Active Learning and Adaptive Sampling for Non-Parametric Inference by Rui M. Castro This thesis presents a general discussion of active learning and adaptive sampling. In many practical scenarios it is possible to use information gleaned from previous observations to focus the sampling process, in the spirit of the "twenty-questions" game. As more samples are collected one can learn how to improve the sampling process by deciding where to sample next, for example. These sampling feedback techniques are generically known as active learning or adaptive sampling. Although appealing, analysis of such methodologies is difficult, since there are strong dependencies between the observed data. This is especially important in the presence of measurement uncertainty or noise. The main thrust of this thesis is to characterize the potential and fundamental limitations of active learning, particularly in non-parametric settings. First, we consider the probabilistic classification setting. Using minimax analysis techniques we investigate the achievable rates of classification error convergence for broad classes of distributions characterized by decision boundary regularity and noise conditions (which describe the observation noise near the decision boundary). The results clearly indicate the conditions under which one can expect significant gains through active learning. Furthermore we show that the learning rates derived are tight for "boundary fragment" classes in d-dimensional feature spaces when the feature iii marginal density is bounded from above and below. Second we study the problem of estimating an unknown function from noisy pointwise samples, where the sample locations are adaptively chosen based on previous samples and observations, as described above. We present results characterizing the potential and fundamental limits of active learning for certain classes of nonparametric regression problems, and also present practical algorithms capable of exploiting the sampling adaptivity and provably improving upon non-adaptive techniques. Our active sampling procedure is based on a novel coarse-to-fine strategy, based on and motivated by the success of spatially-adaptive methods such as wavelet analysis in nonparametric function estimation. Using the ideas developed when solving the function regression problem we present a greedy algorithm for estimating piecewise constant functions with smooth boundaries that is near minimax optimal but is computationally much more efficient than the best dictionary based method (in this case wedgelet approximations). Finally we compare adaptive sampling (where feedback guiding the sampling process is present) with non-adaptive compressive sampling (where non-traditional projection samples are used). It is shown that under mild noise compressive sampling can be competitive with adaptive sampling, but adaptive sampling significantly outperforms compressive sampling in lower signal-to-noise conditions. Furthermore this work also helps the understanding of the different behavior of compressive sampling under noisy and noiseless settings.


Adenosine to inosine (A-to-I) RNA editing by the ADAR enzymes is a common RNA modification, preventing false activation of the innate immune system by endogenous dsRNAs. Methods for quantification of ADAR activity are sought after, due to an increasing interest in the role of ADARs in cancer and auto-immune disorders, as well as attempts to harness the ADAR enzymes for RNA engineering. Here we present the Alu Editing Index (AEI), a robust and simple-to-use computational tool devised for this purpose that produces a single number representing the global editing level from BAM files. The AEI tool is available at https://github.com/a2iEditing/RNAEditingIndexer


The effect of varied amounts of phospholipids in the diet (100, 30 and 0.5% of the total lipid content) on the lipid composition and activity of lysosomal phospholipases A1 and A2 and cholesterinesterase of the rat liver was studied. The experiment lasted 24 days. The liver weight increased in both groups of animals under test, no differences in the content of total lipids being found. Variations in the activity of lipolytic enzymes were of different directions. The animals given pure phospholipids demonstrated less activity of phospholipase A1 without changes in phospholipase A2 activity, a tendency towards elevated activity of cholesterinesterase and drop in the content of phospholipids in the liver. The animals fed 30% of phospholipids showed higher activity of phospholipases A1 and A2, reduced activity of cholesterinesterase as well as decreased protein content in the liver.


Energy sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the few which has got a prospect for a potential of economic development in the country. Currently, electricity is one of the items for export in the country which can be regarded as a strategic sector regarding the country's tiny economic structure. Almost half of the electricity is produced by hydroelectric power plants (HEPP).

Currently total renewable water resources per capita in Bosnia are almost 9000 cubic meters, which means the highest in Europe. Since country's topography is dominated by Dinaric Alps, it generates an advantage for hydroelectric potential. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina is using only 38% of country's hydroelectric potential and both government bodies and economists agree that investing in HEPPs would one of the prescriptions for country's poor economical situation while the energy-lacking countries in the region are ready-customers. Federal Ministry of Energy, Mining and Industry of Bosnia and Herzegovina projects that an investment of 5963 million Euros is required to construct new HEPPs. The projects are envisioned not only to make a considerable surplus to GDP of the country, but also would boom the economy of the country which has a population of 4 million inhabitants.

On the other side, recently various outcomes of HEPP's are being widely discussed referring to political, environmental and social and cultural impacts of the projects, not only by NGO's, environmental activists and such, but also by national governments, international organizations and by international finance institutions who give credit for large scale development projects. In this respect, not only EIAs (Environmental Impact Assessments) but also SIAs (Social Impact Assessments) are required for "correct" projects.This paper will discuss the necessity for SIAs in BH Pervari HEPP, Incir HEPP, Tirebolu HEPP, Simav JEPP, Kargi HEPP) the paper will try to make a comparative analysis and figure out the dynamics and obstacles for SIAs in B&H.

Keywords: Social Impact Assessment, Hydro-energy, Anthropology, Bosnia.


