Lecithin is a natural amphipathic surfactant. In this paper, lecithin was experimented to improve the suspension property of non-plastic materials with aluminum oxide slurry. The suspension property was compared by adding different types and amounts of lecithin into the aluminum oxide slurry in acid and alkaline conditions. The experiments showed that the 6090-type lecithin with the optimal amount (0.2%) of dry base best modified the suspension property of the aluminum oxide slurry.


Profound understanding of business processes is a key success factor for Business Process Management (BPM). As more and more analytical information like runtime data from process execution or statistical data from business intelligence are available, the problem of business process complexity becomes apparent. Process-relevant information needs to be provided as fast as possible while considering easy and fast interpretation and dynamic changes in stakeholders' demands. The static and usecase specific creation or modification of process visualizations shown in current approaches and tools, however, is complex, time consuming, inflexible and thus costly. To address these shortcomings, we introduce a template-based approach that decouples the creation of visualization templates from concrete process visualizations. The binding of customization points of visualization templates to analytical process information is supported by a graphical editor that enables customization of visualizations in a fast and flexible manner. Moreover, due to the separation of concerns, our approach improves the usability of process visualizations because templates may be created by graphic experts independently from specific visualization demands. The feasibility of our concept is demonstrated by a prototypical implementation. KeywordsBusiness Process Management, Process Visualization, Process Analysis, Service-oriented Architecture


Recent studies have shown that star formation in mergers does not seem to follow the same Schmidt-Kennicutt (KS) relation as in spiral disks, presenting a higher star formation rate (SFR) for a given gas column density. In this paper we study why and how different models of star formation arise. To do so we examine the process of star formation in the interacting system Arp 158 and its tidal debris. We perform an analysis of the properties of specific regions of interest in Arp 158 using observations tracing the atomic and the molecular gas, star formation, the stellar populations as well as optical spectroscopy to determine their exact nature. We also fit their spectral energy distribution with an evolutionary synthesis code. Finally, we compare star formation in these objects to star formation in the disks of spiral galaxies and mergers. Abundant molecular gas is found throughout the system and the tidal tails appear to have many young stars compared to their old stellar content. One of the nuclei is dominated by a starburst whereas the other is an active nucleus. We estimate the SFR throughout the system and find that most regions follow closely the KS relation seen in spiral galaxies with the exception of the nuclear starburst and the tip of one of the tails. We examine whether this diversity is due to uncertainties in the manner the SFR is determined or whether the conditions in the nuclear starburst region are such that it does not follow the same KS law as other regions. Observations of the interacting system Arp 158 provide the first evidence in a resolved fashion that different star-forming regions in a merger may be following different KS laws. This suggests that the physics of the interstellar medium at a scale no larger than 1 kpc, the size of the largest gravitational instabilities and the injection scale of turbulence, determines the origin of these laws.


Ferroelectric properties of Lead-free (Bi,La)4Ti3O12 (BLT) films were evaluated on the newly developed MTP (Merged Top-electrode and Plate-line) cell structure. The BLT film was deposited by pulsed-DC sputtering method on a buried Pt/IrOx/Ir bottom electrode stack with W-plug. The BLT composition in the sintered sputtering target was Bi4.8La1.0Ti3.0O12. However, the deposited film composition was about Bi4.0La1.0Ti3.0O12 after the heat treatment of crystallization at 700°C/O2/30sec. And grains of the BLT film were randomly oriented and uniformly small ellipsoidal shape (long direction: ~100nm, short direction: ~20 nm). The remnant polarization (2Pr) and the leakage current density measured in the 100nm-thick BLT film were about 21 C/cm2 and 3 ×10-5 A/cm2 at 3 V, respectively. The fatigue loss was about 10% of the initial polarization value after 1×1011 fatigue cycles.


BACKGROUND/AIM
There are few tests for evaluation of functional abilities of patients surgically treated for hip fractures or osteoarthritis during early rehabilition period. The aim of this study was to investigate reliability (interobserver reproducibility and internal consistency) of the A-test, an original test for functional recovery evaluation during early rehabilitation of patients in an orthopedic ward.

METHODS
The investigation included 105 patients (55 patients with hip osteoarthritis that underwent arthroplasty and 50 surgically treated patients with hip fracture). It was conducted in an orthopedic ward during early inpatient rehabilitation (from 1st to 5th day). For their functional recovery evaluation during early rehabilitation we used the A-test, a performance-based test with 10 items for assessing basic activities by six level ordinal scale (0-5). For internal consistency of the test the Cronbach coefficient alpha was calculated for the A-test results collected during early rehabilitation for all patients (105 patients x 5 days = 525 measures) and separately for the results of patients with hip osteoarthritis (275 measures) and hip fracture (250 measures). Values of this coefficient > 0.7 imply good internal consistency of the test. Interobserver reproducibility was estimated as follows: two physiotherapists together conducted physical therapy with the patients, and then, separately, rated the performance of each activity from the test (78 measures). The agreement between their estimations was expressed by the linear weighted kappa coefficient (for very good agreement values of kappa coefficeent have to be in the range 0.81-1).

RESULTS
The Cronbach coefficient alpha was 0.98 (the results of all the patients and the results of the patients with hip osteoarthritis) and 0.97 (the results of the patients with hip fracture). The values of kappa coefficient were in the range 0.81-0.92 for all items.

CONCLUSION
The A-test is a reliable instrument for everyday evaluation of functional recovery during early rehabilitation of patients surgically treated in an orthopedic ward.


This paper presents the results of three years of development and evaluation of a CD-ROM/Web hybrid simulation known as Brownfield Action for an introductory environmental science course at an independent college for women in the northeastern United States. Brownfield Action is a simulation that provides a learning environment for developing the skills of an environmental site investigator by placing students in a virtual town and asking them to serve as consultants to a real estate developer who wants to avoid purchasing potentially contaminated land. Students must become actively involved in the lecture and laboratory in order to succeed. They work collaboratively with a partner in order to reach a valid conclusion. Results are summarized as follows. Students learned more and in greater depth using Brownfield Action than in previous years without it; student work looked more authentic and professional, closer to what would be expected of a professional performing these tasks; students appreciated how the simulation contributed to their understanding of the material; Brownfield Action was successful dn enhancing the scientific literacy of students, facilitating their construction of new meaning based upon what they saw and experienced, and enhancing practices leading to increased student learning; students' abilities to construct new meaning based upon what they saw and experienced were expanded; students found the content useful and the simulation a good way to learn it; more staff development is necessary to foster the teaching strategies needed for a true discovery process and to build comfort with technology; minor technical glitches created levels of frustration that interfered with its ability to meet its educational potential, however students gave high ratings to other features of the technology, and in particular, eight out of ten students noted the ease with which it was possible to move through information in each of the sections of the simulation. In all, the project has proved successful in providing students with a more integrated science experience than in traditional classrooms. (AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Brownfield Action: An Integrated Environmental Science Simulation Experience for Undergraduates


Intimate partner violence (IPV) has emerged as a public health concern. It does not consist of physical violence alone, but includes psychological and emotional issues as well. IPV cuts across all cultures, age groups, and socioeconomic classes and necessitates numerous health care visits. It is often difficult to identify those who are affected by IPV when assessing during health care services. This difficulty may be overcome as health care providers become aware of the need to integrate screening as part of the initial assessment. Although it can be difficult to measure the impact of IPV, several organizations have been able to determine that the economic cost to society is significantly increased when IPV is present. Because nurses are the largest class of health care providers, their ability to perform screening activities is paramount to early detection and management of IPV.


Professor O. S. Tsyperovich (15.12.1910-20.12.1976), Doctor of biology, was born in the city of Odessa, graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of Shevchenko Kyiv State University as a specialist in organic chemistry (1930-1935). In 1935-1941 he worked at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukr.SSR (Kyiv) as a junior research worker, and then as a senior research worker at the Department of Enzymology. In 1941 O. S. Tsyperovich defended the thesis for the Candidate's degree dedicated to the investigation of synthetic effect of proteolytic enzymes, and he was awarded the title of the senior research worker. In 1941-1945 O. S. Tsyperovich struggled in the ranks of the Soviet Army, was awarded the Red Star Order, medals For Defense of Caucasus, For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. In 1946-1976 O. S. Tsyperovich worked at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. When investigating the mechanism of proteins denaturation he discovered the phenomenon of their "denaturational stabilization". New technological schemes of production of pepsin preparations were elaborated on the basis of the method of autholysis proposed by him. In 1954 O. S. Tsyperovich defended the thesis for the Doctor's Degree and was awarded the order The Badge of Honor. Beginning from 1963 he headed the laboratory, and from 1966 -- the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of Enzymes, in 1969 the title of professor was conferred on him. In the 60-70's O. S. Tsyperovich investigated hydrolytic enzymes of microorganisms with the purpose of their use in industry. Thus, the method of production of the preparation "pronasa" from Streptomyces griseus was developed, aminopeptidases, dipeptidases, a-amylase, cellulases, were investigated. Investigations in the field of preparative enzymology resulted in the development of technological scheme for creation of the following drugs for the purposes of medicine: medical pepsin, preparation gastric juice, crystalline trypsin, highly purified chemotrypsin, highly purified trypsin, highly purified amylase which were introduced into industry. New methods of silver regeneration from photographic and cinema films with the use of proteinase of S. griseus were developed, as well as the enzyme-antibiotic preparation protezym for hydrolysis of fodder proteins which gave positive results in breeding calves and in feeding adult animals. O. S. Tsyperovich has proposed two simple structures of automatic collector of fractions for the column chromatography, published 178 scientific works including 3 monographs, 10 author's certificates; 12 candidates of science were brought up under his supervision.


