Transition metal-doped TiO2 powders as a photocatalyst were prepared by sol-gel process and Sb, Bi and Nb were introduced into them as dopants. The photocatalytic behaviors of the doped TiO2 powder were studied as a function of dopant, doping concentration and preparation conditions. X-ray diffraction, FT-Raman, B.E.T. and scanning electron microscopy were applied for structural and microstructural studies. Optical properties of the doped TiO2 powders were studied by UV-Visible Spectrometer and photocatalytic activity of the doped TiO2 was characterized in terms of the degradation of 1,4-dichlorobenzene. X-ray difraction analysis showed that doping with a transition metal ion suppresses anatase-to-rutile phase transition compared with the pure TiO2. The Sb and Nb-doped TiO2 powders did not exhibit any other diffraction peaks except those belonging to TiO2. On the other hand, a diffraction peak of Bi4Ti3O12 appears for 5 at.% Bi-doped samples. All of the doped TiO2 powders had higher specific surface area than undoped TiO2. Surface area increased with increasing dopant concentration depending on the dopant, from 33.9 m2/g to 55.4m2/g. The UV-visible absorption spectra of doped samples were red-shifted by 20~50nm according to the doping level. Also transition metal doped TiO2 powders exhibited better photocatalytic activity than the undoped TiO2. The increase in photoactivity is probably due to the increase in the interfacial electron transfer, red shifts, and better crystallinity.


At variance from the cases of relative equilibria and relative periodic orbits of dynamical systems with symmetry, the dynamics in relative quasi-periodic tori (namely, subsets of the phase space that project to an invariant torus of the reduced system on which the flow is quasi-periodic) is not yet completely understood. Even in the simplest situation of a free action of a compact and abelian connected group, the dynamics in a relative quasi-periodic torus is not necessarily quasi-periodic. It is known that quasi-periodicity of the unreduced dynamics is related to the reducibility of the reconstruction equation, and sufficient conditions for it are virtually known only in a perturbation context. We provide a different, though equivalent, approach to this subject, based on the hypothesis of the existence of commuting, group-invariant lifts of a set of generators of the reduced torus. Under this hypothesis, which is shown to be equivalent to the reducibility of the reconstruction equation, we give a complete description of the structure of the relative quasi-periodic torus, which is a principal torus bundle whose fibers are tori of a dimension which exceeds that of the reduced torus by at most the rank of the group. The construction can always be done in such a way that these tori have minimal dimension and carry ergodic flow.


Paleomagnetic analysis, in conjunction with petrographic studies, is an approach whereby absolute dates can be placed on diagenetic events. Hematite is associated with dedolomite in the Lower Ordovician Kindblade Formation in south-central Oklahoma and is interpreted as a by-product of the dedolomitization of ferroan dolomite. Paleomagnetic results date the time of dedolomitization as Late Pennsylvanian-Early Permian. Dedolomitization was probably caused by oxidizing fluids with high calcium contents that migrated through the Kindblade Formation following uplift of the Arbuckle Mountains.


A Western diet induces insulin resistance, liver steatosis (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)) and intestinal dysbiosis, leading to increased gut permeability and bacterial translocation, thus contributing to the progression of NAFLD to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. In the present study, we sought, in a model of Western diet-induced NAFLD, to determine whether citrulline (Cit), an amino acid that regulates protein and energy metabolism, could decrease Western diet-induced liver injuries, as well as the mechanisms involved. Sprague-Dawley rats were fed a high-fat diet (45 %) and fructose (30 %) in drinking water or a control diet associated with water (group C) for 8 weeks. The high-fat, high-fructose diet (Western diet) was fed either alone (group WD) or with Cit (1 g/kg per d) (group WDC) or an isonitrogenous amount of non-essential amino acids (group WDA). We evaluated nutritional and metabolic status, liver function, intestinal barrier function, gut microbiota and splanchnic inflammatory status. Cit led to a lower level of hepatic TAG restricted to microvesicular lipid droplets and to a lower mRNA expression of CCAAT-enhancer-binding protein homologous protein, a marker of endoplasmic reticulum stress, of pro-inflammatory cytokines Il6 (P<0·05) and Tnfα, and of toll-like receptor 4 (Tlr4) (P<0·05). Cit also improved plasma TAG and insulin levels. In the colon, it decreased inflammation (Tnfα and Tlr4 expressions) and increased claudin-1 protein expression. This was associated with higher levels of Bacteroides/Prevotella compared with rats fed the Western diet alone. Cit improves Western diet-induced liver injuries via decreased lipid deposition, increased insulin sensitivity, lower inflammatory process and preserved antioxidant status. This may be related in part to its protective effects at the gut level.


The impact of cement dust emissions from the factory of West African Portland Cement at Ewekoro in Southwestern Nigeria on the surrounding vegetation was investigated. Sample plots of 20 m x 20 m were established at 1 km intervals from the factory site up to a distance of 10 km intervals from the factory site up to a distance of 10 km in the four cardinal directions. Leaves of common species were randomly selected for chlorophyll content analysis, leaf abundance and leaf area measurement. Woody as well as herbaceous species encountered within the established plots were enumerated, while soil samples (at 0-15 cm) were collected for laboratory analysis. It was found that chlorophyll contents, leaf abundance, leaf area, woody species density and basal area increased significantly with increasing distance from the factory site. Organic matter, total nitrogen, pH and moisture contents of the top soil did not vary significantly across the study site. Available phosphorus decreased in concentration with increasing distance from the factory site. On the whole, cement dust deposition affected the vegetation parameters studied, up to a distance of 5 km from the factory site. Tanz. J. Sci. Vol. 28(2) 2002: 69-82


Heterogeneous environmental conditions along the Humboldt Current System (HCS) influence the life-history strategy of a variety of species in different ways. There is limited information on latitudinal traits of coastal cephalopods as part of the interacting species in pelagic and benthic environments. The present study used the loliginid squid Doryteuthis gahi as a model organism to: (1) evaluate latitudinal traits on egg laying patterns, (2) characterize a particular spawning ground, (3) quantify the isotopic variation from different tissues, (4) evaluate potential trophic ontogenetic changes, (5) determinate trophic position, and (6) isotopically estimate the relative importance of putative preys in the squid's assimilated diet. Results evidenced that egg-masses collected between 2014 and 2020 presented similar patterns along northern-central Chile (27–36°S), with females attaching small egg-capsules (10–50 mm length) through the year and over a variety of anthropogenic and natural substrates. At a small scale (Coquimbo; 29°S), early life history traits showed distinct patterns depending on SST, with warmer collection periods (∼18°C) evidencing larger capsules and smaller embryos, although small paralarvae were obtained over the 4-year sampling period. In this site, sampling of older ontogenetic stages supported the constant presence of small-sized squids (19–77 mm ML). Males had larger mean sizes compared to females and undetermined specimens, with a high proportion of mature stages. Observations in captivity were extended for up to 110 d, validating that small females (45–64 mm ML) spawn the small egg-capsules typically observed in the field. Differences in stable isotope composition between beaks and soft tissues of adult squids were lower for δ13C values (1.1 vs. 1.4‰, respectively) and higher for δ15N values (5.3 vs. 4.7‰, respectively). Isotopic composition through ontogeny found similar δ13C and δ15N values, suggesting that carbon sources (pelagic origin) and trophic position did not change significantly, with copepods, euphausiids and nereid polychaetes being the most important preys. This study unveils the permanent occurrence of a small reproductive morphotype of D. gahi in shallow coastal habitats of northern-central Chile (i.e., center of the distribution range), providing the first insights for understanding the species' potential adaptations to heterogeneous conditions in the HCS and the unexplored distribution gap between the two centers of abundance (Peru and the Falkland/Malvinas islands).


This research utilizes a 2D printer mechanism from a commercial available inkjet printer, combines with hardware and software to build up a new concept 3D printer. This 3D printer can receive printing information from personal computer, and setting the required layer thickness to stack those layers into a solid model. The largest build volume is 300x420x350 mm, print head resolution is as high as 1200x2400 dpi, and the life of printer head is longer than 12 weeks which is far longer than 4 weeks of Z Corp's. There are many specifications are better than or equivalent to those of Z Corp's Z-510 which is the state-of-art machine of this powder based rapid prototyping.


The present document has been produced and adopted by the bodies identified above as author(s). This task has been carried out exclusively by the author(s) in the context of a contract between the European Food Safety Authority and the author(s), awarded following a tender procedure. The present document is published complying with the transparency principle to which the European Food Safety Authority is subject. It may not be considered as an output adopted by EFSA. EFSA reserves its rights, view and position as regards the issues addressed and the conclusions reached in the present document, without prejudice to the rights of the authors. SCIENTIFIC REPORT submitted to EFSA


Dendritic cells (DCs) are specialized antigen-presenting cells that play crucial roles in the initiation and regulation of immune responses. Maturation and activation of DCs are controlled by a balance of the inhibitory and activating signals transduced through distinct surface receptors. Many inhibitory receptors expressed by DCs have been identified, whereas the new members and their functions need further investigation. In this study, we functionally characterized DC-derived immunoglobulin receptor 2 (DIgR2) as a novel representative of a family of inhibitory receptors belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily. We show that DIgR2 contains 2 immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibitory motifs (ITIMs) within its cytoplasmic region and that DIgR2 associates with Src homology-2 domain-containing protein tyrosine phosphatases-1 (SHP-1). Blockade of DIgR2 on DCs by pretreatment with DIgR2-Ig fusion protein or by silencing with specific small interfering RNA enhances DC-initiated T-cell proliferation and antigen-specific T-cell responses both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, immunization of mice with antigen-pulsed, DIgR2-silenced DCs elicits more potent antigen-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses, thus protecting the vaccinated mice from tumor challenge more effectively. Our data suggest that DIgR2 is a functionally inhibitory receptor and can mediate negative signaling to regulate DC-initiated antigen-specific T-cell responses.