I worked with and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 1970s at the ACLU. I have been in private practice since then, mostly practicing employment law. As I was considering what to speak to you about today, I decided to look back at the briefs that Justice Ginsburg wrote in the 1970s. And as I read them, it occurred to me that there's a very interesting difference between the way she framed her arguments those thirty-five years ago, the language she used, the results she sought then as an advocate, and the way she does those things now as a judge. I offer you two illustrations. The first comparison I call "high dudgeon then and now." Justice Ginsburg didn't display high dudgeon very often as an advocate but I found one excellent example, and I cherish it. It comes from her first Supreme Court brief, the one in Reed v. Reed in 1971. (1) Reed v. Reed, was a challenge to an Idaho statute that preferred men to women as administrators of estates. (2) That seems simple and straightforward enough today, but 1971 was a different world. First, there was no Supreme Court precedent at all, or, rather, there was a lot of Supreme Court precedent, and all of it was bad. Justice Ginsburg's brief in Reed was the very last time she would ever have to brief a case in the United States Supreme Court without being able to cite a Supreme Court case that she herself had won. Also significant is this--we were then right in the middle of the civil rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was in the recent past. (3) Maybe more important, Justice Ginsburg herself was practically a child--a mere thirty-eight years old. Despite her brilliance, she had not up until then gotten the jobs that were easily available to brilliant men, and even to men who were not so brilliant. And the Idaho statute she was challenging was particularly stupid. Justice Ginsburg knew, and has said as much, that it was our job to avoid frightening and alienating old male judges and show them, instead, that the favors they thought they were doing for women were not favors at all, that the pedestal was actually a cage. Throughout her ten years of women's rights advocacy, she challenged gender lines by showing judges that the classification was the outmoded product of stereotypical thinking: men as breadwinners, women as dependents; men as active, women as passive. But that gentle approach is not the only thing on display in the Reed brief. Perhaps it was her youthful exuberance, but in that brief, it would be hard to say that she was not downright confrontational. Here are a few quotes from that brief: "Race and sex are comparable classes. Both have been defined by, and subordinated to, the same power group--white males." "Both slaves and wives were once subject to the all-encompassing paternalistic power of the male head of house." "Prior to the Civil War, the legal status of women in the United States was comparable to that of blacks under the slave codes, albeit the white woman ranked as 'chief slave of the harem.'" She might have cited--but didn't--the infamous line of her colleague, Professor Curt Berger, who said in his property law textbook, "Land, like woman, is meant to be possessed." (4) Justice Ginsburg concluded the Reed brief with the most audacious line of all. She asserted that designating sex as a suspect classification was overdue! Despite the fact that no one--not even she--had ever before actually asked the Court to do so. As far as I know, Justice Ginsburg as advocate was never quite so confrontational in any later brief. But she certainly was as a judge. My favorite illustration is her dissenting opinion five years ago in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (5) Allow me to set this up. When Lily Ledbetter was about to retire from nineteen years of employment from Goodyear, she learned that she had been denied raises in the past due to her sex and those denials rendered her current pay much lower than that of comparable males. …


In the study of the effects of a teacher-planned literature instructional program, a teacher read-aloud program, and a non-specified reading instructional program on the reading attitudes of first and fourth grade students in two rural, western Kansas public schools, two statistical designs were employed. Four null hypotheses were tested with the pre-test/post- test control group design. Assessment of the 54 first graders and the 42 fourth graders' reading attitudes involved the utilization of the Primary Reading Attitude Index, Inventory of Reading Attitude, and the Reading Attitude Inventory (modified). No significant differences in adjusted post - mean attitude scores were evident in the results of the analyses of covariance for both the first and fourth graders. Additionally, no statistical differences in reading attitudes were found between the boys and girls who participated in the literature implementation program (first and fourth grade). Three null hypotheses were tested using the post-measure one group design. Each of the hypotheses regarding the comparison of first and fourth grade students' enjoyment of school reading on the student opinionnaire was rejected. A significant difference in the analysis of variance among the comparisons of first graders' mean ratings on the student opinionnaire revealed that those pupils who received the literature-based treatment program expressed more positive attitudes toward reading than the two control groups. No significant differences among the fourth graders' mean ratings on the students' opinionnaire were noted. Results from the t-tests indicated statistically significant differences between the calculated mean ratings for the first and fourth grade pupils and the theoretical mean of the student opinionnaire, whereby more positive attitudes were yielded by the students involved in the implementation program. Similarly, results from a t-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the calculated mean ratings of the teachers involved in the project and the theoretical mean of the teacher opinionnaire. Teacher s who participated in the investigation expressed more positive opinions than would have been statistically expected. Thus, a total of seven null hypotheses were tested in the study, of which three were rejected.


This research note analyzes the intellectual and ideological contents of cultural conservative discourses on the internet in the past several years in China. Our findings show that online cultural conservatives valorize Han ethnic culture and Chinese cultural tradition at the same time through conflating the two. They also demonstrate that online cultural conservatives reinterpret historical China in order to represent it in a totally positive light and that they vehemently attack the negative images of historical China found in intellectual, official, and popular cultural discourses. They claim that the real culprit that had prevented historical China from progressing into modernity was a non-Han ethnic group (the Manchus). Our analysis on political thoughts of online cultural conservatives shows that they partially agree with Chinese neo-leftists and liberals on critical assessment of contemporary Chinese reality but they diverge greatly from the two schools on the choice of solution for the problems. Online cultural conservatives' proposal is to reinvigorate traditional Chinese culture and their political vision combines international relations realism, cultural determinism, and Han ethnicism.


Hard Disk Drive's arm (HDD's arm) is one of the key elements in the HDD assembly. This element has to have the height of the arm measured from the reference be in the required range. To get such requirement, HDD's arms have to pass to a bending machine in order to measure and adjust the height of the arms accordingly. Currently, if needed, a pre-defined bending force is applied to the arm. In this paper, the fuzzy logic rule to control the bending force is proposed. From the experimental data, it is found that the performance of the proposed technique in terms of the process capability index of the arm height error is superior to the conventional technique.


AIM
This study aimed to retrospectively evaluate the overall survival (OS) of patients with brain metastases (BMs) who had been treated with whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) and Gamma Knife (GK) according to prognostic factors and prognostic index scores.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
The study included 91 patients with BMs who had been treated with WBRT and/or GK between 2014 and 2017. The patients with BMs were retrospectively evaluated regarding age, sex, Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS), recursive partitioning analysis (RPA) class, basic score for BM (BS-BM), Graded Prognostic Assessment (DS-GPA) index, primary tumour type, extracranial metastases, primary tumour control, number of BMs, and brain metastasectomy. A univariate analysis of the OS was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method, supplemented by the log-rank test. We also applied a multivariate survival analysis using the Cox regression model.

