disturbances such as chromosome bridges, fragments, retarded chromosomes, and multiple rearrangements was assessed. The overall frequency of mitotic disturbances in young female mice treated with VCU from mature females for 2 h significantly increased 24 h after exposure. The spectrum of mitotic disturbances was also affected by the VCU treatment. After exposure to VCU from mature males, no significant variation of parameters analyzed was detected in young female mice. The possible mechanisms and role of specific effects of VCU from animals of different sexes on young female house mice are discussed.


Spaces with high occupancy density like classrooms are challenging to ventilateand use a lot of energy to maintain comfort. Usually, a compromise is made between low energy use and good Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), of which poor IEQ has consequences for occupants' health, produc tivity and comfort. Alternative strategies that incorporate elevated air speeds can reduce cooling energy demand and provide occupant's comfort and productivity at higher operative temperatures. A ventilation strategy, Inter mittent Air Jet Strategy (IAJS), which optimizes controlled intermittent air flow and creates nonuniform airflow and nonisothermal conditions, critical for sedentary operations at elevated temperatures, is proposed herein. The primary aim of the work was to investigate the potential of IAJS as a ventilation system in high occupancy spaces. Ventilation parameters such as air distribution, thermal comfort and indoor air quality are evaluated and the system is compared with a traditional system, specifically, mixing ven tilation (MV). A 3part research process was used: (1) Technical (objective) evaluation of IAJS incomparison to MV and displacement ventilation (DV) systems. (2) An occupant response study to IAJS. (3) Estimation of the cooling effect under IAJS and its implications on energy use. All studies were conducted in controlled chambers. The results show that while MV and DV creates steady airflow conditions, IAJS has cyclic airflow profiles which results in a sinusoidal tem perature pro file around occupants. Air distribution capability of IAJS is similar to MV, both having a generic local air quality index in the occupied zone. On the other hand, the systems overall air change rate was higher than a MV. Thermal comfort results suggest that IAJS generates comfortable thermalclimate at higher operative temperatures compared to MV. Occupant responsesto IAJS show an improved thermal sensation, air quality perception and acceptability of indoor environment at higher temperatures as compared to MV. A compa rative study to estimate the cooling effect of IAJS shows that upper HVAC setpoint can be increased from 2.3 – 4.5 oC for a neutral thermal sensation compared to a MV. This implies a substantial energy saving potential on the ventilation system. In general, IAJS showed a potential for use as a ventila tion system in classrooms while promising energy savings.


Plant phenotypic diversity is shaped by the interplay of trade‐offs and constraints in evolution. Closely integrated groups of traits (i.e. trait dimensions) are used to classify plant phenotypic diversity into plant strategies, but we do not know the degree of interdependence among trait dimensions. To assess how selection has shaped the phenotypic space, we examine whether trait dimensions are independent. We gathered data on saplings of 24 locally coexisting tree species in a temperate forest, and examined the correlation structure of 20 leaf, branch, stem and root traits. These traits fall into three well‐established trait dimensions (the leaf economic spectrum, the wood spectrum and Corner's Rules) that characterize vital plant functions: resource acquisition, sap transport, mechanical support and canopy architecture. Using ordinations, network analyses and Mantel tests, we tested whether the sapling phenotype of these tree species is organized along independent trait dimensions. Across species, the sapling phenotype is not structured into clear trait dimensions. The trait relationships defining trait dimensions are either weak or absent and do not dominate the correlation structure of the sapling phenotype as a whole. Instead traits from the three commonly recognized trait dimensions are organized into an integrated trait network. The effect of phylogeny on trait correlations is minimal. Our results indicate that trait dimensions apparent in broad‐based interspecific surveys do not hold up among locally coexisting species. Furthermore, architectural traits appear central to the phenotypic network, suggesting a pivotal role for branching architecture in linking resource acquisition, mechanical support and hydraulic functions. Synthesis. Our study indicates that local and global patterns of phenotypic integration differ and calls into question the use of trait dimensions at local scales. We propose that a network approach to assessing plant function more effectively reflects the multiple trade‐offs and constraints shaping the phenotype in locally co‐occurring species.


Face detection has been developed into one independent research direction. This paper proposes a detection method based on the combination of skin color and improved ICA. The method makes face detection in color images real and abandons the conventional way of detecting grey rather than color images. Its description is as follows: In the beginning, skin color mode should be founded on the basis of a new color space called H_SI_I. Then with the help of prior knowledge, image preprocessing can be implemented to obtain candidates' faces, which will be detected by improved ICA. Experiments demonstrate that the method proposed by this paper has better effect than the conventional face detection based on subspace as far as speed and accuracy is concerned.


What is the impact of the sharing economy, pioneered by companies such as Airbnb, on the housing market? In this paper, I estimate the welfare and distributional impact of Airbnb on the residents of New York City. I develop a model of an integrated housing market, in which a landlord can offer a housing unit for rent either on the traditional long-term rental market or on the newly available short-term rental market. By estimating a structural model of residential choice and linking it to detailed Airbnb usage data, I estimate the effect of such reallocation on the equilibrium rents across different housing types and demographic groups. In addition, to evaluate the gains from direct home-sharing, I estimate a supply system featuring heterogeneous costs. Overall, renters in New York City suffer a loss of $178mm per annum, as the losses from the rent channel dominate the gains from the host channel. I find that the increased rent burden falls most heavily on high-income, educated, and white renters because they prefer housing and location amenities that are most desirable to tourists. Moreover, there is a divergence between the median and the tail, where a few enterprising low-income households obtain substantial gains from home-sharing. Thus, this paper delivers a nuanced characterization of the winners and losers of the sharing economy and provides a framework for understanding the consequences of regulating such technological innovations.