A substrate integrated guide which allows the propagation of both TEm0 and TE0n modes is presented, the Extended Substrate Integrated Waveguide (ESIW). Its structure combines the working principles of SIWs and SINRD guides. While the performances of the ESIW with TEm0 modes are the same as conventional SIWs, they are better than SINRD guides concerning TE0n-like modes. In addition, a novel slotline-based excitation is proposed to launch the mode in the ESIW. This solution alleviates some of the problems encountered in current structures used to excite -like modes, e.g., spurious mode excitation or complicated manufacturing designs. Measurements of a slotline fed ESIW are presented validating the proposed concepts.


A novel double-input pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) dc/dc converter for high-/low-voltage sources is proposed in this paper. With a PWM control scheme, the proposed double-input dc/dc converter can draw power from two different voltage sources simultaneously or individually. The operation modes and the steady-state analysis of the proposed double-input dc/dc converter are introduced in detail. The PWM control scheme for the power flow balancing is also presented. By using a single passive lossless soft-switching cell, switching losses of all power switches can be reduced significantly. Finally, experimental measurements are demonstrated to verify the performance of the proposed converter


High serum follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) values are consistent with ovarian failure. We studied the progress of 67 women aged under 35 years with oligomenorrhoea or secondary amenorrhoea in whom the serum FSH value was greater than 20 U/1. Twenty-four patients remained amenorrhoeic, but 17 ovulated and six conceived, two on two occasions. Coincident mean serum luteinising hormone (LH) concentrations were significantly lower and mean total urinary oestrogen concentrations were significantly higher in patients who subsequently ovulated, but the degree of increase in FSH did not correlate well with later ovarian function. Treatment with oestrogens, clomiphene citrate, human pituitary gonadotrophin, and bromocriptine was of no benefit in inducing an ovarian response while FSH concentrations remained raised. Our results suggest that a considerable proportion of younger women with ovulatory disorders associated with FSH values in the menopausal range will spontaneously resume ovulation and some will conceive.


Regarding the debate surrounding medical involvement in torture and the articles by Professors R S Downie and R M Hare (1): We have learned from Ayn Rand that when a discussion gets bogged down, one should check one's premises. First, let me offer my definition of torture. To torture is to inflict suffering on another to alter his or her mindset. One should comment parenthetically that the word torture is used at times to emphasize the severity of inflicted suffering, but this is a borrowed sense. The essence of the meaning is contained in the definition above. In their articles, Professors Downie and Hare recognize in an inchoate manner that doctoring is special. I should like to propose that the distinction is not in the person but in the contract. The Hippocratic oath is the contract between the doctor and his patient '... to serve to the best of my ability' in return for payment. This is a special case of contract between free men. The law of contract is enshrined in our free society in the English common law and in the American Constitution. The doctor is serving his patient to the best of his ability. The essence of a man is his independent mind. It becomes evident, as a tautology, that torture can never be inflicted within the terms of this contract. So, what of the scenario Professor Hare offers us of a terrorist who has put a bomb in a litter-bin in a crowded place? This is a special case where the duty of the government is to protect the public. A doctor in the service of the state, and being an agent of the state, might be called upon to be associated in the torture of the terrorist in this scenario. Should the doctor plead that because he has a degree in medicine he is too pure to share in what is essentially a military operation for the well-being of society? Does the term doctor confer upon us the hypocrisy of a conscientious objector when one's country is at war? No. I propose to you that a doctor working for the state is in no way superior or purer than any other agent of government. The veterinarian servicing the farmer's herd can help his patients because the health of the animal usually coincides with the needs of the farmer. The line of authority runs, however, from farmer through veterinarian. In the platonic role a doctor who is a government employee acts; the line of authority is the same. The confusion arose, therefore, from failure to realize that the unique aspect of doctoring is in the contract and not the person. Ayn Rand used the term package deal to signal the introduction of a concept into a discussion by implication. This is the situation we are living through in America on a grand scale. The dialectic raging regarding health care is how to make all doctors work for the state (the platonic relationship). Unfortunately, we are not hearing any discussion about whether they should. Elsewhere in the same issue of your journal in The Hippocratic Contract, J Rosalki (2) makes a similar mistake in implying that a contract can have a unilateral purpose. The morals of our great profession have been predicated on a free contract between patient and doctor. The socialist disruption of this relationship should not be tolerated 'in the spirit of our time' but resisted firmly to resist corruption of doctoring.


PITT cooking is a Dutch company that has developed a unique concept of cooking at which several gas burners are integrated on a special way in the working top of a kitchen, known as integrated cooking. The company started about 5,5 years ago and by now it has developed a market share on the Dutch market. Due to their ambitions and the potential the company sees on the international market, it is looking for opportunities for international expansion. A first aim is to establish a market share on the Asian market, and Singapore is seen as the 'gateway' to the Asian market. The goal of this research is to find an answer on the main research question: What would be a suitable internationalization strategy and accompanying marketing approach for PITT cooking to introduce its products on the Singaporean market? The first step in the process of finding an answer on this research question has been a literature study. Based on a literature study I have investigated what internationalization is, what it includes to develop an international strategy and what factors should been considered when develop an international strategy for a young innovative company as PITT cooking. This has resulted in a framework for international market entry, which is presented in chapter 2.7 The internal analysis learns us that PITT has limited resources in both human capital, financial capital and management, which make entry options that call for a small resource commitment more feasible, as exporting and contractual agreements. Equity entry modes are not feasible at this moment because of limited resources in financial capital and management resources. The vision of the company is strongly export oriented, which makes the willingness of the company to internationalise high. The external analysis learns us that the Singaporean market is an attractive market in terms of external environmental factors. Singapore can be characterized as a political stable country, with a high control on corruption and a very open international trade policy. The economic indicators show that Singapore is a healthy international oriented and growing economy with one of the highest GNI per capita in the world. Further Singapore is a country in which the rule of law is strictly preserved and with one of Asia's best IPR regimes. There is a socio-cultural distance between the Netherlands and Singapore, but these can be overcome by introducing an Asian product line. The in-depth external analysis concludes that there is serious competition within the Singaporean market for PITT cooking, but according to insiders in the industry PITT's distinctive character, its network, and a suitable marketing approach will lead to a successful introduction on the Singaporean market. Whether the Singaporean market is not huge in numbers, it can be considered as the 'gateway' to the rest of the Asian market for PITT cooking. Both the internal analysis and the external analysis have been taken into account in the choice of entry mode decision. This analysis concludes that cooperative export seems to be the most feasible entry mode for PITT to introduce its products on the Singaporean market, because of the company's limited resources, it's contacts with Reginox B.V. and the network and reputation Reginox has established already on the Asian market. The marketing approach outlines how PITT should structure the marketing mix elements (product, price, promotion, place) in order to successfully introduce PITT on the Singaporean market. Based on interviews with experts and in-depth market research is concluded that PITT should introduce an Asian specific product line. Further it concludes that PITT should adapt its pricing policy, should be active in promotion in order to overcome the image-damage, and that there are several ways (distribution channels) to get it products to the end-consumers.


ABSTRACT Leishmania (subgenus Viannia) braziliensis is the causative agent of mucocutaneous leishmaniasis (ML) in South America, and ML is characterized by excessive T- and B-cell responses to the parasite. We speculate that the unbalanced production of inflammatory mediators in response to L. braziliensis infection contributes to cell recruitment and disease severity. To test this hypothesis, we first examined the response of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from healthy volunteers to L. braziliensis infection. We observed that while L. braziliensis infection induced the production of chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 10 (CXCL10) and interleukin-10 (IL-10) in human PBMCs and macrophages (MΦs), enhanced expression of CXCL10 and its receptor, chemokine CXC receptor (CXCR3), was predominantly detected in CD14+ monocytes. The chemoattractant factors secreted by L. braziliensis-infected cells were highly efficient in recruiting uninfected PBMCs (predominantly CD14+ cells) through Transwell membranes. Serum samples from American tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) patients (especially the ML cases) had significantly higher levels of CXCL10, CCL4, and soluble tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor II (sTNFRII) than did those of control subjects. Our results suggest that, following L. braziliensis infection, the production of multiple inflammatory mediators by the host may contribute to disease severity by increasing cellular recruitment.


The precursor of (Ca1-x-yKxBiy)3Co4O9 was synthesized by sol-gel method using nitrate salts as raw materials and citrate acid as agent. The final product was obtained after the precursor was calcined at 800°C for 4 h. The polycrystalline bulk samples were fabricated by a conventional sintering process at 900°C for 12 h. XRD and SEM were used to characterize the microstructures and the composition of the samples. The transport properties of the samples at room temperature were determined by measuring electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient. The Bi and K-doped samples show an excellent transport properties even at room temperature. The value of power factor of (Ca0.90K0.075Bi0.025)3Co4O9 reaches 1.42×10-4Wm-1K-2 at 293K, close to the performance of pure Ca3Co4O9 at 1000K.


Mary Bell, Jon Venables, Robert Thompson and the 'Edlington' boys all committed serious violent acts against other children. The 'why' of these incidents was not explored in the court cases, yet child development research indicates that experiences significantly influence children's behavioural tendencies.