The design of complex engineering systems leads to solving very large optimization problems involving different disciplines. Strategies allowing disciplines to optimize in parallel by providing sub-objectives and splitting the problem into smaller parts, such as Collaborative Optimization, are promising solutions.However, most of them have slow convergence which reduces their practical use. Earlier efforts to fasten convergence by learning surrogate models have not yet succeeded at sufficiently improving the competitiveness of these strategies.This paper shows that, in the case of Collaborative Optimization, faster and more reliable convergence can be obtained by solving an interesting instance of binary classification: on top of the target label, the training data of one of the two classes contains the distance to the decision boundary and its derivative. Leveraging this information, we propose to train a neural network with an asymmetric loss function, a structure that guarantees Lipshitz continuity, and a regularization towards respecting basic distance function properties. The approach is demonstrated on a toy learning example, and then applied to a multidisciplinary aircraft design problem.


Today, IoT devices are flooding, and traffic is increasing rapidly. The Internet of Things creates a variety of added value through connections between devices, while many devices are easily targeted by attackers due to security vulnerabilities. In the IoT environment, security diagnosis has problems such as having to provide different solutions for different types of devices in network situations where various types of devices are interlocked, personal leakage of security solutions themselves, and high cost, etc. To avoid such problems, a TCP-based active scan was presented. However, the TCP-based active scan has limitations that it is difficult to be applied to real-time systems due to long detection times. To complement this, this study uses UDP-based approaches. Specifically, a lightweight active scan algorithm that effectively identifies devices using UPnP protocols (SSDP, MDNS, and MBNS) that are most commonly used by manufacturers is proposed. The experimental results of this study have shown that devices can be distinguished by more than twice the true positive and recall at an average time of 1524 times faster than Nmap, which has a firm position in the field.


Drugs that modulate RNA splicing are potential therapeutics for spinal muscular atrophy [Also see Report by Naryshkin et al.] At the turn of the 20th century, the German physician Paul Ehrlich championed the concept that chemicals with special affinities for particular pathogens could serve as "magic bullets" to combat infections with no side effects on the host. In this vein, he went on to discover arsphenamine, an effective antisyphilis drug (1). On page 688 of this issue, Naryshkin et al. (2) identify compounds that selectively modulate the splicing of a particular mRNA precursor, offering potential new treatments for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), the most common genetic cause of infant death (3). Gene-specific RNA-processing drugs could provide unique tools for studying gene function and present a new therapeutic approach for other diseases as well.


Three aspects of the problem of "low doses" in radiobiology are discussed, they are: (1) universality of the stimulatory effect of penetrating radiation on biological objects, (2) the doses used, and (3) the damages induced by irradiation with these doses.


The water required to irrigate greenbelts being established around cities in Iran is a major cause of concern in a country with insufficient supplies. Methods of afforestation which do not require irrigation must be found. One such method is to concentrate water, received by a watershed without vegetation, for distribution over a smaller area where plants are growing by making portions of the watershed area impervious to water through application of asphalt. This principle was tested on runoff plots 2 m wide and 10 m long. Runoff from each plot was measured to study its variations as a function of age of asphalt cover and rainfall amount and intensity. The concept was further tested by constructing 2-m wide terraces along contour lines at 5-m intervals on a hillside with a slope of about 30%. Tree species, ecologically adapted to the area, were planted on the terraces. Calibrated gypsum blocks were placed at depths of 15, 30, 45, and 60 cm in the terraces and at depths of 10 and 30 cm in the watershed area between the terraces to measure soil water potentials. As the asphalt membrane aged, its efficiency in inducing runoff decreased. The runoff efficiency was nearly 75% initially, but decreased to 25% after 4 years. A regression equation was obtained correlating the runoff efficiency with age of the asphalt membrane. Freezing and thawing of the soil, growth of plants, and shrinking and swelling of clays resulted in the deterioration of the membrane. It remained effective for about 5 years. The runoff from the asphalt-sprayed microwatersheds resulted in high soil water contents of the terraces, with average potentials of −0.4, −7.7, and −2.5 bars during 1972, 1973, and 1974 where runoff was received, corresponding to −7.7, −23.8, and −21.8 bars on control plots. The technique is being developed as an alternative to the irrigation practices now in use for the establishment of greenbelts. It will result in savings of water, which in some localities could amount to 5,000 m³/ha/year, an amount sufficient to satisfy the needs of 50 people per year.


Law can't squeeze out values. Thus, it comes as an imperative of our reality to set the place for law in the world of values. The world of values is not apart from our reality. In our reality the world of values is the purpose of everything that exists. Actually, it is about a demand to bring values into our reality. The meaning of values is absolute. The eternity of values immediately points to the absolute order of values, which as such has its 'homeland' in Creator. The issue of finding the place of law in the world of values is 'pre-legal' issue. Thereby the world of values is becoming the assumption of the existence and development of law. Legal norm then becomes the formulation of values. Legal norm is not precious in itself, but only if it expresses fundamental values. Legal norm has to be the logical formulation, that is to say, it has to deliver the contents of value correctly and appropriately. As an expression of the value dimension legal norm obtains the binding power. Keeping in mind the legal norm defined in such a way, nobody can deny its necessity in reality. Law then expresses the contents of value and proposes the model of the ideal behavior. The fact that values have 'creating power' is thus proved to be true.


This book addresses an important problem in ecology: how are communities assembled from species pools? This pressing question underlies a broad array of practical problems in ecology and environmental science, including restoration of damaged landscapes, management of protected areas, and protection of threatened species. This book presents a simple logical structure for ecological assembly and addresses key areas including species pools, traits, environmental filters, and functional groups. It demonstrates the use of two predictive models (CATS and Traitspace) and consists of many wide-ranging examples including plants in deserts, wetlands, and forests, and communities of fish, amphibians, birds, mammals, and fungi. Global in scope, this volume ranges from the arid lands of North Africa, to forests in the Himalayas, to Amazonian floodplains. There is a strong focus on applications, particularly the twin challenges of conserving biodiversity and understanding community responses to climate change.


The aim of the current study is to investigate whether Swedish secondary school students perceive mathematics as a female, male or gender‐neutral domain. A sample of 1300 students in two age groups, 15‐ and 17‐ years, answered a questionnaire and about 50 students participated in interviews. The main part of the inquiry form consists of Who and mathematics, an attitude scale recently developed by other researchers. The results are analysed with respect to gender, school year and study programme. Gendered attitudes were found among considerable minorities. There is a marked tendency to view mathematics as a symbolically male domain: positive aspects are associated with boys and negative aspects perceived as more female. Older students hold more strongly gendered views than younger. Boys in the science programme have the strongest beliefs of mathematics as a male domain.


Genetic and Functional Analysis of a Novel RUNX2 Mutation in Exon 8, G462X, in a Patient with Cleidocranial Dysplasia Yu-Jin Jung, DDS, MSD Department of Orthodontics, Graduate School Seoul National University (Directed by Professor Seung-Hak, Baek, DDS, MSD, PhD) To identify a novel mutation of RUNX2 gene in cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD) patients and to characterize the functional consequences of this mutation. The subjects consisted of 12 Korean CCD patients. After oral epithelial cells were collected using a mouthwash technique, genomic DNA was extracted. Screening for RUNX2 mutation was performed using direct sequencing of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products for exons 1 to 8. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis was performed to confirm the novel mutation. For functional studies, we performed luciferase assay for Runx2 transacting activity, cyclohexamide chase assay for RUNX2 protein stability, real-time PCR for mRNA level of Runx2 downstream bone marker genes, and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) staining assay in mesenchymal stem cells for osteoblast differentiation of the 12 patients, seven showed RUNX2 mutations reported previously and four showed no mutation. A novel mutation, G462X in exon 8, which was located in the C-terminus of proline/serine/threonine-rich (PST) domain, was found in one patient. In the luciferase assay, Runx2 transacting activity was decreased in Runx2-G462X transfected cells. In the cyclohexamide chase assay, Runx2-G462X mutation reduced the stability of RUNX2 protein. Expression of the bone marker genes (osteocalcin, ALP, Type I collagen αI, matrix metalloproteinase-13, bone sialoprotein, and osteopontin) decreased in G462X-transfected cells. In the ALP staining assay, osteoblast differentiation was reduced in Runx2-G462X overexpressed cell. The G462X mutation might reduce the Runx2 transacting activity, lower the protein stability, downgrade the expression of bone marker genes, and eventually diminish osteoblast differentiation in CCD patients.


Graphene and complex-oxide heterostructures are both 2D systems that have initiated numerous research areas. The two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in both systems differs in many ways from traditional semiconductor materials. This research is dedicated to integrating these two versatile systems. Conventionally, the transfer of graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition is assisted by poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). A new transfer method is developed in this research and can protect the graphene against contaminations. The graphene transferred onto the complex-oxide heterostructure substrates using such method is atomically clean with high mobility. Conductive atomic force microscope (c-AFM) writing technique is applied to graphene-complex-oxide heterostructure to reversibly control the charge-neutrality point (CNP) with nanoscale resolution, utilizing the tunability of the complex-oxide substrate. The local electron density and conductivity of the complex-oxide heterostructure interface can be patterned with the c-AFM tip, and the CNP of the proximal graphene is shifted. With this effect, the mixing of edge state in quantum Hall regime on the edge of graphene p-n junctions can be reversibly controlled. Quantization of resistance is observed as a result of the mixing at low temperature, depending on the directions of currents and magnetic fields. Nanoscale devices such as superlattices can also be produced on various two-dimensional material heterostructure by combining these two techniques.


Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis (LMC) is a rare but devastating complication of advanced cancer. Breast cancer, lung cancer, and melanoma are the three most common causes of LMC, whereas it is rare in ovarian cancer. Here, we report the case of a 59-year-old woman who was diagnosed with LMC from ovarian cancer and was successfully treated with intrathecal chemotherapy via Ommaya reservoir and radiation therapy. The patient had an amelioration of symptoms and prolonged survival. Though LMC from ovarian cancer is thought to be rare, it is not going to remain a rare entity because the incidence of LMC in general is thought to be increasing, which is also the case with ovarian cancer. According to 31 cases whose treatment course is reported in literature, despite the absence of an established treatment for LMC, intrathecal (IT) chemotherapy whose survival benefit has been suggested in past studies might also prolong survival in patients with LMC from ovarian cancer. IT chemotherapy via Ommaya reservoir may be preferred to the lumbar puncture route. The presentation of non-specific symptoms of LMC in patients may hinder its diagnosis; however, early diagnosis and treatment induction is the key for patients' prolonged survival and restored useful life.


Abstract This article reports on two quasi-experimental studies that investigated the possible development and transfer of audience awareness in novice EFL writers as they engaged in online writing tasks through a Social Networking Service (SNS). Japanese students from two universities were asked to write, read, and comment on other students' writing once a week. The two studies were arranged sequentially so as to capture in an exploratory but jointly illuminating manner whether and how the "elusive" (Hyland, 2005) construct of "sense of audience" can develop and transfer across genres. The results of both studies suggest that the SNS environment can help L2 writers develop audience awareness and transfer that awareness across genres when two conditions are met: (1) the genre of the SNS tasks should be perceived as similar to that for which transfer was expected; and (2) the students did not develop a sense of audience in previous writing instruction.


Digital self-quantification, also known as quantified self (QS), refers to the measuring and recording of body parameters and conditions using apps and wearables. Self-quantification aims at improved efficacy and self-optimization for better health and well-being. In medicine, QS is used rather hesitantly since products are of poor quality, particularly in terms of user data protection, and the evidence of effectiveness is often lacking. The article is based on results of the TA-SWISS study "Quantified Self – Interface between Lifestyle and Medicine". It describes the QS phenomenon from the medical, legal, ethical, economic, and social perspectives. Future developments and potential solutions are outlined for the exploitation of opportunities arising from the use of QS in medicine and lifestyle while controlling the associated risks.


The pathogenesis of the ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is poorly understood. Since significant elevations in cytokines are found in OHSS, our objective was to conduct a prospective case-controlled study to assess if pre-ovulatory cytokine serum concentrations can predict its occurrence. The study group was selected from in-vitro fertilization patients who subsequently developed severe OHSS, along with a matched group who did not develop this complication (n = 20), and a healthy normal control group (n = 10). Interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) and tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNFalpha) measurements were performed with sensitive immunoassays and confirmed with bioassays. Serum IL-6 (mean concentrations +/- SEM: 4. 38 +/- 0.36 pg/ml), IL-1RA (829 +/- 292 pg/ml) and TNFalpha (15.5 +/- 1.32 pg/ml) concentrations did not show differences throughout the normal menstrual cycle group. Cytokine variability and pre-ovulatory values were similar in OHSS compared to controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) patients. However, average follicular phase serum IL-6 concentrations were higher in OHSS (8.71 +/- 0.41 pg/ml) and COH (7.66 +/- 0.38 pg/ml) patients than in normally menstruating women (4.34 +/- 0.99 pg/ml) (P < 0.0001). Pre-ovulatory serum IL-6 concentrations were also higher in OHSS (9 +/- 0.94 pg/ml) and COH (7.3 +/- 0.97 pg/ml) patients than in controls (4.57 +/- 1.1 pg/ml) (P < 0.01 and P < 0.04 respectively). All IL-1RA and TNFalpha concentrations were comparable in all the groups. This study suggests that cytokine measurements cannot be used to predict the occurrence of OHSS prior to the administration of human chorionic gonadotrophin.


The purpose of this study was to compare the prevalence of human herpesvirus (HHV)-7 and cytomegalovirus (CMV) viremia and the effects of oral and intravenous (iv) ganciclovir in renal transplant recipients at risk for CMV. Stored lysates from peripheral blood leukocytes from 92 patients, who had been previously analyzed for CMV viremia by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for 12 weeks after transplantation, were analyzed for HHV-7 viremia. Baseline and peak prevalences of HHV-7 viremia were 22% and 54%, respectively (P<. 0001). Eighty-two (89%) of 92 patients had at least 1 positive PCR for HHV-7. Oral ganciclovir and treatment with iv ganciclovir had no effect on the prevalence of HHV-7 viremia. In contrast, CMV was almost completely suppressed in patients who received oral ganciclovir, and when present, CMV responded to iv therapy. These results indicate that HHV-7 is resistant to ganciclovir at levels that were effective for prevention and treatment of CMV.


The authors studied the ECGs of 21 boys with Duchenne's progressive muscular dystrophy (group D) aged from 8 months to 10.5 years. They were compared with 21 age matched healthy boys. There were no statistical significant differences between both groups on maximal or minimal heart rates, nor on their subtractions. There were no differences between the electrical axis of P, QRS or T waves in the frontal plane, nor in the duration or amplitude of P waves. R wave in V1 had 1.06 +/- 0.38 (mean +/- 1 standard deviation) mV in group D, and 0.62 +/- 0.29 mV in group C (p less than 0.001). R/S ratio in V1 was 1.24 +/- 0.53 in group D, and 0.70 +/- 0.50 in group C (p less than 0.01). Q wave in V6 had 0.27 +/- 0.18 mV in group D, and 0.13 +/- 0.09 mV in group C (p less than 0.01). Q/R ratio in V6 was 0.19 +/- 0.14 in group D, and 0.09 +/- 0.047 in group C (p less than 0.01). Sensibility, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive values for signs over 75 percentile (Davignon standards) were: for R wave in V1 71.4%, 76.2%, 75%, and 72.7%; for R/S ratio in V1 71.4%, 76.2%, 75% and 72.7%; for Q wave in V6 38.1%, 85.7%, 72.7%, and 58%.


Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common degenerative diseases of articular cartilage. During OA, all the elements that contribute to the joint undergo physiological and structural changes that impair the joint function and cause joint pain and stiffness. OA can arise naturally, with the aging population witnessing an increase in diagnoses of this pathology, but the root causes of OA have yet to be identified, and increasing interest is arising towards investigating biological sex as a risk factor. Clinical studies show increased prevalence and worse clinical outcomes for female patients, yet most clinical and preclinical studies have disproportionately focused on male subjects. This review provides a critical overview of preclinical practices in the context of OA, highlighting the underlying need for taking biological sex as both a risk factor and an important component affecting treatment outcome. A unique insight into the possible reasons for female underrepresentation in preclinical studies is offered, including factors such as lack of specific guidelines requiring the analysis of sex as a biological variable (SABV), research-associated costs and animal handling, and wrongful application of the reduction principle. Additionally, a thorough investigation of sex-related variables is provided, stressing how each of them could add valuable information for the understanding of OA pathophysiology, as well as sex-dependent treatment strategies.


Residue number systems (RNS) are non-weighted systems that allow to perform addition, subtraction and multiplication operations concurrently and independently on each residue. The triple moduli set {2n−1, 2n, 2n+1} and its respective extensions have gained unprecedent importance in RNS, mainly because of the simplicity of the arithmetic units for the individual channels and also of the converters to and from RNS. However, there is neither a perfect balance between the various elements of this moduli set nor an exact equivalence in the complexity of the individual arithmetic units for each individual residue. Two complementary approaches have been proposed to improve the efficiency of RNS based on this type of moduli sets: enhancing multipliers modulo 2n+1, which perform the most complex arithmetic operation, and overloading the binary channel in order to obtain a more balanced moduli set. Experimental results show that, when applied together, these techniques can improve the efficiency of the multipliers up to 32%.


Current spoken dialogue systems initiate their turns after a long period of silence (700-1000ms), which leads to little real-time feedback, sluggish responses, and an overall stilted conversational flow. Humans typically respond within 200ms and successfully predicting initiation points in advance would allow spoken dialogue agents to do the same. In this work, we predict the lead-time to initiation using prosodic features from a pre-trained speech representation model (wav2vec 1.0) operating on user audio and word features from a pre-trained language model (GPT-2) operating on incremental transcriptions. To evaluate errors, we propose two metrics w.r.t. predicted and true lead times. We train and evaluate the models on the Switchboard Corpus and find that our method outperforms features from prior work on both metrics and vastly outperforms the common approach of waiting for 700ms of silence.