In recent years, the concept of nanopore sensing has matured from a proof-of-principle method to a widespread, versatile technique for the study of biomolecular properties and interactions. While traditional nanopore devices based on a nanopore in a single layer membrane supported on a silicon chip can be rapidly fabricated using standard microfabrication methods, chips with additional insulating layers beyond the membrane region can provide significantly lower noise levels, but at the expense of requiring more costly and time-consuming fabrication steps. Here we present a novel fabrication protocol that overcomes this issue by enabling rapid and reproducible manufacturing of low-noise membranes for nanopore experiments. The fabrication protocol, termed trans-chip illumination lithography, is based on illuminating a membrane-containing wafer from its backside such that a photoresist (applied on the wafer's top side) is exposed exclusively in the membrane regions. Trans-chip illumination lithography permits the local modification of membrane regions and hence the fabrication of nanopore chips containing locally patterned insulating layers. This is achieved while maintaining a well-defined area containing a single thin membrane for nanopore drilling. The trans-chip illumination lithography method achieves this without relying on separate masks, thereby eliminating time-consuming alignment steps as well as the need for a mask aligner. Using the presented approach, we demonstrate rapid and reproducible fabrication of nanopore chips that contain small (12 μm × 12 μm) free-standing silicon nitride membranes surrounded by insulating layers. The electrical noise characteristics of these nanopore chips are shown to be superior to those of simpler designs without insulating layers and comparable in quality to more complex designs that are more challenging to fabricate.


The case fatality rate for meningococcal meningitis has changed little in recent years. A study of persons admitted to hospital in Bristol with suspected meningitis found that only five of the 41 cases admitted in 1991 were given penicillin prior to admission. Possible reasons for this include lack of awareness of the need, reluctance to give injections to children, uncertainty about dosage, failure to carry injectable penicillin and diagnostic uncertainty.


Recent enhancements to greedy best-first search (GBFS) such as DBFS, -GBFS, Type-GBFS improve performance by occasionally introducing exploratory behavior which occasionally expands non-greedy nodes. However, most of these exploratory mechanisms do not address exploration within the space sharing the same heuristic estimate (plateau). In this paper, we show these two modes of exploration, which work across (inter-) and within (intra-) plateau, are complementary, and can be combined to yield superior performance. We then introduces a new fractal-inspired scheme called Invasion-Percolation diversification, which addresses "breadth"-bias instead of the "depth"-bias addressed by the existing diversification methods. We evaluate IP-diversification for both intra- and inter-plateau exploration, and show that it significantly improves performance in several domains. Finally, we show that combining diversification methods results in a planner which is competitive to the state-of-the-art for satisficing planning.


This paper attempts to illustrate Uncertainty Analysis (UA) and Sensitivity Analysis (SA) of real-time building energy demand model, which is derived from the dynamic relation of occupant behaviors and building space. UA and SA are indispensable sections of system development to insure the efficiency and accuracy of the model while there are three essential stage of UA and SA we followed. In terms of UA and SA, it is possible to structure a rational framework of complex dynamic network model, and discover the mapping between building energy demand and particular relation network patterns. We assume, firstly, a multi-mode dynamic relation networks model of occupant behavior, building space and temporal unit tends to be developed, and the definitions of basic model framework are given. Then, in the cases of the definitions in the basic model framework assumption, the propagation of uncertainty is taken into consideration according to the sampling based methods mapping the input parameters patterns onto the predictable results. Finally, we discuss the determination of sensitivity analysis with Morris method and Variance-based methods. In this paper, via UA and SA, our goal is to optimize the mapping procedure of the Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) in building energy demand model, explore the essential input parameters pattern, and improve the precision of real-time model prediction.


Two-dimensional atomic-layered material is a recent research focus, and single layer Ta2O5 used as gate dielectric in field-effect transistors is obtained via assemblies of Ta2O5 nanosheets. However, the electrical performance is seriously affected by electronic defects existing in Ta2O5. Therefore, spectroscopic ellipsometry is used to calculate the transition energies and corresponding probabilities for two different charged oxygen vacancies, whose existence is revealed by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. Spectroscopic ellipsometry fitting also calculates the thickness of single layer Ta2O5,exhibiting good agreement with atomic force microscopy measurement. Nondestructive and noncontact spectroscopic ellipsometry is appropriate for detecting the electrical defects level of single layer Ta2O5.