A small-scale review of empirical case studies was used to help undertake a considered assessment of whether root causal factors may have been present in their backgrounds. Through an exploration of their backgrounds and family situations the possible risk factors of abuse and neglect during infancy; poor parental attachment during infancy; negative socialisation during infancy and genetic influences were selected. These themes were checked against the responses of interested parties. The responses were gained through open-ended questionnaires and telephone interviews and confirmed these risk factors, with neglect and abuse seeming to be the correlation which was most attributed to the development of violent tendencies.

Due to the nature of the study, the results cannot be purported to be generally applicable to all similar cases, but the results are worth considering and should instigate further study into this area.


The Victorian Government in Australia through 'The Water Smart Gardens and Homes Rebate Scheme' provides rebates to residential water users who are connected to a mains water supply for purchasing water-saving devices and services to reduce their water consumption. Households who purchased and installed rainwater tanks from 1 January 2007 are eligible for a rebate of up to $1000 per household depending on the size of the tank and connection for indoor water uses, such as for toilet flushing and clothes washing. This report presents the preliminary analysis of the cost effectiveness of the rainwater tanks' rebate scheme to the Victorian Government and to individual household owners who availed this scheme. The study involves the analysis of water consumption before and after the installation of rainwater tanks of 4391 households who availed the government rebates and of 4400 households who did not avail the scheme. Using the data provided by Yarra Valley Water the water savings from different tank's sizes were calculated from the households who installed the rainwater tanks and received rebates. The results revealed that the 4400 households used less water than those that received government rebates before the installation of rainwater tanks but after the installation their water usage surpassed those that installed rainwater tanks. The results also show that rainwater tank sizes with indoor plumbing have longer payback period than those solely for outdoor purposes due to higher capital and operating costs even with higher rebates from the government.


Gravity-based cross-sectional evidence indicates that currency unions and currency boards stimulate trade; cross-sectional evidence indicates that trade stimulates income. This paper estimates the effect that common-currency regimes have, via trade, on income per capita. We use economic and geographic data for over 200 countries to quantify the implications of common currencies for trade and income, pursuing a two-stage approach. Our estimates at the first stage suggest that belonging to a currency union more than triples trade with the other members of the zone. Moreover, there is no evidence of trade-diversion. Thus currency unions raise overall trade. Currency boards have similar effects. Our estimates at the second stage suggest that every one percent increase in trade (relative to GDP) raises income per capita by at least one third of a percent over twenty years. We combine the two estimates to quantify the effect of common currencies on output. Our results support the hypothesis that the beneficial effects of such regimes on economic performance come through the promotion of trade, rather than through a commitment to non-inflationary monetary policy, or other macroeconomic influences.


The present study was aimed to develop a multilayer-modified coating that will enhance the surface characteristics of mild steel against chemical and mechanical deterioration with a ternary Zn-Ni-Al2O3 composition induced with monoethylanine (MEA) and triethylanine (TEA) as surfactant using electrolytic chemical deposition. The microstructures of the coated-body was characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and scanning electron microscope equipped with electron dispersive spectroscope (SEM–EDS). Equally, the adhesion and topography of the coating was examined with atomic force microscopy (AFM). The assessment of the micro-hardness and corrosion properties of the developed composites were used as a criteria. From the results, the deposition of admixed Zn-NiAl2O3 ternary composite particles in the presence of bath-additive surfactant on to the substrate was significantly enhanced. The corrosion resistance of the coated surface was also improved. There exist an improvement in the structural modification and better interfacial adhesion of coatings on the substrate upon addition of TEA and MEA as surfactants during the deposition process along with the electro-deposition variables considered.


Interactions between biogenic monoterpenes and drought stress remain poorly understood and characterised. Even the nature of the response of biogenic monoterpene emissions to water limitation is controversial, possibly depending on the severity, intensity and duration of the drought. Whether monoterpenes regulate plant physiological response to drought stress is currently unknown. In this research, 6-week-old Ailsa Craig wild-type (WT) and ABA-deficient (notabilis) tomatoes were either well-watered or exposed to deficit irrigation (by watering pots with 25% of daily evapotranspiration) in a factorial combination with selected-monoterpenes applied exogenously as a foliar spray. Both genotypes showed similar physiological and biochemical responses to water deficit. Compared to well-watered controls, drought stress significantly reduced net photosynthesis rate and stomatal conductance, increased hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and malondialdehyde (MDA) concentrations, and also significantly inhibited PSII maximum (Fv'/Fm') and operating (φPSII) efficiency under severe stress. Drought stress significantly increased foliar abscisic acid (ABA) accumulation in WT plants, whereas notabilis remained ABA-deficient. Applying exogenous monoterpenes decreased net photosynthesis and stomatal conductance of WT plants under moderate drought conditions. Although foliar H2O2 content (a proxy of oxidative stress) was not affected by exogenous monoterpenes, their application significantly decreased the production of MDA (which indicates damage caused by drought-induced oxidative stress). The monoterpene spray also significantly inhibited ABA accumulation under severe stress, possibly by interfering with the methylerythritol (MEP) pathway and thereby reducing production of ABA precursors. Although exogenous monoterpenes increased plant antioxidative capacity by reducing lipid peroxidation, this did not appear to protect photosynthetic activities as the PSII efficiencies or net photosynthesis rate were not affected. That these effects were not observed in notabilis suggests that monoterpenes have ABA-dependent impacts on plant photosynthetic biochemistry.


The effects of the oligopeptides pentagastrin, cholecystokinin octapeptide, substance P, and FMRF-amide on the feeding and avoidance behaviour of the land snail Helix lucorum were studied. Administration of 1 microM pentagastrin to fasted snails immediately before feeding led to a significant increase in the amount of food consumed in the first 20 min of the feeding period, although there was no change in the total amount of food consumed. Prefeeding injections of 0.05 microM pentagastrin or 0.05 microM or 1 microM solutions of cholecystokinin octapeptide, substance P, or FMRF-amide had no effect on feeding behaviour. Pentagastrin and cholecystokinin octapeptide (0.05 microM solutions) invoked a significant reversible decrease in the generalised avoidance reaction thresholds in fasted but not in prefed snails, whereas the same concentration of FMRF-amide reduced these thresholds only in prefed snails.


Known as ""The Great Killer"" and ""The White Plague,"" few diseases influenced American life as much as tuberculosis. Sufferers migrated to mountain or desert climates believed to ameliorate symptoms. Architects designed homes with sleeping porches and verandas so sufferers could spend time in the open air. The disease even developed its own consumer culture complete with invalid beds, spittoons, sputum collection devices, and disinfectants. The ""preventorium,"" an institution designed to protect children from the ravages of the disease, emerged in this era of Progressive ideals in public health.In this book, Cynthia A. Connolly provides a provocative analysis of public health and family welfare through the lens of the tuberculosis preventorium. This unique facility was intended to prevent TB in indigent children from families labeled irresponsible or at risk for developing the disease. Yet, it also held deeply rooted assumptions about class, race, and ethnicity. Connolly goes further to explain how the child-saving themes embedded in the preventorium movement continue to shape children's health care delivery and family policy in the United States.


To extract meaningful structure from noisy input signals, the human visual-processing system uses elementary structures, such as contours, to extract more complex informative structures. The first step in contour processing involves identifying local orientation. The phenomenon of collinear facilitation is important for understanding how orientation detection is implemented; at the fovea, a stripe near the contrast threshold (target) is easier to detect when it is collinearly flanked by stripes with the same orientation (flankers). This facilitation requires collinear alignment and presumably reflects cortical mechanisms in the early visual cortex. Strong collinear orientation signals are said to help in detecting a feeble signal and in establishing a smooth conscious linkage of orientations. However, contrary to this notion, we show here that relatively small but significant facilitation occurs even when the flankers have no perceived orientation. One such case involves concentric flankers that have unbiased luminance energies in all orientations. When collinearly surrounding an oriented target, these flankers facilitated detection of the target. In another case, oriented flankers that were made invisible through interocular suppression and that were monocularly surrounding an oriented target yielded collinear facilitation even though the flankers themselves were completely masked by random patterns presented to the other eye. These findings indicate that automatic, preconscious processing of orientation information at some early stage can improve the visibility of local linear elements. They also indicate the usefulness of latent visual information in detecting orientation and constructing our visual world.


Twenty years after the promulgation, and the entry into force, of the Code of Canon Law, this article essays a balance sheet of the developments in religious life and in the law of religious life. There is a review of the source material appearing subsequent to the Code, notably the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, "Vita Consecrata". This review yields the conclusion that the Apostolic See has paid special attention to both initial and continuing formation, but that there has been no innovation concerning the substance of the ordering of religious life. There follows a discussion of canonically relevant matters concerning religious life that have in recent years figured repeatedly in debate, at least in the European and North American environments (such as leadership in clerical religious institutes; new meaning of individual forms of consecrated life; new forms of consecrated life; the relationship of religious communities to the dioceses; the question of temporary membership in religious institutes; older candidates for membership). The presentation of these matters is bound together with the author's own reflections on possible solutions. Finally there is an overview of recognisable tendencies in the law of religious life, together with some suggestions.


Most solar energetic particles (SEPs) are produced in the corona. They propagate through complex coronal magnetic fields subject to scattering and diffusion across the averaged field lines by turbulence. We examine the behaviors of particle transport using a stochastic 3D focused transport simulation in a potential field source surface model of coronal magnetic field. The model is applied to an SEP event on 2010 February 7. We study three scenarios of particle injection at (i) the compact solar flare site, (ii) the coronal mass ejection (CME) shock, and (iii) the EUV wave near the surface. The majority of particles injected on open field lines are able to escape the corona. We found that none of our models can explain the observations of wide longitudinal SEP spread without perpendicular diffusion. If the perpendicular diffusion is about 10% of what is derived from the random walk of field lines at the rate of supergranular diffusion, particles injected at the compact solar flare site can spread to a wide range of longitude and latitude, very similar to the behavior of particles injected at a large CME shock. Stronger pitch-angle scattering results in a little more lateral spread by holding the particles in the corona for longer periods of time. Some injected particles eventually end up precipitating onto the solar surface. Even with a very small perpendicular diffusion, the pattern of the particle precipitation can be quite complicated depending on the detailed small-scale coronal magnetic field structures, which could be seen with future sensitive gamma-ray telescopes.