RESULTS
The median OS for all patients with BMs was 6 months. Meanwhile, the median OSs for those with WBRT, GK, and WBRT-GK treatment were 6, 4, and 15 months, respectively (p = 0.00). In the multivariate analysis, the female sex (p = 0.030), brain metastasectomy (p = 0.047), treatment with WBRT-GK (p = 0.001), and the controlled primary tumour (p = 0.007) significantly correlated with the OS. Furthermore, the BS-BM (p = 0.022) was closely related with the OS compared to the RPA and DS-GPA in the multivariate analysis.

CONCLUSION
The BS-BM was found to better predict the survival of patients with BMs according to the prognostic index scores in the multivariate analysis. Thus, our data suggest that the BS-BM is the most appropriate prognostic index.


The concepts of quality and value have become ubiquitous in discussions about health care, including cancer care. Despite their prominence, these concepts remain difficult to encapsulate, with multiple definitions and frameworks emerging over the past few decades. Defining quality and value for the care of older adults with cancer can be particularly challenging. Older adults are heterogeneous and often excluded from clinical trials, severely limiting generalizable data for this population. Moreover, many frameworks for quality and value focus on traditional outcomes of survival and toxicity and neglect goals that may be more meaningful for older adults, such as quality of life and functional independence. A history of quality and value standards and an evaluation of some currently available standards and frameworks elucidate the potential gaps in application to older adults with cancer. However, narrowing the focus to processes of care presents several opportunities for improving the care of older adults with cancer now, even while further work is ongoing to evaluate outcomes and efficiency. New models of care, including the patient-centered medical home, as well as new associated bundled payment models, would be advantageous for older adults with cancer, facilitating collaboration, communication, and patient-centeredness and minimizing the fragmentation that impairs the current provision of cancer care. Advances in information technology support the foundation for these models of care; these technologies facilitate communication, increase available data, support shared decision making, and increase access to multidisciplinary specialty care. Further work will be needed to define and to continue to tailor processes of care to achieve relevant outcomes for older patients with cancer to fulfill the promise of quality and value of care for this vulnerable and growing population.


: Recent years have seen a correlation between the rise in morbidity and lethality from chronic viral hepatitis and that of hepatocellular carcinoma. Present-day methods of hepatotropic viruses (HBV and HCV) identification point to a growing role of chronic viral hepatitis in etiology of cirrhosis which gives rise to hepatocellular cancers. A study of 49 cases based on sectional material established hepatocellular carcinoma development in smoldering chronic viral hepatitis caused by B or C virus or their combination. An immunohistochemical investigation (29) identified differences in hepatitis B and C virus antigen expression in tumor and adjacent hepatic tissue.


The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) technique was employed to investigate the point defects in barium strontium titanate ceramics. All samples showed a strong EPR signal with g = 2.000, which was indexed as intrinsic Ti-vacancy defects. In (Ba0.85Sr0.15)TiO3 ceramic, which showed a tetragonal symmetry and consisted of the crystallites with average size of ~ 220 nm, a novel EPR powder spectrum was observed - the g-factor of the g = 2.000 signal evolved into a g-tensor, and the two weak signals with g3 = ~ 2.6 and g1 = ~ 1.6 gradually shifted toward the g2 = 2.000 signal and approached to each other with increasing temperature.


Electroconductive magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) have attracted a wide scientific attention in recent years due to their potential applications as electric current elements, in seismic protection, in production of rehabilitation devices, and sensors or transducers of magnetic fields/mechanical tensions. A particular interest concerns their behavior under the influence of external magnetic and electric fields, since various physical properties (e.g., rheological, elastic, electrical) can be continuously and/or reversibly modified. In this chapter, we describe fabrication methods and structural properties from small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) of various isotropic and anisotropic MRE and hybrid MRE. We present and discuss the physical mechanisms leading to the main features of interest for various medical and technical applications, such as electrical (complex dielectric permittivity, electrical conductivity) and rheological (viscosity) properties.


The 2008/2009 world economic crisis had significant impact on oil and fuel markets. This crisis has been developed from the meltdown of the American mortgage and financial market and spread throughout the global economy. As each country reacted differently to the crisis, the changes in the fuel market have also shown significant geographic variation. In our present research, the changes of the US, German and Hungarian fuel markets were analysed, looking for answers to the reasons behind different crisis reactions. We examined the tendency of fuel consumption, the changes of gasoline and diesel price elasticity and the possible effects of the crisis on the regulatory system.


This paper focuses on issues of language and culture as mediated by digital video technology. The research arises from a collaborative, internationally taught module where undergraduates from 4 different countries - the UK, the USA, Sweden and the Netherlands - use discussion forums within a VLE to discuss lan-guage-related topics. Within this larger community, a specific project integrating digital video into the VLE allowed Dutch students to present their papers to their UK peers, and for UK students to record a set of responses, to agreed guidelines. The focus taken in this paper is to consider the affordances of this technology for giving and getting feedback across cultural boundaries, and for intercultural communication in a wider sense. At a time when higher education providers are particularly concerned with internationalising their provision, but where students find international mobility difficult for financial reasons, digital video appears to offer much potential for meaningful connection. However, there are important issues about how groups in different cultures are positioned by the purposes of such video exchanges and the nature of the larger project within which they function (see various papers in Herring 1996 in this regard). In this paper, we focus particularly on the roles taken up by the respective groups within the partnership and con-sider ways in which video communication enriched the learning experiences of the participants. We also consider some particular ways in which global issues of language use impacted on the project to frame the communication events.


We present an overview of our work carried out for DCU's participation in the Cross Language !ndian News Story Search (CL!NSS) task at FIRE 2013. Our team submitted 3 main runs and 2 additional runs for this task. Our approach consisted of 2 steps: (1) the Lucene search engine was used with varied input query formulations using dif- ferent features and heuristics designed to identify as many relevant doc- uments as possible to improve recall; (2) document list merging and re-ranking was performed with the incorporation of a date feature. The results of our best run were ranked rst among ocial submissions based on NDCG@5 and NDCG@10 values and second for NDCG@1 values. For the 25 test queries the results of our best main run were NDCG@1 0.7400, NDCG@5 0.6809 and NDCG@10 0.7268.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the gastric emptying of an oral supplement containing carbohydrate plus whey protein drunk before sedation for gastroscopy.