Global trade of green hydrogen will probably become a vital factor in reaching climate neutrality. The sunbelt of the Earth has a great potential for large-scale hydrogen production. One promising pathway to solar hydrogen is to use economically priced electricity from photovoltaics (PV) for electrochemical water splitting. However, storing electricity with batteries is still expensive and without storage only a small operating capacity of electrolyser systems can be reached. Combining PV with concentrated solar power (CSP) and thermal energy storage (TES) seems a good pathway to reach more electrolyser full load hours and thereby lower levelized costs of hydrogen (LCOH). This work introduces an energy system model for finding cost-optimal designs of such PV/CSP hybrid hydrogen production plants based on a global optimization algorithm. The model includes an operational strategy which improves the interplay between PV and CSP part, allowing also to store PV surplus electricity as heat. An exemplary study for stand-alone hydrogen production with an alkaline electrolyser (AEL) system is carried out. Three different locations with different solar resources are considered, regarding the total installed costs (TIC) to obtain realistic LCOH values. The study shows that a combination of PV and CSP is an auspicious concept for large-scale solar hydrogen production, leading to lower costs than using one of the technologies on its own. For today's PV and CSP costs, minimum levelized costs of hydrogen of 4.04 USD/kg were determined for a plant located in Ouarzazate (Morocco). Considering the foreseen decrease in PV and CSP costs until 2030, cuts the LCOH to 3.09 USD/kg while still a combination of PV and CSP is the most economic system.


Local features are widely used for content-based image retrieval and augmented reality applications. Typically, feature descriptors are calculated from the gradients of a canonical patch around a repeatable key point in the image. In previous work, we showed that one can alternatively transmit the compressed canonical patch and perform descriptor computation at the receiving end with comparable performance. In this paper, we propose a temporally coherent key point detector in order to allow efficient interframe coding of canonical patches. In inter-patch compression, one strives to transmit each patch with as few bits as possible by simply modifying a previously transmitted patch. This enables server-based mobile augmented reality where a continuous stream of salient information, sufficient for the image-based retrieval, can be sent over a wireless link at the smallest possible bit-rate. Experimental results show that our technique achieves a similar image matching performance at 1/10 of the bit-rate when compared to detecting key points independently frame-by-frame.


Objective: Risks associated with maternal-infant bed-sharing are widely documented and promoted. This study aims to examine sleep patterns and strategies including bed-sharing. Methods: Women aged over 18 who have infants aged up to 24 months were eligible to participate in an anonymous online questionnaire in March 2010. A representative sample of 1,000 respondents was randomly selected from a total sample of 2000. Results: The challenge of facilitating infant sleeping was highlighted, with 92% of respondents having difficulties at some point. Almost all (97%) felt sleep-deprived at some time, with almost half reporting that they were always or regularly deprived of sleep. Sleep deprivation exacerbated exhaustion or feeling run down (75%), irritability (70%), made mothers less patient with their infants (63%) and put additional strain on their relationship with their partner (37%). Strategies to facilitate infant sleeping included rocking and patting (50%), giving a dummy/comforter (46%) and allowing the baby to fall asleep in their arms (47%) or after feeding (45%). Just under half (41%) utilised bed-sharing as a sleep strategy at night. Bed-sharing was more likely to be used if babies experienced frequent waking at night and unstable sleep patterns. Conclusions: Maternal-infant bed-sharing continues to be an infant sleep strategy used by mothers, despite the risks involved. Implications This study highlights that mothers still continue to bed-share despite preventative health campaigns and the known risks. Thus, health promotion should be modified to include a stronger emphasis on risk minimisation strategies.


Climate change and air pollution have a direct impact on the performance and lifetime of insulating materials. In recent years, Mazandaran and Golestan provinces in Iran have witnessed a climate change and an increase in air pollution. This problem increases outages and losses in transmission and overhead distribution network. Moreover, traditional and empirical methods have been used for insulation coordination in past decades. As a result, research is needed on the regional power line isolation, revision of insulated surface design, and the number of insulators used. In this paper, a specialized software was used for checking existing lines in Mazandaran and Golestan Regional Power. Insulation computations and isolation studies using MATLAB software were used to present solutions for transmission and overhead distribution networks. This specialized software has the ability to calculate the required minimum air gap and the minimum creepage distance and the number of insulators with due attention to regional pollution, overvoltage due to switching and lightning, and power frequency.


Spin–charge separation is considered to be one of the key properties that distinguish low-dimensional electron systems from others. Three-dimensional correlated electron systems are described by the Fermi liquid theory. There, low-energy excitations (quasiparticles) are reminiscent of noninteracting electrons: They carry charges −e and spins 1/2. It is believed that for any one-dimensional correlated electron system, low-lying electron excitations carry either only spin and no charge, or only charge without spin. That is why recent experiments looked for such low-lying collective electron excitations, one of which carries only spin, and the other carries only charge. Here we show that despite the fact that for exactly solvable one-dimensional correlated electron models there exist excitations which carry only spin and only charge, in all these models with short-range interactions the low-energy physics is described by low-lying collective excitations, one of which carries both spin and charge.


Let G be a simple algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field k whose characteristic is either 0 or a good prime for G, and let u is an element of G be unipotent. We study the centralizer C-G(u), especially its centre Z(C-G(u)). We calculate the Lie algebra of Z(C-G(u)), in particular determining its dimension; we prove a succession of theorems of increasing generality, the last of which provides a formula for dim Z(C-G(u)) in terms of the labelled diagram associated to the conjugacy class containing u.


Deep observations of galaxy outskirts reveal faint extended stellar components (ESCs) of streams, shells, and halos, which are ghostly remnants of the tidal disruption of satellite galaxies. We use cosmological galaxy formation simulations in Cold Dark Matter (CDM) and Warm Dark Matter (WDM) models to explore how the dark matter model influences the spatial, kinematic, and orbital properties of ESCs. These reveal that the spherically averaged stellar mass density at large galacto-centric radius can be depressed by up to a factor of ∼10 in WDM models relative to the CDM model, reflecting the anticipated suppressed abundance of satellite galaxies in WDM models. However, these differences are much smaller in WDM models that are compatible with observational limits, and are comparable in size to the systemto-system variation we find within the CDM model. This suggests that it will be challenging to place limits on dark matter using only the unresolved ESC.


We extend full-waveform inversion by Wavefield Reconstruction Inversion by including convex constraints on the model. Contrary to the conventional adjoint-state formulations, Wavefield Reconstruction Inversion has the advantage that the GaussNewton Hessian is well approximated by a diagonal scaling, which allows us to add convex constraints, such as the boxand the edge-preserving total-variation constraint, on the square slowness without incurring significant increases in computational costs. As the examples demonstrate, including these constraints yields far superior results in complex geological areas that contain high-velocity high-contrast bodies (e.g. salt or basalt). Without these convex constraints, adjoint-state and Wavefield Reconstruction Inversion get trapped in local minima for poor starting models.


Recent studies of Tangier disease have shown that the ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1)/apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) interaction is critical for high density lipoprotein particle formation, apoA-I integrity, and proper reverse cholesterol transport. However, the specifics of this interaction are unknown. It has been suggested that amphipathic helices of apoA-I bind to a lipid domain created by the ABCA1 transporter. Alternatively, apoA-I may bind directly to ABCA1 itself. To better understand this interaction, we created several truncation mutants of apoA-I and then followed up with more specific point mutants and helix translocation mutants to identify and characterize the locations of apoA-I required for ABCA1-mediated cholesterol efflux. We found that deletion of residues 221–243 (helix 10) abolished ABCA1-mediated cholesterol efflux from cultured RAW mouse macrophages treated with 8-bromo-cAMP. Point mutations in helix 10 that affected the helical charge distribution reduced ABCA1-mediated cholesterol effluxversus the wild type. We noted a strong positive correlation between cholesterol efflux and the lipid binding characteristics of apoA-I when mutations were made in helix 10. However, there was no such correlation for helix translocations in other areas of the protein as long as helix 10 remained intact at the C terminus. From these observations, we propose an alternative model for apolipoprotein-mediated efflux.


Development of Electrochemical Micro Machining. (August 2008) Sriharsha Srinivas Sundarram, B.E., Anna University, India Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Nguyen P. Hung The machining of materials on micrometer and sub-micrometer scale is considered the technology of the future. The current techniques for micro manufacturing mostly are silicon based. These manufacturing techniques are not suitable for use in demanding applications like aerospace and biomedical industries. Micro electrochemical machining (μECM) removes material while holding micron tolerances and μECM can machine hard metals and alloys. This study aims at developing a novel μECM utilizing high frequency voltage pulses and closed loop control. Stainless steel SS-316L and copper alloy CA-173 were chosen as the workpiece materials. A model was developed for material removal rate. The research studied the effect of various parameters such as voltage, frequency, pulse ON/OFF time, and delay between pulses of the stepper motor on the machined profiles. Experimental data on small drilled holes agreed with theoretical models within 10%. Micro burrs can be effectively removed by optimal μECM. A sacrificial layer helped to improve the hole profile since it reduced 43% of corner rounding.


Traffic flow prediction is an important research issue to avoid traffic congestion in transportation systems. Traffic congestion avoiding can be achieved by knowing traffic flow and then conducting transportation planning. Achieving traffic flow prediction is challenging as the prediction is affected by many complex factors such as inter-region traffic, vehicles' relations, and sudden events. However, as the mobile data of vehicles has been widely collected by sensor-embedded devices in transportation systems, it is possible to predict the traffic flow by analysing mobile data. This study proposes a deep learning based prediction algorithm, DeepTFP, to collectively predict the traffic flow on each and every traffic road of a city. This algorithm uses three deep residual neural networks to model temporal closeness, period, and trend properties of traffic flow. Each residual neural network consists of a branch of residual convolutional units. DeepTFP aggregates the outputs of the three residual neural networks to optimize the parameters of a time series prediction model. Contrast experiments on mobile time series data from the transportation system of England demonstrate that the proposed DeepTFP outperforms the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture based method in prediction accuracy.