Runoff farming was used to grow two species of conifers [Quetta pine (Pinus eldarica) and Arizona cypress (Cupressus arizonica)] in a semiarid climate on a sandy soil treated with wax and a clay soil treated with sodium chloride salt. The treated runoff-contributing areas were varied in length to provide a water supply estimated initially to be two, three, and four times the normal 300-mm annual precipitation. Twenty-five trees were planted per species per site per water-level treatment for a total of 300 trees. Thirty-seven percent of them (110 trees) were harvested after only three growing seasons. Eighty-nine percent (67 trees) of the Arizona cypress on the sand-wax site were marketable, and the remaining 43 trees were from the other three species/site locations. Large differences in tree growth existed among the four species/site locations. The best trees were the cypress grown on the sand-wax site. Most of the cypress on the clay-salt site were 1 to 2 years behind those at the sand-wax site. The Quetta pines grew best on the clay-salt site where 24% were marketable in 3 years, with most of the remaining projected to be marketable by year four. The pines grew poorly on the sand site suffering > 50% mortality on the two lower water treatments. Only the cypress on the sand-wax site showed a significant statistical difference in tree growth as related to water level. Runoff farming shows promise of becoming a practical and practicable method for growing Christmas trees and many other crops in arid and semiarid lands where water is scarce.


Minimal models composed of two ordinary differential equations are considered in this paper to mimic the dynamics of the feelings between two persons. In accordance with attachment theory, individuals are divided into secure and non-secure individuals, and synergic and non-synergic individuals, for a total of four different classes. Then, it is shown that couples composed of secure individuals, as well as those composed of non-synergic individuals can only have stationary modes of behavior. By contrast, couples composed of a secure and synergic individual and a non-secure and non-synergic individual can experience cyclic dynamics. In other words, the coexistence of insecurity and synergism in the couple is the minimum ingredient for cyclic love dynamics. The result is obtained through a detailed local and global bifurcation analysis of the model. Supercritical Hopf, fold and homoclinic bifurcation curves are numerically detected around a Bogdanov–Takens codimension-2 bifurcation point. The existence of a codimension-2 homoclinic bifurcation is also ascertained. The bifurcation structure allows one to identify the role played by individual synergism and reactiveness to partners love and appeal. It also explains why ageing has a stabilizing effect on the dynamics of the feelings. All results are in agreement with common wisdom on the argument. Possible extensions are briefly discussed at the end of the paper.


An organometallic Schiff base (2-(1-((4-aminopyridin-3-yl)imino)ethyl)cyclopenta-2,4-dien-1-yl) (cyclopenta-2,4-dien1-yl)iron (L) and eight transition metal complexes have been prepared by reacting 3,4-diaminopyridine with 2-acetylferrocene in 1:1 molar ratio for ligand formation and by reacting Cr(III), Mn(II), Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), Zn(II) and Cd(II) chlorides with ligand in 1:1 molar ratio for complexes formation. All prepared compounds have been characterized by using elemental analysis (C, H, N, M), molar conductance, IR, UV-Vis, H-NMR, SEM and mass spectral analysis. Also, their TG and DTG behaviors have been studied. All complexes have an octahedral structure. The ligand coordinated to the metal ions through the nitrogen atoms of azomethine and amino groups. In addition, computational studies of the synthesized Schiff base ligand have been carried out by the DFT/B3LYP method. The antimicrobial activities of the ligand and its metal complexes have been studied by using different bacterial species [Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium] and fungal species included [Aspergillus fumigatus and Candida albicans]. Moreover, the prepared compounds have been evaluated for anticancer activities against breast cancer (MCF-7) and normal melanocytes (HFB-4) cell lines. Docking studies have been used to determine the probable binding mode between the ligand and its Cd(II) complex with the active site of 3HB5, 2HQ6 and 1GS4 receptors.


Models in electromagnetism are more and more accurate. In some applications, the gap between the exp rience and the model comes from the deviation on input dat a of the model which are not perfectly known. The stochastic approach can be used to quantify the effect of these input d a a uncertainties on the outputs of the model. In this article, the application of such approach in computational electromagnetics is presented. The four steps devel opment of the model, characterization and modeling of the inp ut data variability, uncertainty quantification, postproces sing (sensitivity analysis) are described and illustrate d by an example of electrical machine with uncertain dimens io .


OBJECTIVE
The usefulness of measuring the GH-dependent acid-labile subunit (ALS) in the management of GH deficiency (GHD) and acromegaly remains in question and is investigated in this study, comparing several different immunoassays for ALS.

METHOD
We compared the diagnostic accuracy of a commercially available polyclonal Ab-based ELISA with SDS pre-treatment (SDS-ELISA) with a monoclonal Ab-based immunofluorometric assay, using two unfolding methods (urea (UREA) and Glycine-HCl (Gly)). The corresponding molecular weight (MW) of ALS and IGFBP-3 immunoreactivity was determined. The clinical usefulness of each assay was examined in adult GH disorders.

RESULTS
ALS was lower in GHD and higher in acromegaly using all assays. In GHD, UREA had higher sensitivity and specificity than SDS-ELISA (59 and 69% versus 41 and 51% respectively). In acromegaly, sensitivity and specificity was 94 and 87% for UREA, 81 and 36% for Gly, and 44 and 44% for SDS-ELISA. After UREA, immunoreactivity for ALS and IGFBP-3 eluted at their predicted free MW using size-exclusion chromatography, whereas ALS immunoreactivity in SDS (300-600 kDa) and Gly (250-500 kDa) was at a high apparent MW consistent with aggregation.

CONCLUSION
The diagnostic accuracy of ALS varies with assay choice and pre-treatment modality. UREA, which results in migration of ALS at the expected MW on a sizing column, has the highest specificity and sensitivity. Thus, if measured in an assay in which ALS is unfolded without aggregation, ALS is a clinically highly useful parameter for the assessment of GH.


It is urgent to adopt public health measures and implement a preventive approach, its contagiousness and alleviate severe COVID-19, by reducing excessive inflammation.

To establish the efficacy and safety of the combined use of BlockACE2® oropharyngeal spray, and emulsion, in comparison with placebo on the reduction of the risk of infection by COVID-19, expressed in the negative result of immunoglobulins for COVID-19.

The clinical study includes 156 participants, ended with 125 adherent participants, 69 in the placebo group and 56 in the BlockACE2 group, with follow-up for 45 days. IgM seroconversion and confirmed with a RT-PCR test for COVID-19 were analyzed.

the cases diagnosed in the placebo group were 5/64 = 0.078% and in the BlockACE2 group 1/55 = 0.018%. The practice of evidence-based medicine considers the randomized clinical trial as the standard to assess the efficacy of health technologies and recommends that decisions be made, with therapeutic options of proven efficacy. The recommended way to present the results of a randomized clinical trial and other types of study should include Relative risk reduction (RRR), Absolute Risk Reduction (RAR) and Necessary number of patients to treat to reduce an event (NNT). This way of presenting the results quantifies the effort to be made to achieve the reduction of an unfavorable event. Relative risk (RR) was 0.25, with a 95% CI (0.03 to 2.05) not statistically significant due to relatively small sample; however, other statistical measures from the clinical evidence were used, such as the Absolute Power, which was 0.753, which means that BlockACE2 could reduce the risk of coronavirus disease of any severity by 75.3%. The number needed to treat (NNT) is 18.31 people,

Due to its characteristics as a food that has no indication for the treatment of diseases as a medicine, or as a nutritional supplement, it requires a rigorous stance to guarantee the validity of the findings from the conduct of the research protocol. In this way, a clinically relevant finding, although "not statistically significant", appears as a signal to scale models of clinical experimentation in the area, for new indications or new presentations. These natural support products could improve the immune conditions to neutralize the entry of the virus into the body and stimulate the cellular immune response to control the aggression of the virus, support and help control the pandemic in an efficient way.


We aimed to assess whether Internet addiction (IA) severity was related to alexithymia scores among high school students, taking into account the role of gender differences and the possible effect of anxiety, depression, and age. Participants in the study were 600 students (ages ranging from 13 to 22; 48.16% girls) recruited from three high schools in two cities from Southern Italy. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, the Internet Addiction Test, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, and the Hamilton Depression Scale. The findings of the study showed that IA scores were associated with alexithymia scores, over and above the effect of negative emotions and age. Students with pathological levels of alexithymia reported higher scores on IA severity. In particular, results showed that difficulty in identifying feelings was significantly associated with higher scores on IA severity. No effect of gender was found. Implications for clinicians were discussed.