METHODS
This is a randomized double-blind trial including adult patients (ages 18-65) with a chief complaint of epigastric burning and who were candidates to elective gastroscopy. After overnight fast subjects were randomized to drink 200 mL of an oral nutritional supplement containing maltodextrine in addition to whey protein 150 to 210 min before the gastroscopy (intervention group, n = 12) or to undergo the endoscopic procedure with no supplement (control group, n = 12). The residual gastric volume (RGV) suctioned and measured during the exam was the main endpoint of the study.

RESULTS
There were no complications during all exams. The median (range) fasting time was greater (P < 0.001) in control group (770 min, ranging from 660-917 min) than in the study group (175 min ranging from 150 to 210 min). The median (range) RGV was similar in between the two groups (control group: 25 (10-70) mL versus intervention group: 10 (0-100) mL; p = 0.32).

CONCLUSION
Gastric emptying 150-210 min after the ingestion of an oral supplement containing carbohydrate plus whey protein is similar to an overnight fasting condition. Although limited by the number of cases, the sedation for endoscopic procedures is safe with this fasting protocol.


Directional prepositions that can be used as numeral modifiers (directional numeral modifiers or DNMs) are different from other numeral modifiers that set an upper bound in that they set a non-cancellable lower bound, their upper bound is cancellable, they are incompatible with the numeral at the bottom of the scale they quantify over, they are not downward monotone and do not license NPIs, and they interact differently with evaluative adverbs. This paper argues that the cause of all these differences is that DNMs assert a lower bound and implicate an upper bound, and that all class B numeral modifiers require quantification over a range of values. Crosslinguistic data support these claims.


This Article analyzes court decisions in 361 criminal cases involving neuroimaging evidence through the end of 2015. There has been a steady upward trend in the number of criminal cases considering neuroimaging evidence with the number of reported decisions being the highest in the most recent period of 2013-2015. Neuroimaging evidence has been used in competency, guilt, and penalty phases of criminal trials, with the most efficacy being seen in the penalty phase, especially in capital cases. In order to provide a helpful analysis of uses and trends of this specific type of evidence, this Article includes an identification of the specific neuroimaging modality used or requested in each case (CT, MRI, EEG, PET, SPECT), the reason for the request for neuroimaging, the legal argument involving the imaging data, and the court's response. In addition, common concerns regarding the use of neuroimaging data are also addressed, including the complexity of the various techniques and analysis, individual variability of the brain, the time gap between scanning and the criminal act, and the ability to make statements about groups versus about one individual. As supported by the trends demonstrated in this analysis, there has been a shift in recent years from discussion about whether neuroimaging evidence is relevant and admissible toward admissibility of this type of evidence and a focus on the substantive results and appropriate use of the neuroimaging data.


We analyse the classical and quantum theory of a scalar field interacting with gravitation in two dimensions. We describe a class of analytic solutions to the Wheeler--DeWitt equation from which we are able to synthesize states that give prominence to a set of classical cosmologies. These states relate in a remarkable way to the general solution of the classical field equations. We express these relations, without approximation, in terms of a metric and a closed form on the domain of quantum states.


Crude palm oil from the mesocarp of Elaeis guineensis Jacq fruits is one of the most consumed vegetable oil in the world. The quality of palm oil assessed mainly by its free fatty acids (FFA) content and impurities, varies between the artisanal and industrial extraction and supply systems. The objective of this paper is to highlight the main parameters that influence the acidity or FFA content of crude palm oil produced by the smallholder artisanal sector. Three parameters examined are: crude palm oil production and extraction methods, microbial activity and oil palm genotype. These three parameters strongly increase lipase activity and hence palm oil acidity. In addition to endogenous lipase in fruit mesocarp, microorganisms found in palm oil are also involved in lipase activity e.g. Aspergillus sp, Mucor sp, Penicillium and Candida for fungi; and bacteria such as Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Micrococcus, Staphylococcus and Enterobacter. To improve the quality of palm oil, smallholders must first seek oil palm progenies with low acidity oil and respect the standard cultural practices for palm oil production.

 Key words: Elaeis guineensis Jacq, palm oil acidity, microorganisms, production systems, genotype.


The ecological "health" of aquatic ecosystems is important to scientists, resource managers, and the general public. In order to properly protect or restore the integrity of an aquatic system we must first accurately assess its present condition. The Index of Biotic Integrity (IBI) is a relatively new approach to this problem which utilizes the characteristics of a lake's fish assemblage to assess lake health. My study focused on developing an Index of Biotic Integrity for several small lakes in New York. The objectives of my study were to (1) select metrics applicable to the set of eight small lakes, (2) calculate an Index of Biotic Integrity for these lakes, and (3) to evaluate the ability of the IBI to estimate the condition of the lakes in terms of anthropogenic impact. The results of the 181 assessment were evaluated via comparison with assessments based on two other methods: a standard rating based on water quality and watershed data and a modification of the Trophic State Index (TSI). Results showed that neither the 181 or TSI could accurately assess the level of anthropogenic impact completely. Although the 181 was unable to correctly assess the level of impact on all study lakes, the results were encouraging and several metrics showed promise for uses outside the realm of the IBI. Furthermore, a comprehensive assessment based on the results of all three methods used in this study produced the best overall results.


A solution of the inviscid rapid distortion equations for a stratified flow with homogeneous shear is proposed, extending the work of Hanazaki & Hunt (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 507, 2004, pp. 1–42) to the two horizontal velocity components. The analytical solution allows for the determination of the spectral tensor evolution at any given time starting from a known initial condition. By following the same approach as that adopted by Mann (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 273, 1994, pp. 141–168), a model for the spectral velocity tensor in the atmospheric boundary layer is obtained, where the spectral tensor, assumed to be isotropic at the initial time, evolves until the breakup time where the spectral tensor is supposed to achieve its final state observed in the boundary layer. The model predictions are compared with atmospheric measurements obtained over a forested area, giving the opportunity to calibrate the model parameters, and further validation is provided by additional low-roughness data. Characteristic values of the model coefficients and their dependence on the Richardson number are proposed and discussed.