Disappearance of growth hormone from blood (plasma) was studied in young broiler chickens in two experiments: a) following single injection of GH (50 ug or 250|ig/kg) to anesthetized chicks; b) injection of GH (50 ug/kg) (under anesthesia) to two lines of broilers selected for either rapid growth or feed efficiency. Clearance of GH never followed a single negative exponential curve. Charac terization of the disappearance by a single metabolic clear ance rate and half-life time were found to be inaccurate and inappropriate on methodological grounds. High doses of hormone might disturb receptor or catabolism equilibria and result in aberrant values of MCR which could probably be because of the very dynamic nature of the GH clearance system, which appeared to be influenced by dose, line (or genetics of the animal) and by some indices of clearance. Therefore, physiological significance of such data must be interpreted carefully.


This book features a countdown of the Cleveland Indians' greatest games. It's far too easy to allow the national media and disparaging fans to undermine Clevelanders' views of their professional sports teams. While the Browns, Indians, and Cavaliers have certainly caused more than their fair share of frustration and heartbreak over the past century, there are countless moments of glory in the fertile athletic history of Northeast Ohio that receive little notice east of Shaker Heights or west of Rocky River. Jonathan Knight's "Classic Cleveland" series sets out to combat this trend, bringing together the most memorable moments of Cleveland's beloved athletic clubs. In three separate volumes, Knight ranks the fifty greatest games of each franchise with entertaining accounts of every contest, properly placing them in the broad landscape of civic history. Regardless of what the current editions of the "Browns, Indians, and Cavs" accomplish, each contest is another chapter in an epos that connects succeeding generations of fans to those that came before. "The Classic Cleveland" series colorfully illustrates that regardless of today's final score, the simple continuation of the saga is reason enough for reflection and celebration. "Classic Tribe" counts down the fifty greatest Cleveland Indians games, from wild ninth-inning comebacks to dazzling pitching performances to spellbinding playoff encounters. The storied history of Cleveland's endearing baseball franchise is sprinkled throughout these tales, from weekday matinees at cozy League Park at the dawn of the twentieth century to unforgettable autumn nights at Jacobs Field. Knight ranks "World Series" masterpieces alongside incredible individual performances and historic achievements: two perfect games seventy-three years apart, the most memorable of the 1954 Tribe's record 111 victories, and the greatest comeback in baseball history. Included in these pages are the heroics of Tribe legends like Stan Coveleski, Bob Feller, Lou Boudreau, Rocky Colavito, and Omar Vizquel to name just a few. Whether played on a balmy summer night on the lakefront or on a golden October afternoon at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario, each game included in "Classic Tribe" is worth remembering and revisiting. Sure to spark interest and debate, "Classic Tribe" will appeal to Indians fans everywhere.


Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) have gained the attraction of the communication industry recently, due to their promising ability to enhance the performance of future broadband Fifth Generation (5G) networks and are integral parts of 5G systems. They can be viewed in multi-dimensional space where, each slice represents a unique tier that has its own Base Station (BS)s and User Equipment (UE)s. Different tiers cooperate with each other for their mutual benefit. Data can be interactively exchanged among the tiers, and UEs have the flexibility to switch between the tiers. The cells in such a heterogeneous cellular networks have variable sizes, shapes, and coverage regions.

However, in HetNets with ultra dense BSs, the distance between them gets very small and, they suffer from very high levels of mutual interference. To improve the performance of HetNets, we have done multiple contributions in this dissertation. First, we have developed analytical derivations for optimizing pilot sequence length which is a very crucial factor in acquiring the Channel State Information (CSI) and the channel estimation process in general. Poisson Point Process (PPP) has been widely used to allocate BSs among various tiers so far. However, BS locations obtained using PPP approach may not be optimum to reduce interference. Therefore, in this dissertation, BSs locations are optimized to reduce the interference and improve the coverage and received signal power. Also, we have derived expressions for static UEs coverage probability and network energy efficiency in HetNets.

A proper UE association algorithm for HetNets is a great challenge. The classic max-Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) or max-received signal strength (RSS) user association algorithms are inappropriate solutions for HetNets as UEs in this context will tend to connect to the Macro BS, which is the one with the highest signal power. A severe load imbalance and significant inefficiency arises and impacts the performance.

The aforementioned algorithms tend to associate UEs to BSs with the best received signal power or signal quality. In HetNets, usually Macro BSs are the ones transmitting the strongest signals; hence most UEs tend to associate with the Macro BS leaving Micro BSs with less load. Also, the conventional max-SINR and max-RSS algorithms do not provide adequate results in multi-tier systems. We suggest two centralized algorithms, LSTD and RTLB, for an even UE association to provide fair load distribution. However RTLB outperforms LSTD in real time scenarios as it easily and quickly adapts to rapid network changes. Furthermore, we consider the mobility of nodes. We derive coverage probability for moving UEs considering both handover and no handover scenarios. Proposed algorithms are fast enough to associate the moving users to different Micro and Macro BSs appropriately in real time. Our algorithms are proved to be feasible and provide a path towards attainable future communication systems.


The quality of reported accounging data as well as the quality and behaviour of their users finally influences the efficiency of an enterprises management. Its assessment could therefore be changed as well. To identify creative accounting and fraud, several methods and tools are used. We present our proposal of the balance mode Q-DMFCA (Quick Detection Model (Material) Flow (Fraud) Cost Accounting) based on environmental acconting and MFCA (Material Flow Cost Accounting) as its method.


The superior colliculus (SC) is a laminar structure which can be separated into superficial and deep layers according to morphological and functional criteria. The superficial layers are interconnected with many nuclei, most of which process visual information. Also, these layers are known to project to the pontine grey. The topography of the projection is well established in many mammals but little is known about the morphology of the cells of origin of the projection. The pons of two adult albino rabbits were injected with Rhodamine latex microspheres and the retrogradely labeled cells in the SC were intracellularly filled with Lucifer yellow. The distribution of the labeled cells was organized into two bands. The upper one (71% of the cells) was located in the middle third of the stratum griseum superficiale (SGS). The lower band was less dense (29% of the cells) and located in the lower third of SGS and in the upper layers of the stratum opticum. Neurons corresponding to the upper band were preferentially vertically oriented. In particular, 47% were vertical fusiform, 23.5% globular/pyriform, 17.7% horizontal and 11.8% stellate in their morphology. Neurons corresponding to the lower band did not present so clear polarization. Thus, 57.1% were stellate, 28.6% were horizontal and 14.3% globular/pyriform. On the basis of their morphology, we consider that the cells of origin of the tectopontine projection form a particular population in the SC.


Ferromagnetic shape memory alloys (FSMA) are a new class of potential multifunctional materials with advancement over the conventional heat-driven shape memory alloys due to their exceptional properties. FSMAs can be controlled by magnetic field have attracted considerable attention as a type of magnetic actuator materials. Among the Heusler alloys that exhibit magnetic shape memory effect, the most extensively studied are those of the Ni-Mn-Ga system. However, to overcome some of the problems related to practical application, such as the high cost of gallium and the low martensitic transformation temperature that they usually present, the search for Ga-free alloys has been recently attempted. This paper aims to represent the behavior of Ga free Ni-Mn-Sn Heusler FSMA by varying the weight percentage of Sn. Three alloys i.e. Mn50Ni50-xSnx (x = 5, 7.5, and 10) were produced as bulk polycrystalline ingots by arc melting. The structural austenite-martensite transformation was checked by Differential Scaning calorimetry (DSC). It is found that, the transformation temperatures gradually decrease as increasing the Sn content. Multiple martensitic transformations, such as twoor three-step martensitic transformations, occur in all these alloy systems. Microstructure and elemental composition of prepared specimen were examined by using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) equipped with a microanalysis system. Therefore, the present Ga-free Ni-Mn-Sn Heusler FSMAs have the great possibility to use in high temperature application and can present a large magnetic-field-induced strain.


In today's scenario, online networking is fast becoming popular among Internet users. The rise in the use of social networking sites such as twitter are gaining much importance because it plays a double role of online social networking and micro blogging but these sites have a constraint to them i.e. the spammers. Twitter is becoming a popular site in the face of micro-blogging service for the users to share short messages, called Tweet. The spamming fact widely spread-out in the tweets is now affecting micro blogs and exploits specific mechanisms of the messaging process. Spammers try to attack the trending topics over the twitter to spoil the useful content. Social spamming is more successful as compared to the email spamming as it uses social relationship between the users. Spam detection in real time is very important because Twitter is largely used for the commercial advertisements. The spammers attack the private information of the user. Spammers can be detected by using the content and user based attributes. In this paper we will try to classify the spam from real time twitter data using Twitter Streaming API, text mining and use the classifiers for spam classification.