Background and Aim: There is limited data on dentin hypersensitivity (DH) among young adults in Africa. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and trigger factors associated with DH among young adults in a university community in Nigeria. Materials and Methods: The study population consisted of 360 young adults, 188 males and 172 females, aged 18-33 years. All individuals answered questions regarding demography, self-reported dentin sensitivity, trigger factors, action taken, and impact of DH on quality of life. Statistical analysis used descriptive statistics and the Chi-square test. Results: The prevalence of DH was 228 (63.3%) among the surveyed population and was significantly higher in females as compared to males (P = 0.03). All the participants who reported DH were right-handed. Among the participants with DH, majority 139 (61.0%) have not taken any action. The major precipitant for the DH was a cold drink 78 (34.2%). Of the 228 who experienced DH, 92 (40.3%) indicated eating as the precipitant, 76 (33.3%) indicated tooth brushing and 22 (9.6%) indicated talking as the precipitant. Approximately, 30% of the participants expressed unhappiness due to tooth sensitivity. Individuals with functional and psychological disturbance were significantly more likely to visit a dentist. Conclusion: The prevalence of DH found in this study was higher than previously reported, suggesting an increase in the levels of sensitivity within the general population. All the participants were right-handed and left side of the mouth was the most commonly affected.


Engineering materials often feature lower dimensional and directed structures such as cracks, fibers, or closed facets in foams. The characterization of such structures in 3D is of particular interest in various applications in materials science. In image processing, knowledge of the local structure orientation can be used for structure enhancement, directional filtering, segmentation, or separation of interacting structures. The idea of using banks of directed structuring elements or filters parameterized by a discrete subset of the orientation space is proven to be effective for these tasks in 2D. However, this class of methods is prohibitive in 3D due to the high computational burden of filtering on a sufficiently fine discretization of the unit sphere. This paper introduces a method for 3D pixel-wise orientation estimation and directional filtering inspired by the idea of adaptive refinement in discretized settings. Furthermore, an operator for distinction between isotropic and anisotropic structures is defined based on our method. This operator utilizes orientation information to successfully preserve structures with one or two dominant dimensions. Finally, feasibility and effectiveness of the method are demonstrated on 3D micro-computed tomography images in three use cases: detection of a misaligned region in a fiber-reinforced polymer, segmentation of cracks in concrete, and separation of facets and strut system in partially closed foams.


Vertical fractures in teeth can present difficulties in diagnosis. There are, however, many specific clinical and radiographical signs which, when present, can alert clinicians to the existence of a fracture. In this review, the diagnosis of vertical root fractures is discussed in detail, and examples are presented of clinical and radiographic signs associated with these fractured teeth. Treatment alternatives are discussed for both posterior and anterior teeth.


: The authors investigated some social, psychological, clinical features in 72 patients suffering of neuroses with an early and late onset of the disease. Statistically important differences between the groups were observed. These data should be considered in treatment strategy, determination of the prognosis of the disease, tactics of subsequent outpatient therapy.


Aim: The objective of this study was to identify maternal, obstetrical and reproductive factors associated with long-term changes in maternal weight after delivery. Materials & methods: Participants were enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study of maternal health 5–10 years after childbirth. Data were obtained from obstetrical records and a self-administered questionnaire. Weight at the time of first delivery (5–10 years prior) was obtained retrospectively and each woman's weight at the time of her first delivery was compared with her current weight. Results: Among 948 women, obesity was associated with race, parity, education, history of diabetes and history of cesarean at the time of first delivery. On average, the difference between weight at the time of first delivery and weight 5–10 years later was −11 kg (11 kg weight loss). In a multivariate model, black race and diabetes were associated with significantly less weight loss. Cesarean delivery, parity and breastfeeding were not associated with changes in maternal weight. Conclusion: Black women and those with a history of diabetes may be appropriate targets for interventions that promote a long-term healthy weight after childbirth.


The interest of evaluating new information technologies in real-life conditions "in the wild" has recently been increasing. For this new direction, researchers and technology developers need to find the real-life context in which to intervene and the users willing to test the prototype technologies in their everyday practices. Additional complications follow from the ecology of several applications used together. In this paper, experiences from a complex real-life experiment with a set of three research prototypes are analyzed. Based on the results, master-level students are competent users when evaluating individual prototypes but less suitable for integrating separate prototypes into meaningful ecology and envisioning a transition from a traditional way of working to a new one. For this task, users are needed who have a vision of the new and who recognize the problems and tensions between the old and the nascent new.


Interactive image segmentation is an essential tool in pixel-level annotation and image editing. To obtain a high-precision binary segmentation mask, users tend to add interaction clicks around the object details, such as edges and holes, for efficient refinement. Current methods regard these repair clicks as the guidance to jointly determine the global prediction. However, the global view makes the model lose focus from later clicks, and is not in line with user intentions. In this paper, we dive into the view of clicks' eyes to endow them with the decisive role in object details again. To verify the necessity of focus view, we design a simple yet effective pipeline, named FocusCut, which integrates the functions of object segmentation and local refinement. After obtaining the global prediction, it crops click-centered patches from the original image with adaptive scopes to refine the local predictions progressively. Without user perception and parameters increase, our method has achieved state-of-the-art results. Extensive experiments and visualized results demonstrate that FocusCut makes hyper-fine segmentation possible for interactive image segmentation.


A dialogue response is malevolent if it is grounded in negative emotions, inappropriate behavior, or an unethical value basis in terms of content and dialogue acts. The detection of malevolent dialogue responses is attracting growing interest. Current research on detecting dialogue malevolence has limitations in terms of datasets and methods. First, available dialogue datasets related to malevolence are labeled with a single category, but in practice assigning a single category to each utterance may not be appropriate as some malevolent utterances belong to multiple labels. Second, current methods for detecting dialogue malevolence neglect label correlation. Therefore, we propose the task of multi-label dialogue malevolence detection and crowdsource a multi-label dataset, multi-label dialogue malevolence detection (MDMD) for evaluation. We also propose a multi-label malevolence detection model, multi-faceted label correlation enhanced CRF (MCRF), with two label correlation mechanisms, label correlation in taxonomy (LCT) and label correlation in context (LCC). Experiments on MDMD show that our method outperforms the best performing baseline by a large margin, i.e., 16.1%, 11.9%, 12.0%, and 6.1% on precision, recall, F1, and Jaccard score, respectively.


PURPOSE
To determine if tumor-specific loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for chromosomes 1p or 16q is associated with a poorer prognosis for children with favorable-histology (FH) Wilms tumor entered on the fifth National Wilms Tumor Study (NWTS-5).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Between August 1995 and June 2002, 2,021 previously untreated children with FH or anaplastic Wilms tumor, clear-cell sarcoma of the kidney (CCSK) or malignant rhabdoid tumor of the kidney (RTK), were treated with stage- and histology-specific therapy. Their tumors were assayed for LOH for polymorphic DNA markers on chromosomes 1p and 16q. ResultsLOH for 1p or 16q was rarely observed in CCSK (n = 90) or RTK (n = 22). The relative risk (RR) of relapse for patients with FH stage I to IV tumors with LOH, stratified by stage, was 1.56 for LOH 1p (P = .01) and 1.49 for LOH 16q (P = .01), whereas the RR of death was 1.84 (P = .03) and 1.44 (P = .15), respectively. When the effects of LOH for both regions were considered jointly among patients with stage I to II FH disease, the risks of relapse and death were increased for LOH 1p only (RR = 2.2, P = .02 for relapse; RR = 4.0, P = .02 for death), for LOH 16q only (RR = 1.9, P = .01 and RR = 1.4, P = .60) and for LOH for both regions (RR = 2.9, P = .001 and RR = 4.3, P = .01) in comparison with patients with LOH at neither locus. The risks of relapse and death for patients with stage III to IV FH tumors were increased only with LOH for both regions (RR = 2.4, P = .01 and RR = 2.7, P = .04).

CONCLUSION
Tumor-specific LOH for both chromosomes 1p and 16q identifies a subset of FH Wilms tumor patients who have a significantly increased risk of relapse and death. LOH for these chromosomal regions can now be used as an independent prognostic factor together with disease stage to target intensity of treatment to risk of treatment failure.


Visual cognition of the indoor environment can benefit from the spatial layout estimation, which is to represent an indoor scene with a 2-D box on a monocular image. In this paper, we propose to fully exploit the edge and semantic information of a room image for layout estimation. More specifically, we present an encoder–decoder network with shared encoder and two separate decoders, which are composed of multiple deconvolution (transposed convolution) layers, to jointly learn the edge maps and semantic labels of a room image. We combine these two network predictions in a scoring function to evaluate the quality of the layouts, which are generated by ray sampling and from a predefined layout pool. Guided by the scoring function, we apply a novel refinement strategy to further optimize the layout hypotheses. Experimental results show that the proposed network can yield accurate estimates of edge maps and semantic labels. By fully utilizing the two different types of labels, the proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art layout estimation performance on the benchmark datasets.


The field investigation of dragon canoe in the southeast Guizhou region not only presents an example of empirical study of sports anthropology, shows an effective way to study various primitive sports forms and acquire first-hand factual data, but also carries out in-depth explanation and analysis by applying cultural anthropology, and provides a more perfected clew for advocating ecological sport and protecting cultural heritages by means of theo- retical construction. This study reveals that the dragon canoe used by people of Miao nationality in the southeast Guizhou region is a living fossil in the process of germination of competitive sports, not provided with the nature of sport up to this day, should be deemed as a wizard ritual like competitive game relic showing unique national char- acters. Beyond the vision of sport, this competitive game still left over several riddles for cultural anthropological study. This study not only confirms the nature of a traditional physical activity, advocates that the protection of cultural heritages should include the protection of their ecological environments, but also verifies the important contributions of sport anthropology to sport theories.


This paper describes some initial steps toward the development of more natural control strategies for free motion of robot arms. The standard lumped parameter dynamical model of an open kinematic chain is shown to be stabilizable by linear feedback, after nonlinear gravitational terms have been cancelled. A new control algorithm is proposed and is shown to drive robot joint positions and velocites asymptotically toward arbitrary time-varying reference trajectories.