Student behavior inside and outside of the classroom is an issue that impacts faculty, students, student affairs personnel, and the entire college community. Any type of violence or disrespectful behavior can disrupt the learning process. Due to recent violent events on college campuses, an assessment of campus safety was conducted. About 150 faculty and staff and 450 students completed a survey designed to measure beliefs and attitudes, daily behaviors, personal safety precautions, and cases of victimization. Survey results provided insight into the college community's perceptions of campus safety, and aided in the formation of strategies used to reduce or eliminate violence and incivility in the college environment. Findings also informed student affairs administrators of further actions needed to resolve conflict on campus, such as the development of policy and programs. ********** The college campus atmosphere is often viewed as a place of academic sanctuary where opinions and feelings are openly expressed between faculty and students. For these students, the college years are a time of transition between the formal learning that takes place in childhood and adolescence and the move toward adulthood and the formal workplace. This transitional period is one that fosters independent and critical thinking, and allows students to speak out and test limits and boundaries. Subsequently, this time in young adulthood is also when students are more apt to challenge protocols and traditions in the college classroom. This picture of academic freedom and discourse has changed sharply over the years, when one closely examines patterns of behavior that exist both inside and outside of the college classroom. This transitional period, during which young college students test their limits, has been more recently marked by acts of violence. Acts of violence, such as campus shootings and rapes, have caused college campuses to examine and implement safety plans for students and employees. Such plans often take resources away from academic needs for allocation toward the general security of the campus (Carr, 2005; Fox, 2008). Many would argue that safety is an expense to colleges that is worthwhile. Yet, in reality, resources are being diverted to enhance security on campuses with little increase in funding for these measures (Rasmussen & Johnson, 2008). Despite efforts to improve on preparedness for disasters following the terrorist attacks in New York City, the hurricane in New Orleans, and flooding in the Midwest, the scope of violence that occurred at the Virginia Tech campus quickly motivated colleges to examine standards and practices in the event that a similar incident would occur (Rasmussen & Johnson, 2008). Concerns about the growing violence on college campuses has led some to question if this in part is due to the educational system that fosters peer groups and social hierarchies, leading certain students to become outcasts (Farmer, Farmer, Estell & Hutchinson, 2007). Others suggest that higher education has seen a large growth in enrollment that has resulted in college communities experiencing the same crime issues as any other community or city with open access spaces where people move from building to building (Border & Petersen, 1993 as cited in Bromley, 2005; Rasmussen & Johnson, 2008). Yet others point to several factors such as the entitlement mentality of this generation, the declining respect given to teachers, medications taken for behavioral health problems, inflated grades and the pressure to access graduate school and jobs (Benton, 2007). Regardless of the underlying root causes of increased violence on campuses across the country, colleges have struggled with violent and disruptive behavior since the 1980s and there seems to be no good solution to the ever-growing threat that hinders academic life (Carmody, 1990). On-campus crime has been addressed by the passing of the 1990 Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act and the subsequent Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, also known as the Clery Act. …


In this paper, some fundamental limitations of projective invariants of non-algebraic planar curves are discussed. It is shown that all curves within a large class can be mapped arbitrarily close to a circle by projective transformations. It is also shown that arbitrarily close to each of a finite number of closed planar curves there is one member of a set of projectively equivalent curves. Thus a continuous projective invariant on closed curves is constant. This also limits the possibility of finding so called projective normalisation schemes for closed planar curves. >


To study the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic period and its duration, samples of charcoal, bone, flowstone and shells excavated from Bailiandong and Miaoyan caves, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, South China were dated using the Peking University AMS facility and liquid scintillation counter. The remains excavated from these sites show typical characteristics of the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic. Radiocarbon dating results show a rapid transition from ca. 20 to 10 ka bp.


With previous health warnings, personal anxieties could feed behavioral changes with many people of India considering notable changes in their transportation use and anticipating in preparation the purchase of goods, particularly masks. Asian respondents were especially likely to have talked about the pandemic with friends, whereas one-fourth of respondents globally had talked about the pandemic with their family. Our data on the correlation indicates that these conversations may increase existing rates of anxiety. Practitioners need to be mindful that rumors spread rapidly during periods of pandemic danger, with significant risks of both emotional and physical 'contagion' amongst individuals. Any rise in anxiety may lead to sudden changes in behavior, which can quickly lead to shortages and can enhance the need for treatment at home.


Abstract Here we discuss antibody, cell and gene-based therapies that are currently available and under investigation for both wet and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). We initially discuss ocular anatomy, AMD modelling as well as the underlying pathophysiology of AMD. The antibody-based trials which have revolutionised the management of wet AMD are reviewed. The latest concepts in antibody therapy for wet AMD such as the port delivery systems, bispecific antibodies, designed ankyrin repeat protein (DARPINs) and brolucizumab are explored. Furthermore, the antibody-based trials targeting the complement pathway to reduce progression of geographic atrophy (GA) in dry AMD are discussed. Stem cell therapy and gene therapy are novel treatment modalities with no established clinical use in wet or dry AMD. Here, we discuss their efficacy so far in clinical trials. Their benefits and risk in the treatment of both wet and dry AMD are evaluated.


A new method is proposed to evaluate the dynamics of QT interval adaptation in response to heart rate (HR) changes. The method considers weighted averages of RR intervals (R~R~) preceding each cardiac beat to express RR interval history accounting for the influence on repolarization duration. A global optimization algorithm is used to determine the weight distribution leading to the lowest regression residual when curve fitting the [QT, R~R~] data using a patient- specific regression model. From the optimum weight distribution, a memory lag L/sub 90/ is estimated, expressing the delay in the QT adaptation to HR changes. On average, RR intervals of the past 150 beats (approximately 2.5 min) are required to model the QT response accurately. From a clinical point of view, the interval of the initial tens of seconds to one minute seems to be most important in the majority of cases. A measure of the optimum regression residual (r/sub opt/) has been calculated, discriminating between post-myocardial infarction patients at high and low risk of arrhythmic death while on treatment with amiodarone. A similar discrimination has been achieved with a variable expressing the character of QT lag behind the RR interval dynamics.