A nonprofit organization (NPO), is defined as a business "not conducted or maintained for the purpose of making a profit" (merriamwebster.com). However, to pursue the goal of benefiting society, a nonprofit must have enough funds in order to further their mission. Nonprofits rely heavily on government funding, outside donations, and fundraising to get what they need, but the amount received by an organization fluctuates year to year which makes budgeting and accounting difficult. This thesis will work to evaluate the financial and business processes of the not-for-profit organization called Partners in Development located in Ipswich Massachusetts. Partners in Development is a recognized 501(c)(3) organization that sends teams of volunteers to Haiti, Guatemala, Peru, and the Mississippi Delta to build homes, and provide medical care and clean water to those in need. Based off of extensive research in the not-for-profit sector as well as an interview with the organization's President; this thesis will identify and explain the business and financial practices of this organization that result in its success, and serve as an example for those wishing to pursue their lifelong dream of helping others.


Three major Mesozoic-Tertiary basins adjoin in east-west alignment along the eastern third of the south coast of Australia, for a distance of about 700 miles. The total area embraced by the three basins is about 100,000 square miles, and it includes part of three of Australia's six states. Three-fourths of the area is offshore shelf. The general east-west alignment of the basins resulted from sharp taphrogenic breakdown across the generally north-south Paleozoic orogenic trend of eastern Australia and Tasmania. The main faults and many of the basin features tend to have northeasterly or northwesterly trends, suggesting that rotational or transcurrent stresses were involved in the breakup and subsidence. Sedimentation began at least as early as the Late Jurassic. The Mesozoic is an estuarine to marine, poor- to well-sorted terrigenous clastic series. The Tertiary is largely marine and is more uniformly developed throughout. The lower third of the Tertiary contains extensive, generally highly porous and permeable coastal sandstone beds together with some shale and varying amounts of coal and carbonaceous beds. The middle beds consist mainly of shale. The upper third or more has a considerable amount of limestone and marl. Several unconformities are recognized. Though not all sediments bear marine fossils, the contained waters are saline beyond the limits of the rather extensive fresh-water flushing onshore. The Gippsland or eastern basin includes approximately 20,000 square miles. At least 10,000 feet of rapidly deposited Upper Jurassic-Cretaceous terrigenous clastics fills a down-faulted central trough and overlaps the basin shelves on the north and south; and about 9,000 feet of more widely extending Tertiary sandstone, shale, marl, and limestone comprises the remainder of the basin fill. The deeply silled Bass basin separates the island State of Tasmania from the mainland. It occupies an area of 35,000 square miles. The section consists of 12,000 feet or more of sandstone, shale, marl, and limestone, together with some coal, of Eocene and earlier ages. Deposition began in the central part of the basin, probably at least as early as Late Cretaceous time, and it continued throughout the Tertiary. The deposition progressively overlapped toward all flanks. The western, or Otway, basin includes an area of about 45,000 square miles. In this basin, the Mesozoic consists of sandstone, shale, siltstone, and mudstone. Deposition began during the latter part of Jurassic time and it continued, except for recognizable intervals of non-deposition, into the Paleocene. The maximum thickness exceeds 15,000 feet. A maximum of about 8,000 feet of overlapping Tertiary sandstone, shale, marl, and limestone completes the basin fill. Potential petroleum traps of the following types occur: tectonic folds; fault or fault-block structures; massive, elongate sandstone bodies associated with pronounced transgressive overlap, shale interfingering, and compaction drape; porosity abutment both above and below extensive low-angle unconformities; unconformable overlap by basin-sink sediments across broad-bottom highs and against and over major fault scarps; structural noses; extensive progressive flank overlap around a deeply silled basin by a sandstone, shale, marl, and limestone section; and porosity pinchouts. Since the mid-1920s, 130 exploratory borings have been drilled onshore in the extensively freshwater-flushed basin flanks. Numerous non-commercial oil and gas shows were logged. In 1965 and 1966, five exploratory wells were drilled offshore, up to the April, 1966, date of this paper. Three of these were located on well-defined closure in the Gippsland basin and resulted in major wet gas and oil discoveries in Eocene and Upper Cretaceous sandstone reservoirs. Prior to farmout of each of the three basins, successively from east to west, 18,000 miles of aerial magnetic and 5,320 miles of conventional seismic surveys were carried out under the direction and assistance of the writers. Comprehensive basin studies and compilations completed the preliminary investigations. Not included in the foregoing are various geophysical surveys on a much smaller scale by other companies and government agencies. Also not included are many hundreds of miles of additional shooting by the farmee preparatory to drilling.


Within the history of paediatrics is the history of the name used to describe it. The etymology of the word 'paediatrics' dates from its first written use, recorded as 'pädiatrik' in the German literature and as 'paediatric', later 'pediatric' in the USA, both first in 1850. Professor Robley Dunglison (1788–1869), the British and American medical lexicographer, first defined 'paediatria' as 'the treatment of the diseases of children' in 1855. 'Pediatric medicine' was promoted as a specialty in the USA in 1880. The oldest monumental inscription defining the specialty of 'paediatrics' in the UK is to be found on a plaque added (in 1950) to the memorial to Dr George Armstrong (1719–1789), a founder of the specialty of paediatrics, in Castleton Cemetery, Scottish Borders, Roxburghshire. 'Paediatrics' and 'child health', with subtle semantic distinctions, had become well established in the English-speaking world by the middle of the 20th century. This paper presents an interpretative chronology of the etymology of the descriptors of the specialty that enjoins all who care for children.