An overview of the Strategic Objective on Advanced Grid Technologies, Systems and Services under the IST (Information Society Technologies) thematic priority of the 6th European RTD Framework Programme (2002-2006) will be provided. The evolution and progress since the 5th Framework Programme will be sketched. The presentation will include a brief description of the portfolio of 12 new projects - with a total EU funding of 52 million € - that were launched in the 2nd half of 2004. Latest strategic planning activities with regard to the Strategic Objective - particularly in the context of the European Research Area - will be covered in relative details. The related topics (S.O. 2.5.4) of the IST Work Programme 2005- 2006 - as specified for Call 5 - will be addressed in an exhaustive manner. Future perspectives for the 7th Framework Programme (2007-2013) regarding the ICT technology pillar on/ Software, Grids, Security and Dependability/ as laid out in the Commission proposal of April 2005 will be outlined on a high level. A question and answer time will follow the presentation.


Ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) is a powerful method for the synthesis of various functional polymers including, but not limited to, biologically active polymers owing to its living character. However, the majority of polymers obtained by ROMP have a nondegradable backbone and there are very few examples of fully degradable polymers synthesized via ROMP. Herein, oxadiazabicyclooctenone is successfully developed as a versatile monomer for the construction of new pH-sensitive polymers by ROMP. The degradability was also introduced into the backbone of poly(oxa)norbornenes by copolymerization.


Knowledge of current epidemiology and spine trauma trends assists in public resource allocation, fine-tuning of primary prevention methods, and benchmarking purposes. Data on all patients with traumatic spine injuries admitted to the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne between May 1, 2009, and January 1, 2011, were collected from the Alfred Trauma Registry, Alfred Health medical database, and Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry. Epidemiological trends were analyzed as a general cohort, with comparison cohorts of nonsurvivors versus survivors and elderly versus nonelderly. Linear regression analysis was utilized to demonstrate trends with statistical significance. There were 965 patients with traumatic spine injuries with 2,333 spine trauma levels. The general cohort showed a trimodal age distribution, male-to-female ratio of 2:2, motor vehicle accidents as the primary spine trauma mechanism, 47.7% patients with severe polytrauma as graded using the Injury Severity Score (ISS), 17.3% with traumatic brain injury (TBI), the majority of patients with one spine injury level, 7% neurological deficit rate, 12.8% spine trauma operative rate, and 5.2% mortality rate. Variables with statistical significance trending toward mortality were the elderly, motor vehicle occupants, severe ISS, TBI, C1–2 dissociations, and American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) A, B, and C neurological grades. Variables with statistical significance trending toward the elderly were females; low falls; one spine injury level; type 2 odontoid fractures; subaxial cervical spine distraction injuries; ASIA A, B, and C neurological grades; and patients without neurological deficits. Of the general cohort, 50.3% of spine trauma survivors were discharged home, and 48.1% were discharged to rehabilitation facilities. This study provides baseline spine trauma epidemiological data. The trimodal age distribution of patients with traumatic spine injuries calls for further studies and intervention targeted toward the 46- to 55-year age group as this group represents the main providers of financial and social security. The study's unique feature of delineating variables with statistical significance trending toward both mortality and the elderly also provides useful data to guide future research studies, benchmarking, public health policy, and efficient resource allocation for the management of spine trauma.


This paper proposes age and periodic replacement last models with continuous, and discrete policies. That is, an operating unit is replaced preventively at time T of operation as a strategic policy, or at a number N of working cycles to satisfy successive job completion, whichever occurs last. Such policies are named as replacement last, and their expected cost rates and optimal policies are obtained. However, the focus of this paper is to compare replacement last with replacement first policies, which are formulated under the classical assumption of whichever occurs first. From the points of cost and performability, different comparative methods for continuous and discrete optimizations are demonstrated to determine in what cases we should adopt replacement last rather than replacement first. All theoretical discussions in this paper are made analytically, and are computed numerically.


The evaluation of development processes and of public policies often involves comparisons of social states that differ in income distributions, population sizes and life longevity. This may require social evaluation principles to be sensitive to the quality, the quantity and the duration of lives. This paper 1) reviews some of the normative issues at stake, 2) proposes and discusses some specific methods to address them in a generalized utilitarian framework, and 3) briefly illustrates the application of some of these methods to the global distribution of incomes, population sizes and longevity over the last century. Depending on the approach taken, it is found inter alia that global social welfare in 2010 can be deemed to be between 1.8 and 407 times that of 1910, the role given to the quantity of lives being particularly important in that assessment.


The degradation of reactor grade stainless steels and their susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking (SCC) when exposed to the pressurised water reactor (PWR) primary water environment has been a topic of intense research for many decades. Nevertheless, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of SCC remains incomplete to date. It has been generally accepted that only high-resolution (electron) microscopy techniques are capable of revealing the yet unidentified processes involved in SCC crack propagation. For this reason, one of the main objectives of this project was to make new techniques with improved spatial resolution accessible to SCC research. While low-keV energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was used for the preliminary analysis of SCC cracks, transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD) and atom probe tomography (APT) were used for high-resolution studies of the microstructure and chemistry near the crack tip. In particular, TKD proved very beneficial for revealing the extent of the strain concentration around the crack tip. For the application of APT to SCC research, a novel method for preparing APT needles containing entire SCC crack tips was developed. The method was then used for acquiring very localised compositional measurements of the crack tip and GB oxide chemistry with extraordinary accuracy. The second objective of this thesis was to understand the impact of the SCC test temperature on the crack growth rate (CGR) in SUS316 stainless steel. It was found that after steady growth with increasing temperature, a peak in the CGR occurred at T 320°C, followed by a substantial drop towards higher temperatures. The inhibition of the CGR with increasing temperature between 320° and 360°C and its impact on the microstructure were studied via analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and TKD. Furthermore, the potential impact of thermally activated diffusion and mechanical response-based mechanisms was investigated. It appears that higher dislocation density and strain concentrations around the crack tips at lower temperature (i.e. 320°C) lead to possibly enhanced brittle-like fracture at the crack tip. An enhanced model for the ongoing processes involved in SCC crack propagation based on the experimental results is presented at the end of this work.


Author(s): Golden, Kathryn B. Elise Benjamin | Advisor(s): Small, Stephen | Abstract: This dissertation is a critical examination of both the history of the Dismal Swamp maroon communities (independent and resistant communities of individuals some would label "runaway slaves") and of the politics of race and representation of enslaved resistance in public historical narratives and in local Black collective memory. Principally, this is a critical exploration of the legacies of slavery and enslaved resistance evidenced by Black people's resilience in and around the swamp across time – from maroon resilience through the physical swamp muck and mire, an appealing alternative to bondage, to the present-day resilience of Black community memory of enslaved people's historical agency, in spite of the metaphysical muck and mire, or the entanglement of race and power that too often silences the narrative of Black resistance.Once recently an extremely understudied and under-researched topic, my research on the history and legacy of U.S. marronage advances the fields of slavery, public history, and collective memory by: (1) connecting the activities of the Dismal Swamp maroons to a hemispheric Black tradition not merely of flight, but organized violence against slaveholding societies as freedom and self-defense; (2) comprehensively clarifying the specificity of U.S. marronage through a reconceptualization of the phenomenon that fundamentally includes all slaveholding contexts; (3) emphasizing the erasure and marginalization of enslaved resistance, and marronage in particular, in public historical representation, distinct from previous studies in the fields of public history and collective memory that focus on representational silences surrounding the Civil War or plantation slavery more broadly; and (4) by utilizing the voices of descendants of the enslaved as central to the recovering and uncovering of the historical legacy of the Dismal Swamp maroons. This interdisciplinary project benefits from the use of mixed methods and the methodology of restorative and transformative history. This is the labor of reconstructing and reconnecting with the past toward social change. Racialized and oppressed peoples' knowledge about the swamp, about history, and their generational memory are key sources in this project. I place them in conversation with written historical archives, with the archaeological record, and with the ethnography of race and representation in the present cultural landscape of the Dismal Swamp. My methodology approaches the swamp as a living archive from which ongoing freedom struggles and racial oppression can be can be read and can be learned from, across time.The first part of the dissertation focuses on U.S. marronage, its relationship to the maroons of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the activities of maroon communities in the Great Dismal Swamp, a huge morass of swampland straddling the Virginia/North Carolina eastern seaboard. The swamp once covered the space of two thousand square miles and is thought to have contained tens of thousands of self-emancipated individuals throughout the period of 1700-1865. I weigh the historical scale, scope, and impact of marronage in the swamp and its surrounding cities and counties. I investigate autonomous maroon and enslaved community building and organized, collaborative, insurrectionary maroon and enslaved networks of freedom along the peripheries of the swamp. I argue that the presence of the swamp itself greatly influenced opportunities for enslaved resistance, as the rise of marronage and insurrection by the early 19th century threatened the very foundation of the surrounding plantation world, as evidenced by the attempted rebellions of 1792 and 1800-1802. The second part of this dissertation examines the present-day relationships between the suppression of the history of enslaved agency, marronage, and resistance in public history, and collective memory. I point to the defining role race plays in power struggles for historical representation and the building of memory (or forgetting) about slavery and marronage throughout the swamp's built landscape. I analyze texts, plaques, signs, markers, tour narratives, and other discourse at twenty-seven historical sites and sites that publicly inform the historical significance of the Dismal Swamp and the surrounding Tidewater region of Virginia and North Carolina, to examine the ways these institutions (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Services, museums, historical societies) control the narratives about the swamp and its interpretive significance. I find that institutional practices of representation privilege the historical and present "logic of whiteness" that minimizes, distorts, segregates, or silences histories involving white culpability and the experiences of those that challenge the status quo. This is particularly applicable to those pasts shaped by Black autonomy (marronage) and violent protest. But despite these silences and ensuing struggles for more equitable and just historical representation, interviews with thirty-two Black people living around the swamp today show how Black communities continue to contest dominant epistemes and create alternative spaces of knowledge and resilient memory that are self-validating, empowering, and that directly inform local Black identity, place, and belonging.