Home ownership has been a source of concern for many EU28 governments, especially since the start of the economic crisis in 2008-09. After five-to-six years of persistently weak economic performance and in the context of the recently enacted mortgage credit directive - which should affect the principal funding channel of housing purchases – it seems timely to look at recent home ownership behaviours across the EU28, with special emphasis on the major changes. Recent macroeconomic data reveal three striking phenomena: highly diverse home ownership rates across countries – still; significant contractions in ownership in the UK and Ireland (especially among families); and marked contractions in ownership among poorer households in the EU15 since 2007. This ECRI Commentary is one of two on the topic of home ownership in the EU, published simultaneously by the same author; ECRI Commentary No.14, entitled "Home ownership, labour markets and the economic crisis" looks at the effects of high levels of home ownership, especially on labour markets.


Abstract Thanasimus substriatus (Gebler) (Coleoptera: Cleridae) is an important predator of bark beetles (Scolytidae) and has been used in China for the biological control of the larch bark beetle, Ips subelongatus Motschulsky, and the spruce bark beetle, Ips typographus L. In this study, the number, external morphology, and distribution of antennal sensilla of T. substriatus were determined using scanning electron microscopy. The capitate antennae of both sexes consist of the scape, pedicel, and 9 flagellomeres. Two types of sensilla chaetica (SC1 and SC2), 2 types of sensilla trichodea (ST1 and ST2), 3 types of sensilla basiconica (SB1, SB2, SB3), and Böhm's bristles (BB) were identified according to the morphology and fine structure of each type of sensilla in both sexes. No differences in shape, structure, sensilla distribution, and typology were observed between the sexes. The density of sensilla was greater on the last 3 than on the first 8 segments. SC1 and SC2 occurred on all antennal segments in both sexes. SB1 were located only on the last 5 segments of the antennae. SB2 and SB3 were found only on the last 3 segments of the antennae and were absent on the first 8 segments in both sexes. ST1 and ST2 were absent from the scape and pedicel. BB only occurred on the scape and pedicel. The distal antennal sensilla of T. substriatus had notably more sensilla than proximal ones in type and number, indicating this is the main area to detect environmental stimuli for feeding or oviposition.


In the process of modernization, we can observe in general a shift of the written form of each language to adapt to the written culture of the new society. Both in eighteenth-century Britain and in nineteenth-century Japan, the initial phase of the shift was carried out by private individuals like authors, journalists and translators. Then, the written form invented by them became public and contributed to making canons through print culture and education. Examining comparatively the process of modernization and the shift of written language in both countries, this paper will discuss the transformation of the power of individual men of letters and some of the damage accompanying modernization of society and language, taking the post-modern situation of the twenty-first century into account.


For ALAN BENTON, sage, scholar, friend, and warrior Y fueron siempre mis lujos invertir en buenos cuadros lo que otros derrochaban en yates, mesas de juego o queridas. Eso es todo. ANTONIO ALVAREZ "Pague..." 43 THE PURPOSE OF THIS study is to analyze the personality and motivations of this Cuban philanthropist, diplomat, bibliophile, art collector, and businessman. (1) I want to determine what attracted Mr. Cintas so irresistibly to his beloved books--and especially the 1605 Quijote--and art. This study will also show that quixotic idealism and benevolence fueled his desire to collect books and art primarily for the well being of the Cuban people. A collector's paintings and books allow the scholar to peer into that collector's heart and soul. I hope to explain why, and sometimes how, Mr. Cintas acquired the specific books, manuscripts, paintings, and other art objects that constituted his world-renowned collections. The reader can readily find some of the answer to this question in the intriguing words of this study's epigraph. A while ago when I was studying Cervantes's Don Quijote, Jill Gage a Newberry Library reference librarian suggested that I might like to see the Newberry's first edition of that novel (1605-1615). [ILUSTRACION OMITIR] When I opened the cover of the first volume, I saw the bookplates of the three previous owners of this Newberry copy of Don Quijote: Henry Labouchere, Oscar Benjamin Cintas of Havana, Cuba, and Louis H. Silver. The fact that a Cuban had owned such a rare bibliographic treasure greatly piqued my curiosity. (2) And that is the genesis of this study. THE EARLY YEARS: FAMILY HISTORY, SAGUA LA GRANDE, AND GREAT BRITAIN Because Mr. Cintas's artistic and intellectual development are so closely associated with his family and with his native city of Sagua la Grande, a family biography and city description are very much in order. Mr. Cintas also bought the second edition of Barcelona of 1608 as well as the 1617 one from Barcelona both of which are also part of the Newberry Library collection. He also had several other early editions of Don Quijote (O'Reilly items 79-82) In 1887 Oscar Benjamin Cintas y Rodriguez was unto the manor born in the Cuban provincial town of Sagua la Grande (3) although his family's economic situation had already begun to diminish. His family had him baptized in the town's Parish Church. (4) It was in this large and beautiful church that a priest had baptized each Cintas family child for decades. On such occasions Mr. Cintas's maternal grandfather, Jose Rodriguez Lopez ([dagger]- 1886) (5) used to take from his own home art gallery a painting of the Virgin by Murillo. He used to place it on the altar as a witness to the ceremony with the hope that the Virgin would protect these children. According to Portela this painting by Murillo is different from the one that graced Mr. Cintas's Havana mansion (Telephone conversation, March 8, 2008). [ILUSTRACION OMITIR] According to Ramos, in this church there also hung a canvas by the Belgian painter Jos. Correns called, " The Savior's Baptism" (Ramos [1962] 30-31). Ramos confirms that the donor was a Dutchman called Juan Van der Kieft who had married into a prominent Sagua family (Ramos ibid., 33 note 2). Thus we could say without fear of contradiction that within a week or so of his birth, Mr. Cintas received his first introduction to great art thanks to his grandfather and to Mr. Van der Kieft. For Mr. Cintas this tradition helped to create and to maintain an environment well-disposed to art, one that would nurture him throughout his life (Portela telephone conversation, September 30, 2000). (6) Even though his grandfather had died the year before Mr. Cintas was born, his artistic tradition remained a part of Mr. Cintas's tradition for his entire life. In fact, according to Portela, Mr. …