A reduction (by 16-24%) in the amount of myosin regulatory light chains (LC2) in all heart sections of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy was found. The appearance of atrial essential light chains in ventricular myosin (up to 23%) not typical for this heart section in norm was also revealed. The decrease in LC2 content leads to a considerable inhibition of actin-activated ATPase activity and a loss of Ca2+ sensitivity of reconstructed filaments of myosin isolated from atria and ventricles of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. The hybridization of myosin molecules from heavy chains of pathological human left ventricular myosin and light chains of pig left ventricular myosin leads to an increase in actin-activated ATPase activity of myosin and its Ca2+ sensitivity to the control level. The data suggest strongly the contribution of LC2-deficit to the distortion of functional properties of myosin in dilated cardiomyopathy. In contrast, the appearance of atrial LC1 in ventricle in dilated cardiomyopathy is a factor improving these properties.


A petrological assessment of 11 volcano-sedimentary belts in the Central Arabian Shield (CAS) using 118 new analyses is presented. The same samples have been used in a Rb-Sr dating programme also reported in this volume. The oldest volcano-sedimentary belts ('sequence' C; >900 Ma) are chemically immature bimodal suites of low-K tholeiites and sodic dacite/rhyolite depleted in lithophile elements. These lavas have chemical characteristics similar to immature island arcs such as the Tonga–Kermadee and Lesser Antilles arcs. Younger lavas of 'sequence' B (900–700 Ma) are slightly more mature in composition, being predominantly calc-alkaline and low-K arc tholeiite series with higher lithophile element contents. They are comparable with Pacific island are averages. The youngest voluminous lavas ('sequence' A; 700–570 Ma) are generally calc-alkaline or high-K, calc-alkaline series lavas with moderately high lithophile element abundances. They are comparable to volcanic arcs such as Central America and Indonesia, which are transitional between island arcs and continental margin volcanic arcs. The cratonization process in the CAS thus involved the superimposition of three volcano-sedimentary sequences, formed in progressively maturing volcanic arcs. Early-formed, immature island arcs were succeeded by chemically more mature island arc deposits and then by deposits formed in volcanic arc(s) transitional between island arcs and continental margins. The evolution ceased at this stage and probably did not advance to the equivalent of an Andean continental margin.


We propose a construct, the Trust Triangle, that highlights three primary mechanisms that provide ex post accountability for opportunistic behavior and motivate ex ante trust in economic relationships. The mechanisms are (i) a society's legal and regulatory framework, (ii) market-based discipline and reputational capital, and (iii) culture, including individual ethics and social norms. The Trust Triangle provides a framework to conceptualize the relationships between trust, corporate accountability, legal liability, reputation, and culture. We use the Trust Triangle to summarize recent developments in the empirical finance literature that examine how trust is formed and how trust, or its absence, affects financial markets, firm performance, and the incidence of financial fraud. To date, most studies examine only one leg of the Trust Triangle in isolation. The evidence, however, indicates that all three legs of the Trust Triangle have first-order effects on a wide range of financial outcomes and that they are interrelated. Attempts to model trust and trustworthiness that do not incorporate all three aspects of the Trust Triangle will therefore miss essential aspects of the basic economic problem of how counterparties overcome the risks of moral hazard, asymmetric information, and opportunism to engage in mutually beneficial exchange and production activities. We focus especially on culture-related mechanisms, a recently developed area in empirical finance research that has potential to influence the more established research on laws and reputation.


OBJECTIVES
Previous community-based studies have failed to demonstrate an independent association between OSA and circulating cardiac troponin concentrations, a marker of myocardial injury. However, these studies have used troponin assays with modest analytic sensitivity to detect low-level, chronic increments in troponin levels. Using a highly sensitive troponin I (hs-TnI) assay, we tested the hypothesis that the severity of OSA is associated with myocardial injury independently of comorbidities.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
Community-based.

PARTICIPANTS
514 subjects (54% men, age 48 ± 11 y [mean ± SD]).

INTERVENTIONS
N/A.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
hs-TnI concentrations were measured in fasting morning blood samples and 318 participants (62%) had hs-TnI concentration above the limit of detection ([LoD] 1.2 ng/L). The severity of OSA, expressed as the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and nocturnal hypoxemia, was assessed by in-hospital polysomnography. After adjustment for age, gender, estimated creatinine clearance, history of coronary artery disease and hypertension, smoking, diabetes mellitus, systolic blood pressure, heart rate, body mass index, left ventricular hypertrophy, and cholesterol ratio in multivariate linear regression models, higher AHI (standardized β = 0.12, P = 0.006), lower mean SpO2 (β = -0.13, P = 0.012) and higher percentage of total sleep time with SpO2 < 90% (β = 0.12, P = 0.011) were all associated with higher hs-TnI levels in separate models. Additional analyses with hs-TnI categorized in tertiles or using a different strategy for persons with hs-TnI levels below the LoD did not change the results.

CONCLUSION
Increased obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) severity is independently associated with higher concentrations of hs-TnI, suggesting that frequent apneas or hypoxemia in OSA may cause low-grade myocardial injury.


This thesis describes the design, construction, and use of a sputter deposition facility at the University of Leeds for the growth of magnetic multilayer samples. Now completed, the machine is a UHV sputtering facility, capable of growing up to 15 samples of arbitrary complexity under computer control in a single vacuum cycle. The system currently has five sputter targets.
The system was used to grow Co/Cu multilayers. It was found that the level of residual gas in the chamber is of primary importance in determining the final quality of the samples. A good vacuum is required to achieve good antiferromagnetic coupling between adjacent Co layers in the multilayer stack. Consequentially the giant magnetoresistance of such samples is very high. A poor vacuum leads to poor coupling between Co layers, and the magnetoresistance of such samples is minimal.
When grown under clean conditions the giant magnetoresistance of the Co/Cu multilayers was very high - as much as 75% at room temperature, rising to 130% at 4.2K. Coupling oscillations as the Cu spacer thickness was varied were strong, whilst none were detected as a function of Co thickness.
It was found that the >< Cu spacer layer was the part of the multilayer where the effects of damage by residual gases were most severe, and that damage to this area could cause biquadratic coupling. This form of the coupling arranges spins in adjacent layers at 90° to one another, rather than antiparallel, reducing the giant magnetoresistance response of the sample. The saturation magnetisation, bilinear and biquadratic coupling energies of 180° and 90° coupled samples were measured. These three quantities were found to scale as a function of temperature.