Pigeons' pecks at two white response keys (initial-link situation) occasionally turned both keys red (terminal-link situation). When the two keys were red, pecks occasionally produced food, after which the keys were again white. In both situations, a changeover delay prevented the response-produced outcome from immediately following a change of responding from either key to the other. In the initial-link situation, the ratio of pecks at the keys closely paralleled the ratio of transitions into the terminal-link situation produced by the pecks, conforming to the well-known matching relation. In the terminal-link situation, the peck ratios deviated from the matching relation toward indifference. Overall response rate and rate of changeover were generally higher in the terminal-link situation than in the initial-link situation. The finding of matching in the initial-link situation supports a definition of reinforcement as situation transition. The differences in performance between the two situations, viewed in the light of other recent findings, suggest that the effects of a changeover delay depend on the overall reinforcing value of the choice alternatives.


In recent years some interest has arisen concerning the influence of a dietary deficiency of vitamin A in the production of tumors in rats. Fuzimaki and his associates (1, 2, 3) reported that prolonged feeding of rats with a diet deficient in vitamin A was followed by the development of carcinoma in the fore-stomach of five rats out of 49 animals tested. One of the five animals developed metastases in the lungs. Their recent communication (4) indicated that the hyperkeratosis or atypical epithelial proliferation in the fore-stomach of albino rats was not marked unless the animals were fed with a diet deficient in fat, as well as in vitamin A. The investigations of Erdmann and Haagen (5) also lead to the conclusion that lack of vitamin A in the diet is an important factor in carcinogenesis. Following special feeding they found a number of rats with spontaneous tumors. Of the 83 specially fed rats, 6 developed tumors. Four tumors originated from the mammary gland of female animals. Three of the tumors were adenocarcinomas, and one was an angioma. Two other tumors were papillomas of the stomach. They stated that the great increase over the control animals (7 per cent against less than 1 per cent) could only be accounted for by the kind of diet eaten (6). In her last paper (7) Erdmann stated that after being subjected to a diet over-rich in vitamin B and D, eight rats in three series of experiments developed malignant growths. In the first series, consisting of 80 rats, 3 adenocarcinomas of the mammary gland developed (5). In the second series, consisting of 100 rats, one papilloma of the stomach appeared.


The development of monoclonal antibody and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) techniques has made possible the detection of specific antigens at extremely low concentrations. Diagnosis of recalcitrant diseases such as melioidosis depends upon either early isolation and identification of the causative organism or the identification of a specific marker antigen, Pseudomonas pseudomallei exotoxin, in serum; the latter is better because it allows more rapid and simple diagnosis. A method of detecting exotoxin concentrations of greater than 16 ng/ml by an ELISA based on a monoclonal antitoxin is here described; it is significantly more sensitive than the mouse lethality test (lower threshold 30 micrograms/ml) currently in use and an in-vitro cytotoxicity test (lower threshold 10 micrograms/ml) that we have developed and describe here.


X-rays are widely applied in clinical medical facilities for radiotherapy (RT) and biomedical imaging. However, the sole use of X-rays for cancer treatment leads to insufficient radiation energy deposition due to the low X-ray attenuation coefficients of living tissues and organs, producing unavoidable excessive radiation doses with serious side effects to healthy body parts. Over the past decade, developments in materials science and nanotechnology have led to rapid progress in the field of X-ray-activated tumor-targeting nanosystems, which are able to tackle even systemic tumors and relieve the burden of exposure to large radiation doses. Additionally, novel imaging contrast agents and techniques have also been developed. In comparison with conventional external light sources (e.g., near infrared), the X-ray technique is ideal for the activation of nanosystems for cancer treatment and biomedical imaging applications due to its nearly unlimited penetration depth in living tissues and organisms. In this review, we systematically describe the interaction mechanisms between X-rays and nanosystems, and provide an overview of X-ray-sensitive materials and the recent progress on X-ray-activated nanosystems for cancer-associated theranostic applications.


Previous research in computer games have focused on user experience from the perspectives of game content, graphics, interactivity and underling game story while missing to address the effect of a certain input modality on the user experience. In this paper we report from two user studies that focus on players' experience and performance in relation to the use of two different input modalities for the same game and whether it changes the flow and gameplay in any way. The overall research was according to this whether a game can be more fun to play with a certain input modality? The paper presents the results from these studies and draws conclusions based on these data in relation to computer games and user experiences in the context of mobile game playing.


Earnings management and corporate governance relationships are examined for a sample of 49 Portuguese listed firms considering an unbalanced panel for the period 2002-2017, using panel corrected standard errors models and considering the family ownership effect. Empirical findings reveal that there is a positive relationship between corporate board independence and earnings management and that the presence of women on board decreases earnings management practices. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that earnings management practices are lower in family firms than in non-family firms. Size, being audited by the Big 4 companies, return on assets, loss, and the existence of an audit committee on board influence positively earnings management, but leverage, age, and ownership control are negatively related to earnings management. Results indicate that further auditing and control is necessary for Portuguese listed companies leading to strict recommendations to be followed by policymakers regarding control of these firms.


With the continued scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still seeking out-of-the-box solutions to break its transmission cycle and contain the pandemic. There are different transmission routes for viruses, including indirect transmission via surfaces. To this end, we used two relevant viruses in our study. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing the pandemic and human norovirus (HuNV), both known to be transmitted via surfaces. Several nanoformulations have shown attempts to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses. However, a rigorous, similar inactivation scheme to inactivate the cords of two tedious viruses (SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant and HuNV) is lacking. The present study demonstrates the inactivation of the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant and the decrease in the murine norovirus (MNV, a surrogate to HuNV) load after only one minute of contact to surfaces including copper–silver (Cu–Ag) nanocomposites. We thoroughly examined the physicochemical characteristics of such plated surfaces using diverse microscopy tools and found that Cu was the dominanting element in the tested three different surfaces (~56, ~59, and ~48 wt%, respectively), hence likely playing the major role of Alpha and MNV inactivation followed by the Ag content (~28, ~13, and ~11 wt%, respectively). These findings suggest that the administration of such surfaces within highly congested places (e.g., schools, public transportations, public toilets, and hospital and live-stock reservoirs) could break the SARS-CoV-2 and HuNV transmission. We suggest such an administration after an in-depth examination of the in vitro (especially on skin cells) and in vivo toxicity of the nanocomposite formulations and surfaces while also standardizing the physicochemical parameters, testing protocols, and animal models.


Much evidence suggests that life originated in hydrothermal habitats, and for much of the time since the origin of cyanobacteria (at least 2.5 Ga ago) and of eukaryotic algae (at least 2.1 Ga ago) the average sea surface and land surface temperatures were higher than they are today. However, there have been at least four significant glacial episodes prior to the Pleistocene glaciations. Two of these (approx. 2.1 and 0.7 Ga ago) may have involved a 'Snowball Earth' with a very great impact on the algae (sensu lato) of the time (cyanobacteria, Chlorophyta and Rhodophyta) and especially those that were adapted to warm habitats. By contrast, it is possible that heterokont, dinophyte and haptophyte phototrophs only evolved after the Carboniferous-Permian ice age (approx. 250 Ma ago) and so did not encounter low (</=5 degrees C) sea surface temperatures until the Antarctic cooled some 15 Ma ago. Despite this, many of the dominant macroalgae in cooler seas today are (heterokont) brown algae, and many laminarians cannot reproduce at temperatures above 18-25 degrees C. By contrast to plants in the aerial environment, photosynthetic structures in water are at essentially the same temperature as the fluid medium. The impact of low temperatures on photosynthesis by marine macrophytes is predicted to favour diffusive CO(2) entry rather than a CO(2)-concentrating mechanism. Some evidence favours this suggestion, but more data are needed.


The objectives of this study was to investigate the effect of green light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on rice (Oryza sativa L.) seed germination as well as seedling growth. The rice seed of BRRIdhan52, BRRIdhan81, BRRIdhan86 and BRRIdhan92 were germinated and nursed in control environment in full dark (no supplemental light) and under green light (6 h/day with18 h dark). The results showed that germination percent, leaf length, leaf blade length, seedling fresh and dry weight were enhanced by green lighting. Highest germination percent (88%) was counted in BRRIdhan86 and longest first leaf (7.24 cm) with widest leaf (7.24 cm) in BRRIdhan92 under green light. Green light not only enhance the first leaf blade length also increased the dry matter production. High positive significant correlation were observed in seedling fresh weight and dry weight. Correlation value (r) was positive and significantly ranged from 0.999 to 0.981. Green light remarkably promote the leaf surface area, root morphology which ultimately contributed to vigorous seedling growth with an increase 6 to 156 times than rice seedlings grown in dark for the studied character. As a result, the effects of green light emitting diodes (LEDs) on rice seed and seedlings for plant cultivation under controlled-environment conditions are promising, and they may affect subsequent phases of growth and development. More research on green light and other solid state light sources are needed for use in plant lighting designs, as well as the ability to match wavelengths to plant photo sensors for better production and influence on plant morphology and metabolism.
Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 13(1&2): 50-55, 2020


Since the 1970s, land cover in central Argentina has shifted away from perennial crops and grasses toward annual crops, largely soy. In this study, we use observations and modeling to understand how this shift in land use has affected the sub‐surface, surface, and atmospheric fluxes of moisture and energy in a flat agricultural area. We analyze the flux tower data from a paired site at Marcos Juarez in central Argentina during the period of the RELAMPAGO field campaign (2018–2019). When compared to perennial alfalfa, the observations over soy show lower evapotranspiration (ET) and specific humidity, higher sensible heat, higher outgoing shortwave radiation, and soil temperature. Water table (WT) depth is shallower below the soy than the alfalfa sites. To better understand the long‐term temporal behavior from 1970s to present, the Budyko framework is used to show that the trends in ET cannot be explained by climate variables alone. We then use the Noah‐MP land surface model calibrated at both soy and alfalfa sites. Long‐term simulations of the calibrated model suggests that ∼95% of precipitation is evaporated in the alfalfa site with negligible recharge and runoff. Contrarily in the case of soy, ET is about 68% of precipitation, leaving nearly 28% for recharge and 4% for runoff. Observed increases in streamflow and decreases in WT depth over time are likely linked to shifts in land cover. Furthermore, the partitioning of net radiation shifts from latent heat to sensible heat resulting in a 250% increase in Bowen ratio (from 0.2 to 0.7).