The mobile Internet that was a huge hype ten years ago is finally here. We have a wealth of mobile devices that allow us to enjoy and consume Internet content from any number of web sites and services. With faster processors and radio links, our use of the Internet and the traffic mobile users generate grows at a tremendous pace. In this development, we still have a huge challenge to tackle: energy efficiency. When ten years ago one would recharge his personal mobile device once a week, we now do that daily; Smart phones today are not able to carry enough energy to allow us several days of usage time. The focus on this paper is to present and analyse one solution to help us in our daily lives. We implement and study a scheme where web content, a page, is delivered as a whole to a mobile device, instead of sending each individual object of the page separately. Combined with RRC state based header compression and selective content compression, our proposal allows the radio to keep in low power state for longer durations, and as a consequence brings huge energy savings. Download times also decrease, thus bringing increased Quality


Hybrid testing is an emerging technique for system emulation that uses a transfer system composed of actuators and sensors to couple physical tests of a critical component or substructure to a numerical simulation of the remainder of a system and its complete operating environment. The realisation of modern real-time hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems often proves infeasible due to (i) hardware with bandwidth limitations and (ii) the unavailability of control schemes that provide satisfactory force and position tracking in the presence of sharp non-linearities or discontinuities. Where this is the case, the possibility of employing a pseudo-dynamic technique remains, enabling tests to be conducted on an enlarged time scale thus relaxing both bandwidth and response time constraints and providing inherent loop stability. Exploiting the pseudo-dynamic technique, this thesis presents the development of Robotic Pseudo-Dynamic Testing (RPsDT), a dedicated method that specifically targets the realisation of hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems using commercial offthe shelve (COTS) industrial robotic manipulators. The RPsDT method is evaluated in on-ground studies of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) maneuvers with probe-hose-drogue systems where the critical contact and coupling phase is tested pseudo-dynamically with full-scale refuelling hardware while the flight regime is emulated in simulation. It is shown that the RPsDT method can faithfully reproduce the dominant contactimpact phenomena between probe and drogue while minor discrepancies result from the absence of rate-dependant damping in the force feedback measurements. In combination with full-speed robot controlled contact tests, reliable estimates for impact forces, strain distributions and drogue responses to off-centre hits are obtained providing extensive improvements over current predictive capabilities for the in-flight behaviour of refuelling hardware and it is concluded that the technique shows great promise for industrial applications.


Recently, the growing demand for rich multimedia content such as Video on Demand (VoD) has made the data transmission from content delivery networks (CDN) to end-users quite challenging. Edge networks have been proposed as an extension to CDN networks to alleviate this excessive data transfer through caching and to delegate the computation tasks to edge servers. To maximize the caching efficiency in the edge networks, different Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) servers assist each others to efficiently select which content to store and the appropriate computation tasks to process. In this paper, we adopt a collaborative caching and transcoding model for VoD in MEC networks. However, unlike other models in the literature, different chunks of the same video are not fetched and cached in the same MEC server. Instead, neighboring servers will collaborate to store and transcode different video chunks and consequently optimize the limited resources usage. Since we are dealing with chunks caching and processing, we propose to maximize the edge efficiency by studying the viewers watching pattern and designing a probabilistic model where chunks popularities are evaluated. Based on this model, popularity-aware policies, namely Proactive caching policy (PcP) and Cache replacement Policy (CrP), are introduced to cache only highest probably requested chunks. In addition to PcP and CrP, an online algorithm (PCCP) is proposed to schedule the collaborative caching and processing. The evaluation results prove that our model and policies give better performance than approaches using conventional replacement policies. This improvement reaches up to 50% in some cases.


This paper examines users' comments on the Facebook pages of 20 American academic libraries and subdivides them into 22 categories. A total of 3,513 posts were examined and analyzed in various ways, including how many of the posts included user comments and how many had none; how many comments were included in each post; and what the percentage of user participation was on the library walls, in terms of "likes" and comments. The most significant findings are that approximately 91% of the posts do not include any comments, over 82% of user participation is expressed via the "like" functionality and most comments on academic libraries' Facebook pages are not uploaded by prospective users (i.e., college and university faculty and students) but rather by library personnel, employees affiliated with the same institution as the library, and alumni.


Recently, a new type of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) system with mobile readers is introduced. In such a system, it is more desirable for mobile readers to identify tags without a back-end server, and thus it is frequently referred as a serverless mobile RFID system. In this paper, we formalize a serverless mobile RFID system model and propose a new encryption-based system that preserves the privacy of both tags and readers in the model. In addition, we define a new adversary model for the system model and show the security of the proposed system. Throughout comparisons between ours and the other alternatives, we show that our proposed system provides a stronger reader privacy and robustness against a reader forgery attack than the competitors.


SummaryThe application of microwave dielectric heating techniques for chemical syntheses has attracted considerable interest in recent years. A fundamental understanding of the mechanisms responsible for effective coupling of microwave radiation to liquid and solid chemicals and the establishment of techniques for containing the chemicals safely within a microwave cavity have contributed to the rapid progress in this area. A wide range organic and inorganic reactions have been accelerated using microwave techniques. The rapid syntheses of these compounds can be attributed primarily to superheating effects which result from the effective coupling of microwaves to the polar organic solvent in the containment vessel. Similar methods have been used for accelerating intercalation reactions resulting in the incorporation of organic molecules between the layers of an inorganic host material. In the solid state mixed metal oxides may be synthesized at an accelerated rate if one of the components has a high loss tangent. The ceramic high temperature superconducting materials have been synthesized in this manner and have utilized the high loss tangent of copper oxide. Metal chlorides, chalcogenides and oxides have also been synthesized directly from the elements using microwave dielectric heating effects resulting from the efficient coupling of microwaves to the particles of metal powder.


Eighty-three students enrolled in general education classrooms and 62 Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) enrolled in bilingual education classrooms were assessed in reading English three times a year using curriculum-based measurement. Fluency in Spanish passages was also assessed for Spanish-speaking ELLs in the bilingual education program. Results showed that Spanish-speaking ELLs read less fluently on English passages than general education students across grades and across testing periods. When general education students reading in English and Spanish-speaking ELLs reading in Spanish were compared, general education students read more fluently in English than Spanish-speaking ELLs did in Spanish. In addition, general education students made more gains over time in reading English than Spanish-speaking ELLs reading in Spanish. These findings suggest that curriculum-based measurement can be a viable methodology for evaluating the rate of progress of Spanishspeaking ELLs in bilingual education programs. In addition, the study points to the need for more research to determine the expected rates of gain in reading among Spanish-speaking ELLs in both English and their native language.


After 10 years of organizing the Cybertech robotics competition, this paper presents this unique and innovative educational experience of teaching engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain. Cybertech is not only a well-known robotic contest in Spain due to the Robotaurus bullfighting, but is also a whole academic activity spanning theory, laboratory practical lessons, seminars, tutoring, and a spectacular contest in which robots, developed by the students, compete. It is an open activity, for all students and grades, requiring knowledge of various subjects such as mechanics, microcontrollers, control, and electronics. The experience acquired has shown how this novel educational approach can boost the motivation of students, who in a real applied project effectively learn not only the particular subject matter, but also skills in teamwork, oral presentations, budget management, and so on. This is considered the flagship of innovation in education at UPM. This paper describes the evolution of Cybertech over the past 10 years, summarizes the educational experience, and provides some statistics and results as well as a perspective for future editions of the competition.


The nucleus accumbens, a site within the ventral striatum, is best known for its prominent role in mediating the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse such as cocaine, alcohol, and nicotine. Indeed, it is generally believed that this structure subserves motivated behaviors, such as feeding, drinking, sexual behavior, and exploratory locomotion, which are elicited by natural rewards or incentive stimuli. A basic rule of positive reinforcement is that motor responses will increase in magnitude and vigor if followed by a rewarding event. It is likely, therefore, that the nucleus accumbens may serve as a substrate for reinforcement learning. However, there is surprisingly little information concerning the neural mechanisms by which appetitive responses are learned. In the present study, we report that treatment of the nucleus accumbens core with the selective competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist 2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (AP-5; 5 nmol/0.5 microl bilaterally) impairs response-reinforcement learning in the acquisition of a simple lever-press task to obtain food. Once the rats learned the task, AP-5 had no effect, demonstrating the requirement of NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in the early stages of learning. Infusion of AP-5 into the accumbens shell produced a much smaller impairment of learning. Additional experiments showed that AP-5 core-treated rats had normal feeding and locomotor responses and were capable of acquiring stimulus-reward associations. We hypothesize that stimulation of NMDA receptors within the accumbens core is a key process through which motor responses become established in response to reinforcing stimuli. Further, this mechanism, may also play a critical role in the motivational and addictive properties of drugs of abuse.


: We report a case of fatal anaphylactic reaction to intravenous methylprednisolone succinate therapy developed in a 51 year old asthmatic man with aspirin intolerance and undetermined myocarditis. 14 similar cases were found in literature and analysed: asthma and aspirin intolerance seem to be risk factors; the organism reacts against either unconjugated corticoid or esterified corticoid principally its succinate salt; the mechanism of these reactions remains not clear; it may be either a true allergic reaction or a non specific reaction.


Returns to education are mainly influenced by the characteristics of the individual. However, returns also depend on location characteristics; suggesting location premia can exist for educational attainment. This paper analyzes regional variations to returns from education using Swedish municipalities. The political geography of Sweden assists the analysis since it can be divided into four categories based on size and commuting patterns. Based on the obtained results, the often-assumed hypothesis of equal returns to education for all regions in a country can be rejected. The highest returns to education are found in municipalities at the top of the urban-rural hierarchy (dense and large municipalities), and the lowest are in the most peripheral municipalities.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this review is to examine the current state of the literature regarding wound care provided by advanced practice nurses globally. Specifically, this review will examine the similarities and differences in the wound care practice of nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, advanced practice nurses, and advanced practice registered nurses.

INTRODUCTION
Advanced practice nurses have graduate education and advanced scope of practice. The addition of advanced wound care training provides unique opportunities for advanced practice nurses to provide wound care.

INCLUSION CRITERIA
This review will consider advanced practice nurses who are nurse practitioners or registered nurses with graduate education and advanced training (certification/education) in wound care. The wound care can be provided independently or as a part of a team, in any setting.