It is well known that in an asynchronous system where processes are prone to crash, it is impossible to design a protocol that provides each process with the set of processes that are currently alive. Basically, this comes from the fact that it is impossible to distinguish a crashed process from a process that is very slow or with which communications are very slow. Nevertheless, designing protocols that provide the processes with good approximations of the set of processes that are currently alive remains a real challenge in fault-tolerant-distributed computing. This paper proposes such a protocol, plus a second protocol that allows to cope with heterogeneous communication networks. These protocols consider a realistic computation model where the processes are provided with nonsynchronized local clocks and a function \alpha () that takes a local duration \Delta as a parameter, and returns an integer that is an estimate of the number of processes that could have crashed during that duration \Delta. A simulation-based experimental evaluation of the proposed protocols is also presented. These experiments show that the protocols are practically relevant.


This paper aims at highlighting the need for the examination of factors influencing pre-service teachers' multicultural competence in non-traditional multicultural environments, using Greece as an indicative example. After providing some background characteristics concerning the presence of diversity in the Greek wider societal and educational context, the paper defines a way of operationalising multicultural competence based on Sue's (2001) multidimensional model. Next, a literature review of factors that have been found to influence multicultural competence or its aspects is presented. Based on that literature review, the paper concludes suggesting the utilisation of a multifactorial model as a means of getting a more nuanced understanding of the factors influencing pre-service teacher's multicultural competence.


In this paper, the author reports the extensive research studies by the author's team on the development of glued laminated bamboo, or glubam, a bamboo-based glulam. Research findings indicate that the glubam has similar mechanical properties as timber and can be used as substitute to timber-based glulam. Several demonstration projects were also executed exhibiting the suitable constructability of glubam structures. Inspired by the recent advancement of cross-laminated timber or CLT in Europe, the author's team recently is developing cross-laminated bamboo and timber, or CLBT (or CLTB). Pilot tests for manufacturability and mechanical performance of CLBT panels were carried out and the results demonstrate the good behavior of the CLBT as building slabs and panels. CLBT is promising for integrating the use of bamboo and fast-grown trees, both are quite abundant in China and elsewhere.


Design validation and verification is the process of ensuring correctness of a design described at different levels of abstraction during the design process. Design validation is the main bottleneck in improving design turnaround time. Currently, simulation is the primary methodology for validation of the first description of a design. In this paper we integrate directed search methods and observability-based code coverage metric (OCCOM) computation into an algorithm for generating test vectors under OCCOM for sequential HDL models. A prototype system for design validation under OCCOM has been built. The system uses repeated coverage computation to minimize the number of vectors generated. Experimental results using the test vector generation system are presented.


Mispositioning of buried utilities is an increasingly important problem both in industrialized and developing countries because of urban sprawl and technological advances. However, some of these networks have surface access traps, which may be visible on high-resolution airborne or satellite images and could serve as presence indicators. We put forward a methodology to detect manhole covers and grates on very high-resolution aerial and satellite images. Two methods are tested: the first is based on a geometrical circular filter, whereas the second one uses machine learning to retrieve some patterns. The results are compared and combined to benefit from the two approaches.


The partial evaluation approach, which transforms a high-level program into a low-level program that is specialized for a particular application, exposing the parallelism inherent in the underlying numerical computation, is discussed. A prototype compiler that uses partial evaluation is described. Experiments with the compiler have shown that for an important class of numerical programs, partial evaluation can provide marked performance improvements: speedups over conventionally compiled code that range from seven times faster to 91 times faster have been measured. By coupling partial evaluation with parallel scheduling techniques, the low-level parallelism inherent in a computation can be exploited on heavily pipelined or parallel architectures. The approach has been demonstrated by applying a parallel scheduler to a partially evaluated program that simulates the motion of a nine-body solar system.<<ETX>>


Background . The aim of the present study was to compare the biomechanical characteristics of posterior meniscal root repair of porcine and human menisci. Methods . In vitro biomechanical testing was performed using 12 porcine menisci and 12 human menisci. All menisci were sectioned at the midpoint of their circumference and mounted on an electro-mechan-ic testing machine. The posterior root was sutured with three single stitches using a no. 2 non-absorbable suture. All specimens were subjected to cyclic axial loading followed by load-to-failure testing. Displacements were recorded at the conclusion of cycles 1, 100, 500 and 1000. Further, load-displacement curves of each specimen were recorded and analyzed to determine the cyclic stiffness at the 500th and 1000th cycle. Results. A higher elongation of the human specimens was observed after 1, 100, 500 and 1000 loading cycles, when it was compared to porcine specimens (p < 0.05). The total displacement amount of the porcine specimens at the 1000th cycle was 2.2 mm ± 0.1. Similarly, the total displacement amount of the human specimens at the 1000th cycle was 3 mm ± 0.5. Higher stiffness was observed in the porcine group at the 500th and 1000th cycle. Conclusion. Three single sutures technique for meniscal root repair appears to be biomechanically effective for both human and porcine menisci.


Objectives: Three Yersinia species (out of 17) are important
human pathogens - Y. pestis, Y. enterocolitica and Y.
pseudotuberculosis. Out of yersiniae, only one bacteriocin,
pesticin I, was characterized on a molecular level so far. In
this study, we have mapped the production of antimicrobial
agents by 53 environmental yersiniae. Results: In the set of
yersiniae strains, we have identified 6 bacteriocin producers -
Y. frederiksenii (1 strain), Y. intermedia (1 strain) and Y.
ruckerii (4 strains). Bacteriocin produced by Y. frederiksenii
27601 was further analyzed. This bacteriocin seems to
specifically target yersinia strains, as it does not act
against any other tested Enterobacteriaceae (20 strains out of
5 enterobacterial genera have been tested so far).
Interestingly, this bacteriocin specifically kills Y.
enterocolitica (98%, 45 out of 46 strains tested) in contrast
to strains of Y. pseudotuberculosis (0%, 15 strains tested).
Among the 53 environmental yersiniae, this bacteriocin was
active on 14 strains (24%). Genes encoding the colicin (1317
bp) and immunity protein (338 bp) have been identified on a
plasmid. Functional tests revealed its pore forming activity.
Moreover, receptor binding domain interacting with
yersinia-specific outer membrane protein YiuR was identified
together with TonB-system responsible for its translocation.
Conclusion: We have described a novel colicin FY, isolated from
a strain of Yersinia frederiksenii, its complete plasmid
sequence (pYF27601), mechanism of its toxicity, corresponding
receptor (YiuR), and translocation routes into a susceptible
bacterium. This is the first colicin characterized in detail,
active mainly against pathogenic species of Y. enterocolitica.