The coverage of onion and maize growers has been analyzed under Market Intervention Scheme (MIS) in Karnataka by selecting two northern districts of the state, viz. Dharwad and Gadag. The study has used simple tabular analysis along with discriminant analysis. The coverage of farmers under the scheme has not been found satisfactory. The main problems being faced by the farmers in availing MIS benefits have been identified to include procedural complexities of the scheme, delayed payments and the requirement of meeting Fair Average Quality (FAQ) stipulations for the crops. It has also been revealed that farther are the procurement centres, more is the likelihood of the farmers to go in for open market sales. The study has suggested to cover a larger number of farmers under MIS by simplifying the procedures, making timely payments and increasing the number of procurement centres.


Transformation and change for a better health and care delivery system have been the
driving forces behind UK's government initiatives and investments during the past
decade. Questions have been raised in terms of how successful these investments have
been and to what extent they have delivered their strategic step changes and benefits to
the community and to the healthcare system in itself as a whole. The need to identify a
process that will manage and deliver those benefits as well as managing any
unanticipated impacts is now greater than ever.
This paper investigates the need for a new thinking behind transformation and change
and argues that the answer is a benefits driven mindset. A Benefits Realisation
Management Process (BRMP) should be the leverage behind any decision making
mechanism. It should provide the justification and give purpose to any project or
programme no matter how big or small.
This paper presents results from a literature review and a case study methodology
approach focusing on why healthcare infrastructure and service delivery programmes or
projects need to be benefit driven in order to have a better chance on achieving the
required results for all stakeholders involved throughout the process.


This essay discusses teaching transactional skills as part of traditional non-clinical, substantive law classes. It offers a very personal perspective gleaned from the author's 40 years of combined experience as a San Francisco transactional law practitioner and law professor. Of necessity, due to length constraints, the author offers only a few selected opinions about what she thinks works in teaching transactional skills in substantive law classes. Despite this limited focus, the author weighs in, at least a bit, on a myriad of subjects, including the current push for law graduates to be more "practice ready," the importance of skin-in-the-game type mentoring both pre- and post- law school graduation, the different challenges in training transactional lawyers versus litigators, the merits of using multifaceted large drafting projects versus more discrete problems, course advising needs, the teacher as recruiter, balancing desires for breath versus depth of exposure, and using what the author calls factual "side-bars" as accommodation of traditional casebooks to the transactional perspective. The author hopes these offerings of her matured discernment from longevity in the field of transactional law skills training, in the various iterations she notes in the essay, provide some helpful insights to current teachers of transactional law skills, both clinical and non-clinical.


The banking sector comprises of 49 institutions, 42 of which are commercial banks, 3 mortgage finance companies, one non-bank financial institutions and one building society as at December 2008, according to CBK annual reports. Despite the long existence of commercial banks in Kenya, local, international and multinational, they have shied away from lending to small-scale businesses. It is a well-established fact that access to finance is a major determinant of economic growth (Beck, Levine, and Loayza, 2000). Therefore, access to finance, which has been one of the core topics in development for quite some time, has emerged on the agenda of nearly all governments. The important policy question is: what measures must be taken to foster access to finance? This study therefore attempted to find out lending conditions by commercial banks that affect small-scale business in Kisii County. The study found out that competition, pricing, Commercial banks tight bank requirement as important factor that affect accessibility of loans by SMEs by commercial banks. The study concludes that Majority of the population are locked out of the formal financial sector due to the many strict requirements and stringent conditions required by the banks for one to open an account or access credit because their information is not captured. Consequently, the study recommends that CBK should influence the interest rate.


The aim of this study is to determine the thermodynamic influence of the presence of Cu3SbS3, Cu2S and Sb2S3 in the formation of Cu12Sb4S13 - equivalent to mineral tetrahedrite. Thus, the Cu-Sb-S system is studied. Twenty three samples, with compositions that essentially lay along the vertical section Cu2S-Sb2S3, were prepared. The samples were analyzed by Electron Microprobe (EPMA) in order to determine the room temperature phases' composition. Samples were also analyzed by Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA/DSC) in order to establish thermal transitions, and by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), at room and high temperatures, so as to determine the phases that are present in the equilibria at certain temperatures. The experimental phase diagram was established and the results were compared with those available in the literature.