METHODS
The proposed review will be conducted in accordance with the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The databases searched will include MEDLINE, CINAHL, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Scopus. To reflect changes in advanced practice nursing scope of practice, searches will be limited to articles published from 2011. Articles in languages other than English will be translated. Titles and abstracts will be independently reviewed by two reviewers, relevant sources will be retrieved in full and reviewed. Any disagreements will be resolved through discussion or with an additional reviewer. The similarities and differences in wound care practice (type of wound, practice setting, treatments) will be extracted using a data extraction tool. Any modifications will be detailed in the scoping review. Extracted data will be presented in a descriptive format.


This study was designed to explore the relation pattern of cultural intelligence, cultural identity, autonomy, and self-efficacy and second language achievement of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 247 undergraduate students. Data were collected nationwide, from different parts of Iran; that is, from Kerman, south of Iran; Hamadan, west of Iran; Mashhad, east of Iran; and Gorgon, north of Iran. The participants' ages ranged from 18 to 26 and they were mostly juniors and seniors. They completed the following questionnaires: Cultural Intelligence Questionnaire (Ang, et al., 2007), Cultural Identity Clarity Scale (Usborne & Taylor, 2010), Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (Cotterall, 1995, 1999) and Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (Pinitrich, Smith, Garcia & Mckeachie, 1991). The participants' GPA of three general English courses were considered as their second language achievement. Responses from questionnaires were collected through convenience sampling. The design of the study is based on path analysis. After data collection, the hypothesized model was tested by AMOSE program. The results demonstrated that the variables under study could strongly predict EFL learners' L2 achievement. L2 achievement may largely depend on students' cultural intelligence, cultural identity, autonomy and self-efficacy. Also, it was reported that autonomy was the strongest predictor of EFL learners' L2 achievement.


Objectives: to present a methodology used by the Policy, Planning and Region Management research and the Health Care Networks in Brazil – the Regions and Networks research. Methods: description of the analytical scheme in the process of choosing health regions and criteria to select cities and health units, instruments for collecting primary and secondary data and the indicators database, besides the regional typology elaborated for data analysis. Results: the analytical scheme is based on the health policy analysis; policy, structure and organization were defined as the macro dimensions. For each one of these, sub-dimensions were defined. The questionnaire was elaborated by variables that were possible to analyze the regionalization process determinants. Five health regions were selected from the previously defined criteria. Conclusions: the method allowed to establish attributes in the regionalization, constructed by specific components integration, coordination and regulation. The multilevel approach was important because it portrayed different perceptions from the stakeholder managers and providers according to their bonds in the city, regional and state scenarios.


The directly observed growth of individual water trees has been used to examine analytically the applicability of a number of field-dependent growth models. Aqueous electrodes with different radii of curvature have been used to investigate the influence of the inception geometry upon tree growth. Measurements of growth rate have been made over a range of frequencies and the rate constants and compared with the results of dynamic dielectric and mechanical responses, in an attempt to elucidate the material factors that are involved in treeing. It is shown that the frequency dependence of the growth rate cannot be attributed to a modification of the dielectric by the tree, causing a frequency-dependent change of field strength for large enough trees. The rate constants obtained are frequency dependent and the analytical results are consistent with a mechanism of electrical origin, which causes microvoids and crazes to nucleate and grow. In general, the propagation rate of the damage seems to be rate limiting, but in a few cases generally characterized by a sharp inception geometry and thus possibly mechanical strain, it is the nucleation rate that is the slowest. >


In this review we describe various aspects of the primary gastric lymphomas, the classification, and the most important clinico-pathological aspects, with emphasis in mucosa associated lymphoma (MALT) and the Helicobacter pylori infection.


Protection of children against sexual exploitation, particularly against exploitation in cyberspace, constitutes one of the most burning issues of the modern world. The Internet is frequently used as the beginning of the road to sexually exploiting a child, and as way of earning the child's trust and gaining physical access to them. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic and isolation resulting from it brought with them substantial threats, also in this area, whose effects will be long-term. What was observed during the pandemic was not only an increase in online traffic related to the distribution of child pornography, but also a definite increase in behaviours that may be classified as grooming. It is sometimes considered that grooming is the basic method leading to child sexual exploitation, or even its immanent feature. Relatedly, what becomes an important issue is an analysis of legal regulations that concern grooming in cyberspace, and an attempt to answer the question whether the scope and level of protection provided to children by Polish criminal law are sufficient. © 2021 Author.


of MapReduce Sets forChain Foldingexpressions analysis has to suggest criteria how Chain Foldingexpressions in Chain Folding data can be defined in a meaningful way and how they should be compared. Similitude based MapReduce Sets for Chain FoldingExpression Analysis and MapReduce Sets for Assignment is expected to adhere to fundamental principles of the scientific Chain Foldingprocess that are expressiveness of Chain Folding models and reproducibility of their Chain Foldinginference. Chain Foldingexpressions are assumed to be elements of a Chain Foldingexpression space or Conjecture class and Chain Folding data provide "information" which of these Chain Foldingexpressions should be used to interpret the Chain Folding data. An inference Chain Folding algorithm constructs the mapping between Chain Folding data and Chain Folding expressions, in particular by a Chain Foldingcost minimization process. Fluctuations in the Chain Folding data often limit the Chain Folding precision, which we can achieve to uniquely identify a single Chain Foldingexpression as interpretation of the Chain Folding data. We advocate an information theoretic perspective on Chain Foldingexpression analysis to resolve this dilemma where the tradeoff between Chain Foldinginformativeness of statistical inference Chain Foldingand their Chain Foldingstability is mirrored in the information-theoretic Chain Foldingoptimum of high Chain Foldinginformation rate and zero communicationexpression error. The inference Chain Foldingalgorithm is considered as anoutlier objectChain Foldingpath, which naturally limits the resolution of the Chain Foldingexpression space given the uncertainty of the Chain Folding data. KeywordsChain Foldingexpressions, kernel function.


Atlantic cod form spawning aggregations in locations and seasons that are persistent from year to year and individual fish have been shown to exhibit spawning site fidelity and home to specific spawning grounds each season. In the Gulf of Maine, cod are known to have historically occupied a mosaic of spawning grounds but many of these spawning components have been extirpated, primarily through overfishing, with a near complete loss of spawning along mid-coast and eastern Maine. The remaining spawning aggregations in the western Gulf of Maine are particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation owing to their proximity to shore, the predictability of their timing, the fine-scales upon which they operate, and the high density of fish within each aggregation. Broad scale management actions that are currently being discussed may allow an increased harvest from these spawning aggregations. In this paper we describe the creation of three small-scale area closures that serve to eliminate the exploitation and disturbance of discrete spawning aggregations of Atlantic cod and prevent the potential extirpation of these spawning components. Each closure was unique in the circumstances that surrounded their creation, including differences in the amount of prior protection from commercial and recreational exploitation, the timing and duration of the closure, the size of the closure area, the management body that had authority to enact the closure, the amount of monitoring that has occurred, and the amount of spatial or temporal modifications that have occurred since enactment. We believe the case for spawning closures for Atlantic cod has already been made by several authors and the purpose of this paper is not to present new science, but rather to show the path that was followed to create these spawning closures within the complicated ment array of fisheries manage


This paper discusses thermo-viscoelastic problems using the symplectic system method. With the aid of the symplectic character and the Laplace integral transformation, all general solutions of the homogeneous equation are obtained directly via zero eigensolutions and their Jordan forms of the corresponding symplectic dual equations. The special solution of the non-homogeneous equations are given by applying the the adjoint symplectic relation between the eigensolutions. Examples show the results of the direct symplectic method, and reveal the creep and relaxation properties of the time dependent viscoelastic materials.


Recent breakthroughs in deep learning (DL) have led to the emergence of many intelligent mobile applications and services, but in the meanwhile also pose unprecedented computing challenges on resource-constrained mobile devices. This paper builds a collaborative deep inference system between a resource-constrained mobile device and a powerful edge server, aiming at joining the power of both on-device processing and computation offloading. The basic idea of this system is to partition a deep neural network (DNN) into a front-end part running on the mobile device and a back-end part running on the edge server, with the key challenge being how to locate the optimal partition point to minimize the end-to-end inference delay. Unlike existing efforts on DNN partitioning that rely heavily on a dedicated offline profiling stage to search for the optimal partition point, our system has a built-in online learning module, called Autodidactic Neurosurgeon (ANS), to automatically learn the optimal partition point on-the-fly. Therefore, ANS is able to closely follow the changes of the system environment by generating new knowledge for adaptive decision making. The core of ANS is a novel contextual bandit learning algorithm, called μLinUCB, which not only has provable theoretical learning performance guarantee but also is ultra-lightweight for easy real-world implementation. We implement our system on a video stream object detection testbed to validate the design of ANS and evaluate its performance. The experiments show that ANS significantly outperforms state-of-the-art benchmarks in terms of tracking system changes and reducing the end-to-end inference delay.


Eel were known asa food source that contain high nutrients. Recently, the utilization of Eel for export purposes has remained high. The aimof this study were to analyze the nutritive value and fatty acids profi le of fresh Indonesian eel and roasted eel (kabayaki). This study were conducted at P.T. Jawa Suisan Indah, Sukabumi District, West Java Province, and Kimia Terpadu Laboratorium Bogor Agricultural University, from October 2012 to May 2013. The proximate analysis on fresh Indonesian Eelshowed that it contained 17.68% of protein, 28.29% of fat, 42.03% of moisture, 3.93% of ash and 0.30% of crude fi ber. While Kabayaki contains 32.70% of protein, 2.39% of fat, 48.32% of moisture, 2.37% of ash and 0.55% of crude fi bre. The fatty acids composition of fresh Indonesian Eelconsisted of 22.78% saturated fatty acids (SFA), 32.84% monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), 11.4% polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), 1.15% eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and 5.16% docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). While kabayaki contained 30.68% SFA; 31.1% MUFA; 10.39% PUFA; 0.70% EPA and 1.29% DHA.