The research on the size-effects in Very-High-Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) has recently drawn the attention of several scholars. The fatigue cracks in VHCF originate from the largest defect present within the loaded material volume (risk-volume) and the larger the risk-volume, the larger the probability of critical defects affecting the VHCF response (size-effect). Many models have been proposed in the literature to deal with size-effects in VHCF. However, the proposed models cannot be validated on full-scale components, since VHCF tests are typically carried out with ultrasonic fatigue testing machines. The authors have proposed a specimen geometry, the so-called Gaussian specimens, to enlarge as much as possible the risk-volume in ultrasonic VHCF tests. In this study, fully reversed tension–compression ultrasonic VHCF tests up to 109 cycles were carried out on AISI H13 steel Gaussian specimens with a risk-volume of 5000 mm3, two times larger than the largest tested in the literature. The stress distribution and the absence of bending loads were verified with strain gages, proving that VHCF tests on risk-volumes of 5000 mm3 can be reliably carried out. Ultrasonic VHCF tests were also carried out on small hourglass specimens, confirming that larger risk-volumes allow for a more reliable design against VHCF failures.


The objectives of this research are: (1) to increase Kopyor fruit production through improved cultivation techniques and integration of honeybees as pollinators, and (2) to produce true-to-type seeds to obtain 100% heterozygotes hybrid Kopyor coconut through controlled crosses. Improve cultivation techniques are conducted by improving drainage, adjusting plant spacing, fertilization and pest control. Improve polination is conducted by integrating honey bees as pollinators in coconut plantation. Controlled crosses to produce true to type hybrid coconut seeds was done using three Pati Dwarf Kopyor coconut (heterosigot kopyor coconut) using pollen of harvested from tissue culture derived kopyor palms (homosigot kopyor coconut). Results of first year experiment were baseline data for total and kopyor fruit production of selected palm used in the improved cultivation Prosiding Seminar Hasil-Hasil Penelitian IPB 2012 162 studies and the honey bee as effective pollinators. The observed data include average of total fruits and the average of kopyor fruits per bunch at the start of the study, at 6 months and 12 months later. For controlled pollination studies, the number of female flowers and the number of fruit at 1 to 3 months, the number of harvested normal fruit and kopyor fruts after pollination were recorded. Results of observation indicated majority of kopyor palms existed in Pati were experiencing 'nglakani' and the fruit production was generally decreased. Average fruit per bunch ranged from 1–7 fruits while the number of kopyor fruits ranged from 1–3. Improved cultivation techniques applied were to solve some of that problem. Integration of honey bees as pollinators is expected to increase total number of normal and kopyor fruits. Controlled pollination is expected to increase the percentage of kopyor fruit production. Moreover, results of controlled pollination should produce true-to-type kopyor coconut seedlings.


This study explores the organization and management of the innovation process in Irish food firms, with a specific focus on the internal and external interactions across the different phases of the innovation value chain. Recent research highlights the benefits of open innovation. However, many firms don't practice open innovation or only leverage external resources and skills to a very limited extent; and prior research using Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data suggests that this is particularly the case for Irish firms. In this study the organization and management of innovation activities of Irish firms is analysed using CIS data and interview data from eight Irish food firms. In each firm multiple senior managers are interviewed about the origin of an innovative idea, the management of the innovation, and the role of external organisations in the innovation process. The analysis suggests that the organisation and management of the innovation process is contingent on both the stage of the innovation process and on managerial perceptions of the risks associated with open innovation. Contributions include extending existing research on open innovation by using the innovation value chain to show that the nature and extent of openness of the innovation process varies within a firm across the different stages of the value chain. Additionally, the context for the research, food firms, is under-represented in research on the emerging open innovation paradigm.


Replications are rare in visualization research, but if they were more common, it is not unreasonable to believe that they would show a similar rate of unreproducible results as in the psychological and social sciences. While a replication crisis in visualization research would be a helpful wake-up call, examining and correcting the underlying problems in many studies is ultimately more productive.In this paper, we survey the state of replication in visualization research. We examine six threats to the validity of studies in visualization and suggest ways to address them. Finally, we describe possible models for publishing replications that satisfy the novelty criterion that can keep replications from being accepted.


Objective: To assess the safety and efficacy of long-term treatment with telmisartan 80 mg/hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg (T80/H25) fixed-dose combination (FDC) in patients who completed a previous double-blind study, in which T80/H25 provided more blood pressure (BP) reduction and produced a BP response in more patients than did T80/H12.5 FDC. Methods: Patients received open-label T80/H25 for 24 weeks; further antihypertensive medication was permitted. Seated trough BP was measured at weeks 0, 4, 12 and 24. Results: Primary end point (seated trough diastolic BP (DBP) control (< 90 mmHg)) was achieved in 71.4% of patients versus 52.4% at baseline (n = 639). The improvement was apparent at week 4 and sustained thereafter. In patients who received more antihypertensive medication (111/639 (17.4%)), DBP control increased from 24.8% at baseline to 58.6% at week 24. Seated trough systolic BP (SBP)/DBP were reduced from 141.0/89.0 mmHg at baseline by 4.6/3.6 mmHg by week 24. SBP response (< 140 or ≥ 20 mmHg reduction from start of previous trial) and DBP response (< 90 or ≥ 10 mmHg reduction from start of previous trial) increased at week 24 versus baseline from 51.8 to 69.3% and from 55.8 to 74.3%, respectively. At week 24, 110 (17.4%) patients achieved normal SBP/DBP (< 130/< 85 mmHg) and a further 24 (3.8%) patients achieved optimal SBP/DBP (< 120/< 80 mmHg). T80/H25 FDC was well tolerated; drug-related adverse events occurred in 29 (4.5%) patients. Conclusion: T80/H25 provides sustained and well-tolerated additive BP control, given alone or as part of a multi-antihypertensive therapy.


ADAM10 and ADAM17 are two closely related members of the ADAM (a disintegrin and metalloprotease) family of membrane-bound sheddases, which proteolytically cleave surface membrane proteins. Both ADAM10 and ADAM17 have been implicated in the proteolytic cleavage of NOTCH receptors and as such regulators of NOTCH signaling. During retinal development, NOTCH signaling facilitates retinal neurogenesis by maintaining progenitor cells in a proliferative state and by mediating retinal cell fates. However, the roles of ADAM10 and ADAM17 in the retina are not well defined. In this study, we set out to clarify the roles of ADAM10 and ADAM17 during early retinal development. The retinal phenotype of conditionally abated Adam17 retinae (Adam17 CKO) did not differ from the controls whereas conditionally ablated Adam10 retinae (Adam10 CKO) exhibited abnormal morphogenesis characterized by the formation of rosettes and a loss of retinal laminae phenotypically similar to morphological abnormalities identified in mice with retinal NOTCH signaling deficiency. Additionally, Adam10 CKO retinae exhibited abnormal neurogenesis characterized by fewer proliferating progenitor cells and greater differentiation of early photoreceptors and retinal ganglion cells. Moreover, constitutive activation of the NOTCH1-intracellular domain (N1-ICD) rescued Adam10 CKO abnormal neurogenesis, as well as abnormal retinal morphology by maintaining retinal cells in the progenitor state. Collectively these findings provide in vivo genetic evidence that ADAM10, and not ADAM17, is indispensable for proper retinal development as a regulator of NOTCH signaling.


The sexualization of the female body in contemporary media has created considerable anxiety about its impact on girls. Much of the resulting research focuses on the influence of visual media on body image and the flow-on effects for girls' health. Rather less attention is paid to the pedagogical role of popular romance fiction in teaching girls about their sexuality. Given the pronounced increase in eroticized fiction for girls over the past decade, this is a significant oversight. This article applies Hakim's (2010) concept of erotic capital to two chick lit novels for girls. The elements of erotic capital—assets additional to economic, cultural and social capital—are used to explore the lessons these novels teach about girl sexual subjectivities and sociality in a sexualized culture.


A trencher (machine) is a device used for digging trenches, used for laying pipes & cables, for setting up drainage or in preparation for trench warfare strategy. Also irrigation is very necessary for cultivation of crops. Usually rivers are far from agri-lands, which creates difficulty to irrigate. To overcome this problem of irrigation, pipeline have been developed which connects river with agri-lands. In present days, it is been followed manually with heavy machines, which results in high economic costs and time. Trenchless methods are attractive solutions in areas where difficult ground conditions exist, high groundwater table, or urban settings with highly congested infrastructure render open trench excavation highly undesirable. Such settings may include pipeline routings under a river, heavily travelled roadways, or railroad line.