Abstract Autism spectrum disorder appears to affect about 60 children/10,000 under the age of 8 years. Recent studies show that a valid clinical diagnosis can be made at 2–3 years. The UK National Autism Plan for Children provides guidelines for best practice in screening, investigation, early diagnosis and intervention in pre-school and primary school-aged children. In a survey conducted by the UK National Autistic Society in 2001, it was found that, despite the right to have their needs assessed by their local authorities, only 38% of adults with autism or Asperger's syndrome has had a community care assessment. The same survey showed that, at the time of transition from adolescence to adulthood, only 53% families had a transition plan in place. Only 2% of adults at the lower end of the autism spectrum and only 12% of higher-functioning adults were in full-time paid employment. Co-morbid mental health problems are common; prevalences of 10–40% have been documented.


The idea that one drug treatment can fit all has been waning for decades, but up until a decade ago, we lacked the technology and infrastructure to implement novel medical approaches that would give rise to personalized medicine. Still in its embryonic stages, personalized medicine, also known as precision medicine, aims to synthesize relevant genetic and genomic information from a patient to help tailor disease diagnosis, prevention, and treatment. At a population level, the convergence of such data is also used to improve our standard of care for the public at large.

It is within this context that President Barack Obama announced the creation of a Precision Medicine Initiative in his 2015 State of the Union address. The initiative's mission statement is "to enable a new era of medicine through research, technology, and policies that empower patients, researchers, and providers to work together toward development of individualized treatments" [1].

In this issue of the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM), we focus on personalized medicine and the promises it holds for the future of disease prevention and treatment. Articles cover topics ranging from a historical overview of how the field came into existence to the challenges of funding rare disease research, from improved diagnosis of common disorders to better understanding addiction and how to treat it.

Personalized medicine emerged from a growing trend in aiming to give patients individualized care. Tishler gives a historical overview of the collegiate atmosphere that seeded this trend and gave rise to the field of personalized medicine. But without adequate technological advances, this goal would have remained wishful thinking. Lifton describes the impact of reduced sequencing costs, down to levels defying Moore's Law, and the initiatives aimed at collecting patients' genetic data that have allowed the field to grow. What to do once you have individual patients' data? This is the challenge addressed by Gibson et al. in their case study of wellness-oriented personalized medicine and the framework in which individual data should be deployed.

Despite its relatively new arrival on the medical scene, personalized medicine has already offered key insight into a number of diseases. Newman et al. highlight what advances personalized medicine has triggered in our understanding of the etiology and development of Castleman disease, a rare heterogeneous disorder. Tackling a more common woe, Duan et al. present the contribution this field of medicine has had on identifying mutations contributing to melanoma and on developing targeted therapies against it. Stence et al. present original data detailing the use of sequencing in complementing the individual diagnosis of patients with thyroid nodules, while Van der Stel details its application to the treatment of addiction. Finally, Schwarz et al. dissect the effect personalized medicine has had in developing human organoids, a putatively ideal model system to test individualized drugs.

While a number of initiatives and consortia aimed at collecting and synthesizing individuals "omics" data exist, the application of personalized medicine to rare diseases remains a pecuniary challenge. As a solution to overcome such financial hurdles, Fumagalli and Gouw present the contribution of crowdfunding in helping develop projects on rare diseases such as Sanfilippo syndrome.

Personalized medicine offers promise for dissecting mechanisms involved in disease development and how to coin preventive and therapeutic approaches that will address patient idiosyncrasies. As illustrated throughout the articles in this issue of YJBM, furthering our understanding of the etiology and treatment of human diseases through personalized medicine will require the collaboration of patients, researchers, and funding resources. It will enable the existence of a shared framework in which the collection of individual data, their analysis, and applications become routine.


The Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), which is the most efficient and effective modern custom power device used in power distribution networks to protect customers with an uninterrupted flow of energy at smooth sinusoidal voltage at contracted magnitude &frequency have large nonlinear loads, purity of the waveform of supplies is lost .this ends are producing many power quality problems from various disturbances of the power supply. this paper presents the study &analysis enhancement of power quality problems, voltage sag& swells with the applications its by using proposed control DVR techniques used. At present, most of DVR use feed-forward control because of the compensation response time requirement, this kind of control may introduce steady state error and on-site calibration problems. discrete PWM-based control scheme is implemented, with reference to DVR. The aim of the control scheme is to maintain a constant voltage magnitude at the sensitive load point, under the system disturbance .simulation results show the capability of the DVR to control conditions. Keywords—Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), discrete pwm based control scheme, voltage sag, voltage swell, MATLAB.


The Samgang haengsil-to is a collection of Chinese and Korean stories of exemplary conduct performed by filial sons, loyal subjects and devoted women, which epitomize Confucian virtue entailed in the three fundamental human relations. These stories were first written in classical Chinese, accompanied by illustrations, and later appeared with vernacular Korean texts added. Ever since it was published by the court in 1434, the Samgang haengsil-to underwent numerous editorial changes during the first half of Chosn dynasty (1392-1910) with respect to the selection of stories, the content, the language, and even the appearance of the book. These changes were not made at random, nor are they addressing mere practical reasons such as facilitating reading or enhancing the book's aesthetic appeal. Rather, there was a certain political and cultural context at work behind these changes, which reflected the shifting value system and the process of Confucianization of Chosn Korea. By tracing the major changes made to different editions of the Samgang haengsil-to, this paper discusses the influences that social and political environments exert on a text.