Even though under emulation situation of land uses in urban and peri urban area, farm sector in peri urban area still plays important role in giving various benefit such as social, enviromental and economic benefits to the society. this research aims to conduct economic valuation for farmland in peri urband area, analyze farmer readiness to leave the farm activity, analyze the attraction of non farm sector to the farmer that can influence farmer to leave or maintain their activity in farm sector in Yogyakarta peri urban area. The basic method used in this research was CVM method (Contingent Valuation Method). the research located in peri urban are of Yogyakarta and in Yogyakarta municipality region. The existence of total use value of farmland in peri urban area makes the farmers in Yogyakarta oer iurban area and Yogyakarta municipality resident are ready to pay for WTP. The WTP of farmers was related to the locatipn of the farmland. the improved situaation of farm activity will increase the amouunt of farmers who want to remain in farm activity or even they wnat to leave the farm activity under certain condition, which shows that farm activity still being attractive to the farmer. but under this hypothetical situation of improved condition, the tendency of the farmer to leave farm activity under certain condition will go up in lin ewith the increasing of land price and the experience length of the farmer in farm activity. therefore the land price and experience duration in farm activity are the important factor in determining farmer readiness to leave farm activity. whether in existing and improved situation most farmer wish to gain non farm earning as much more than 5 times as earnings of existing farm activity so that they were ready to leave farm activity. this amtter depicts that although there will be improved action in order to repair farm trouble-shooting faced by farmer, the farmer's interest to the non-farm activity did not change.


It would seem that laparoscopic laser cholecystectomy is a safe and reasonable procedure. We feel that it will be indicated for most patients with symptomatic gallbladder disease. The only distinct contraindications which we have noted are multiple prior upper abdominal procedures, common bile duct obstruction, or intense acute inflammation. However, as experience has widened, even some of the above problems may be manageable with laparoscopic technique. We would expect that the technique can be attempted on at least 90% of patients with proven gallbladder disease and that this percentage may increase with further experience. Our experience suggests that there is probably no increased operative risk with this operation. Any potential risks associated with pneumoperitoneum and introduction of laparoscopic instruments is more than offset by higher morbidity associated with open techniques. Besides the obvious economic benefits of shorter hospital stay and recovery time and rapid return to self-care and employment, this operation is quite rewarding for both surgeon and patient due to the decrease in post-operative pain and discomfort and a striking decrease in pulmonary problems, phlebitis and other complications of more invasive procedures. We expect this to become the standard procedure for gallbladder disease as experienced is widened.


Introduction: Antibiotic resistance is a major global health concern as many fatalities occur each year due to severe infections associated with it, such as sepsis. This research protocol hopes to address the issue of antibiotic resistance in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by using an alternative antibiotic therapy. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), which have antibiotic properties and low antibiotic resistance potential, will be administered in conjunction with stable and biocompatible branched amphiphilic peptide capsules (BAPCs). Surface functionalized ligands will be attached to the peptide capsules to target iron receptors essential to MRSA survival. By targeting its iron receptors, the bacteria will be unable to mutate in such a way that would attenuate its uptake of this antibiotic. Methods: Testing will begin in vitro on MRSA cultures to assess the minimum inhibitory concentration of the various AgNP treatment groups. Constraints determining the minimum inhibitory concentration include a minimum 3-hour delay in bactericidal effect from application, and a 95% eradication efficacy. Drug efficacy will be evaluated via ex vivo and in vivo mice experiments, with off-target toxicity effects measured via BAPC targeted immunohistochemistry, and both serological and organ-based tests. Repeated in vivo treatments will be performed against a control to measure the relative antibiotic resistance advantages this treatment proposes. As this protocol requires the use of mice, ethics approval from the Canadian Council on Animal Care will be obtained prior to experimentation. Results: It is expected that the AgNPs will be successfully encapsulated within the structurally-sound BAPCs and that the AgNPs will eradicate a significant amount of the MRSA present in the human body with minimal side effects. The in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo tests are likely to yield results that demonstrate that the most effective protocol in eradicating MRSA is to use AgNPs in BAPCs in conjunction with a vancomycin treatment. The proposal will likely satisfy the criteria for appropriate AgNP doses, which includes bactericidal effect in a time frame of hours, over 95% efficacy, and statistically significant reproducibility. Discussion: Successful BAPC mediated delivery of AgNPs prove the potential for targeted antibiotic application against multidrug bacteria with lower risk of antibiotic resistance compared to conventional antibiotics. This proof of concept protocol demonstrates the potential for applying rational design of BAPCs as a delivery vector. Certain limitations, including off-target toxicity and redundant targeting are issues to be cognizant of and controlled. Conclusion: This novel therapy can be considered as a preliminary step in overcoming antibiotic resistance. With appropriate modifications to the functional ligands attached to the BAPCs, the proposed drug mechanism could be applied to treat other bacterial strains.


This study describes effective rate controls regarding both end-to-end receiver's reports and intermediate network information for streaming delivery systems on next-generation mobile communication networks. Moreover, the method has been implemented in our mobile QoS systems for Windows. Results of evaluation experiments with an IMT-2000 network simulator showed that network information-based rate control is superior to end-to-end control in terms of the number of lost packets and bandwidth usage at specified channel and error rates. Moreover, they indicated that cooperative method using network information and end-to-end receiver's reports are quite effective for retransmission and session control, which is indispensable for mobile streaming systems.


The solidification behaviour of pure Alloy 625, and Alloy 625 enriched respectively in iron and carbon, was investigated in situ by hot-stage light optical microscopy. Using this technique planar front solidification for distances of several hundred microns was facilitated. After solidification, the material that experienced planar front solidification corresponded accurately to that of dendrites tens of microns in width adopting an equivalent dendrite arm width approach. Eventually, the planar solidification front broke down, where after the residual liquid solidified eutectic-like. This material contained γ-phase, Laves phase and, if carbon was dissolved in the liquid, niobium rich carbides formed. Molybdenum and niobium showed strong tendencies to segregate. Their segregation was balanced by inverse segregation of nickel and iron. The chromium concentration remained almost constant in γ in the entire matrix material. Addition of carbon did not cause detectable alterations of the material that experienced planar front solidification. However, it promoted the formation of niobium rich carbides in the material that solidified eutectic-like. Thus, this material differed from that of the pure sample in constitution, and consequently in γ-phase composition. Niobium rich carbides formed prior to Laves phase; in carbon rich volumes only the carbides form. As compared to the pure sample, the sample enriched in iron had decreased global minimal solute concentration in the material that experienced planar front solidification. However, once the concentrations were corrected with respect to the dilution simply caused by the presence of iron, the solidification behaviour in this material was identical to that of the pure sample. The constitution in the material that solidified eutectic-like was γ and Laves phase. As compared to the pure sample, the Laves phase was enriched in iron.


The legal status of an organ, in the period between its extraction from the body of a donor and its implantation in the body of a recipient, is unclear. In that period, the excised organ might be said to be orphaned because of its ambiguous custodial and proprietary status, and a host of activities might take place which could jeopardise its safety or viability for transplantation. For instance, what happens if the organ was lost or damaged in transit? Not inconceivably, a thief might snatch the organ from the possession of the transplant team; a transplant surgeon could use the organ for the treatment of their relative or close friend, a celebrity, or an influential political figure, instead of transplanting the organ into the properly selected and designated recipient contrary to the established allocation criteria. The excised organ might be damaged maliciously by a third party, say, an enemy of the proposed recipient who was bent on frustrating the recipient's only means of receiving a life-saving treatment. Further, a live donor might change their mind on donation to the potential recipient after the organ has already been extracted. While these scenarios raise an interesting mix of legal, ethical, political and social questions, a fundamental enquiry that permeates the whole gamut of issues engendered by the hypothetical above is the question of ownership and proprietary entitlement to an excised (orphaned) organ. Accordingly, this article interrogates the question of proprietary control or ownership of an orphaned organ.


INTRODUCTION
The treatment of bilateral renal and/or ureteric stones can be challenging due to concerns about its safety and efficacy compared to staged ureteroscopy. This review evaluates the current evidence to look at the outcomes of bilateral simultaneous ureteroscopy (BS-URS) for urinary stone disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A systematic review using studies identified by a literature search between January 1990 and August 2013. All English language articles reporting on outcomes of BS-URS for urolithiasis were included. Two reviewers independently extracted the data from each study.

RESULTS
A total of seven studies (312 patients) were identified with a mean age of 40 years. Of the reported stone location, two thirds of the stones were in the ureter. With a mean operative time of 58 minutes, stone free status was achieved in 87.1% after the first look and 91.6% after a re-look for pure ureteric stones. Nearly 86% of patients had a postoperative stent inserted with a mean hospital stay of 2 days. In the pure ureteric stone cohort a total of 134 (50.8%) complications were reported. Around three quarters of the complications were Clavien I grading (hematuria, lower urinary symptoms and flank pain) and under a quarter were Clavien III complications.

CONCLUSION
Although BS-URS achieved a high overall stone free rate; the complication rate seemed to be high. The quality of included studies in this review was weak and future research with good methodology is required to evaluate the feasibility and safety of BS-URS procedure.