Currently, ocean wave energy is a novel means of electricity generation that is projected to potentially serve as a primary energy source in coastal areas. However, for wave energy converters (WECs) to be applicable on a scale that allows for grid implementation, these devices will need to be placed in close relative proximity to each other. From what's been learned in the wind industry of the U.S., the placement of these devices will require optimization considering both cost and power. However, current research regarding optimized WEC layouts only considers the power produced. This work explores the development of a genetic algorithm (GA) that will create optimized WEC layouts where the objective function considers both the economics involved in the array's development as well as the power generated. The WEC optimization algorithm enables the user to either constrain the number of WECs to be included in the array, or allow the algorithm to define this number. To calculate the objective function, potential arrays are evaluated using cost information from Sandia National Labs Reference Model Project, and power development is calculated such that WEC interaction affects are considered. Results are presented for multiple test scenarios and are compared to previous literature, and the implications of a priori system optimization for offshore renewables are discussed.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


SUMMARY Recently interest has developed regarding the statistical properties and uses of marker processes in the context of the analysis of failure time data or survival analysis. A marker process is a stochastic process that acts as a time dependent covariate that is internal to the unit under study in the language of Kalbfleisch & Prentice (1980). As such the sample path of the process up to a certain point in time may carry information about the subsequent hazard for failure. Uses of marker processes in the analysis of survival data are manifold. Here we consider the specific area of prediction of future failure times at a point in time based on various forms of information about the history of the marker process. We provide a stochastic framework for the consideration of prediction functions, demonstrate a simple consistency condition that such functions should satisfy, and discuss construction of prediction functions in a general sense. Several examples are used to illustrate the ideas and we show that certain recently suggested imputation schemes fail to meet the consistency condition. The consistency condition also elucidates the model assumed by Cox (1983) in his work on surrogate responses. We also briefly consider a closely related backward prediction problem.


Background: Autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells (MNCs) have been shown in multiple labs to improve stroke recovery in animal models but the mechanisms remain unclear. We assessed whether MNCs modulate macrophage-microglia responses in acute stroke.

Methods: C57/BL mice were subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) for 60 minutes or sham surgery. 24 hours later, they were randomized to receive saline infusion IV or 1x 106 autologous MNCs IV. At various time points after stroke, 1ml peripheral blood was collected and brains were harvested up to day14. Peripheral blood was labeled with anti-mouse CD45, CD115, F4/80 or Gr-1 antibodies and then assessed by flow cytometry. Microglia were isolated from brains by Optiprep gradient and stained with anti-mouse CD11b, CD45, and CD86 antibodies for evaluation by flow cytometry. For gene expression analyses by RT-PCR, microglia-macrophages were further sorted by magnetic activated-cells sorting using CD11b antibody.

Results: 1) At day 2 after stroke, the percentage of CD115+ monocytes and CD115 + /Gr-1 low cells were significantly decreased in whole peripheral blood but F4/80 + macrophages were increased. MNCs increased the abundance of CD115 + /Gr-1 low cells and decreased the abundance of F4/80 + macrophages in peripheral blood compared to saline control at day 2 after stroke (n=5, p <0.05); 2)Compared to saline, MNCs significantly reduced the total number of CD11b + microglia-macrophages in the stroke-affected hemisphere at day 2 to day 6. MNCs significantly decreased the proportion of CD11b + /CD45 high among CD11b + cells at day 2 and day 4 and CD86 + cells among CD11b + cells at day 2. Among CD11b + microglia-macrophages isolated from the ipsilateral hemisphere of MNC treated mice, compared to saline treated controls, iNOS and IL-1β genes expression were down-regulated at day 2. At day 6, iNOS remained down-regulated while now IL-10, Arganase-1 and CD206 genes expression (markers for the "healing" macrophage phenotype) were up-regulated (n=3 to 5, p <0.05).

Conclusions: MNCs may enhance recovery after stroke by altering monocyte trafficking and changing microglial polarization into a healing phenotype.


Erasable Optical Media Is Closer to Being Real Described by the manufacturer as a breakthrough in media, not hardware, Tandy Corp.'s THOR-CD technology makes it possible to write, erase and rewrite audio CD-compatible optical discs. THOR stands for Tandy High-intensity Optical Recording. Educational institutions, which have extensive data storage needs but also require that any storage system be highly flexible and easily accessible, could well be one of the first beneficiaries of this technology. The announcement of the new development in optical media precedes the introduction of any products by 18 to 24 months. This period is the normal manufacturing lead time to build player/recorders, according to Ed Juge, director of market planning for Tandy Corp. Several patents have been applied for by the firm. How It Works In general, current optical media uses microscopic "pits" and "lands," located in a substrate layer of the disc, to represent the basic units of binary code. To read the data, a low-power laser beam shines onto the disc, and various circuitry interprets the amount of light reflected back. A flat surface, or land, has much higher reflectivity than does a pit. THOR-CD media utilizes both thermal and optic technologies. A laser creates pits in a heat-sensitive dye polymer material. These pits have the same form, fit and optical properties found in the pits of a standard audio CD or CD-ROM disc. The breakthrough is that the pits, while environmentally stable, can be removed by thermo-optically reversing the process. Thus the media is restored to its original form, allowing a disc to be erased and re-recorded over and over again. According to a press release from Tandy, the erase process can be both bulk (erasing the entire disc at once) and spot (erasing just an individual pit). Discs may therefore be wiped totally clean for recording all new information. Or discs can be edited, with new data written only in specific locations. Special Sauce Dye polymers are not new to the optical media industry. A number of firms have been working with them for years for a variety of applications. Optical Data, Inc. in Beaverton, Ore., has been researching the use of dye polymers with optical media for six years. Its technology involves a two-layer scheme, and the company was granted a U.S. patent on the process in January of this year. Tandy has an option to acquire the license for Optical Data's technology, according to Bill Livermore, the marketing director for Optical Data. Tandy marketing information representative Lynn Handley says the Optical Data technology was utilized as a "guidepost" in developing THOR-CD. Tandy's unique contribution is a coating over the dye polymer. Code-named "special sauce" by Tandy engineers, the coating adds a reflective layer that provides the compatibility with current audio compact discs. Question of Compatibility The significance of the THOR technology, according to Tandy, is its complete compatibility with current audio CD and CD-ROM players. A THOR-recorded disc can be played in any audio CD or CD-ROM player. Other write/erase/rewrite optical data disc systems do exist, but they use "bumps," not pits. This makes them incompatible with current compact disc hardware. By retaining pits, the THOR technology remains true to current audio CD standards. The use of pits in THOR optical media also means that educators, administrators and students are provided with the same kind of access times, transfer rates and storage capabilities offered by current CD-ROM optical media and hardware. THOR Timetable According to Tandy, initial efforts will focus on developing and producing the blank media and an audio CD-compatible recorder. The recorder will play existing audio CDs in addition to playing, recording and erasing THOR media. …


The performance of space-time codes is evaluated in terms of diversity gain and coding gain, two measures which describe the worst-case pairwise error probability between codewords at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We introduce the concept of effective coding gain to provide an estimate on the bit error rate (BER) at low-to-moderate SNR. This concept connects the number of nearest neighbours with degradation in error performance. We demonstrate the value of the new concept through analysis of space-time block codes for the quasi-static Rayleigh fading channel


The objective of this study was to give a description of the clinical picture, diagnosis and treatment in 19 patients with mushroom grower's lung. Of these patients, six worked at mushroom compost manufacturing, seven were traced by means of a nationwide enquiry among mushroom growers and six were referred by GPs. The following factors were measured after provocation at the worksite: pulmonary function, blood gas values, leukocyte count and body temperature. On the day of the provocation and on a control day chest X-rays were made. The most frequent complaints were dyspnoea and fever (in 15 and 13 patients, respectively). Serological tests in 16 of the 19 patients revealed antibodies against various fungi that occur in locations where mushroom compost is handled. Six to 12 hours after the provocation, all patients showed a rise of the mean body temperature from 37.1 to 38.4 degrees C; the mean leukocyte count rose from 7.7 to 17.0 X 10(9)/l. Lung function studies revealed restrictive disorders: the mean VC fell from 5.15 to 4.50 l, the TLC from 6.80 to 6.18 l. The differences, tested with Wilcoxon's two-sample test were significant (p less than 0.001). Roentgenological abnormalities were seen in two patients (reticular lung image). Treatment consisted of preventive measures, such as improved air conditioning at the worksite, wearing masks, wetting the compost to keep it from flying about, and supplying pretreated compost requiring no personal preparation.


The data showed that there was acrrelation between EHF and host animals as well as types of natural foci in plains, hills and mountain areas of Tian Tai county. It was clear that the main host animals were R. norvegicus and A. agrarius in plain areas, so there are mixture foci of R. norvegicus and A. agrarius in the above areas. The morbidity of EHF and the positive rate of mouse lung antigen as well as the inapparent infections rate of healthy population were high in plains. As the attitude elevated, it gradually formed a natural focus of R. norvegicus as the main host animal in hills and mountaim areas. The positive rate of the mouse lung antigen diminished sharply. Both the incidence rate of EHF and the inapparent infection rate of healthy population were lower.


AIM
Restrictive diets are commonly prescribed to cardiac patients for therapeutic and preventative reasons. However, these are often contraindicated for malnourished, older patients. The present study aimed to explore dietary behaviours of malnourished older cardiac inpatients and identify sources of nutritional information.

METHODS
A cross-sectional study was conducted over 4 months in a cardiology ward. Data on inpatients' habitual dietary behaviour, duration and reasons for dietary practices, and sources of nutrition advice were obtained during a dietetic assessment. From the reported reasons for dietary practices, diets were categorised by the treating dietitian into 'clinically indicated' (CI) or 'not clinically indicated' (NCI) diets.

RESULTS
Sixty-seven malnourished patients were included, with mean age 76.6 ± 8.3 years and BMI 19.5 ± 6.2 kg/m2 . Twenty-six (38.8%) reported at least one dietary restriction, 14 (20.9%) were on a high energy-high protein diet prior to hospitalisation and 27 (40.3%) were on nonrestrictive diets. Five (19.2%) restrictive diets were assessed as CI at the time of admission, while 21 (80.8%) were NCI diets. CI diets were mostly recommended by dietitians (n = 15, 78.9%). Recommendations for NCI restrictive diets came mainly from 'Other' sources (n = 10, 55.6%) including the internet, friends and family.

CONCLUSIONS
Restrictive diets are common among malnourished cardiac inpatients with the majority no longer clinically indicated. It is important for dietitians to explore current dietary practices of malnourished older inpatients on admission. Inpatients following NCI diets may require additional time for education around nutritional priorities.