Studies on migration in Nepal primarily focused on the causes of migration, in general. While a few studies examined the remittances received or sent by migrants, there is little information about the variation in remittances received by households by migrant's destination. Thus, this exploratory study attempts to answer: Does the extent to which households receive remittances vary by migrant's destination? Using the data collected in 2013 from the western Chitwan Valley of Nepal, the findings from multivariate analysis reveal that net of controls, both the receipt (whether a household received any remittance or not) as well as the amount of remittances received by a household varied by migrant's destination. Evidence suggests that households are less likely to receive remittances from migrants working in India (a country of low earning potential) as compared to those working in Nepal. On the other hand, households received significantly more amount of remittances from migrants working in countries with high earning potentials (such as Middle East, East or South East Asia, and America, Australia and Europe) as compared to the domestic migrants who were working inside of Nepal but outside of Chitwan. Adjusting for other factors, the largest amount of remittances was received from migrants working in the East or South East Asian countries (e.g. South Korea, Malaysia, Japan) followed by those in America, Australia, and Europe and the Middle East. The insights gained from this exploratory study are discussed .


Fear is increasingly cited as a reason for rising rates of intervention in childbirth, with women it is argued opting for operative birth in order to avoid going through labour. Explanatory factors are said to include previous negative birth experiences, but increasingly the way that childbirth is portrayed by the media is suggested to be having a significant effect on women's perceptions and raising anxiety with regard to the birth process. Last year, with growing interest in the impact of the media on maternal perceptions, Bournemouth University held a debate on the role that the media plays in creating fear in childbirth (Hundley et al., 2014). Not surprisingly the debate sparked fairly heated discussion, but a point raised by our media colleagues made us stop and think. They argued that the responsibility for balanced reporting of childbirth lay not with the media but with the midwifery profession. Midwives they said needed to be more media savvy.


Smokeless tobacco is the term used to describe a range of products found worldwide which individuals use to extract nicotine, but without smoking. Ways of achieving this include chewing, sniffing and placing in areas of the body where tissues are sufficiently thin for absorption to take place such as the oral mucosa or postauricular skin. In Central Australia, Aboriginal groups across a wide area have chewed wild tobacco plants, commonly known as Pituri, for countless generations. As well as inducing a sense of well-being, the habit has strong cultural significance. While some smokeless tobacco products used outside Australia are known to have a detrimental effect on oral health, particularly malignant change, little is known about Pituri. To date, reports of adverse oral outcomes have been elusive. Most Pituri research seems to have focussed on obstetric issues, arguably unexpected as the tobacco seems to be in contact with the mouth for longer than any other body tissues. The following report describes a lesion on the anterior buccal mucosa resulting from prolonged Pituri use. The relevant literature is reviewed. A clinical and ethical management dilemma arises between respecting the associated cultural issues and ignoring an apparent pathological entity. © 2022 Australian Dental Association.


Engine maintenance and repair is a large part of the total airplane operating cost. Routine maintenance is essential for providing a positive impact on lifetime, engine performance and reliability. The sector of on-wing and near-wing maintenance is growing because of its potential to reduce the expenses and inspection time, with diagnostics taking place close to the airplane or inside a hangar on the airport. Due to the high complexity of modern jet engines, this task creates special needs towards the measurement systems regarding flexibility and robustness.
 This paper describes four design approaches of such measurement systems to determine the engine parts' health status with complex geometries in narrow or occluded spaces between blades and individual discs. The utilized nondestructive technologies are endoscopic fringe projection for geometry measurement, adapted low coherence interferometry to determine surface microstructures, high frequency inductive thermography with an optical mirror and miniaturized high frequency eddy current testing for inspection of the protection coating system and for the detection of subsurface cracks and defects. The inspection information obtained by all these techniques can be further used for regeneration process simulations and functional simulations to predict the optimal overhaul strategy.


ABSTRACT A convergence between vulnerability, radicalisation and children has been framed as an emergent category of abuse: "childhood radicalisation". Focusing on the UK PREVENT programme, this paper explores the ways children have become interrelated with counter-radicalisation. While PREVENT engages with people of all ages, Home Office data indicates children are a target group. This approach has been consolidated through the 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act which legislates PREVENT as safeguarding. Inspired by Ernst Bloch's "ontology-of-the-not-yet", this article draws upon critical geographies of "hope" as a theoretical tool to unpack PREVENT. I explore the productive power of PREVENT in catalysing "hopeful" forms of subjectivity; specifically, the pedagogy of PREVENT, and de-radicalisation through Channel. The article then extends Bloch's original apparatus to examine the ways hope acts as an assemblage of affects to enact practices of control. It is the reciprocal influence of hope, fear and anticipatory security that helps illuminate how PREVENT makes visible, and thus regulates, processes of becoming. The article traverses disciplines encompassing criminology, critical geography, critical international relations, and critical terrorism studies. This inter-disciplinary approach usefully captures PREVENT in terms of performativity, anticipatory security and the figuration of the child.


In 1985, Mutsuyuki Kochi [1,2] reported a novel anti-tumor agent after acquiring a Japanese Patent in 1969. According to his patent, 4-Hydroxybenzaldehyde is an anti-tumor agent without any sideeffects. My impression is that this medicine is capable of preventing carcinogenesis when used quantitatively sufficiently. In order to treat developed cancers, you ought to start giving your cancer patient a small dose of the stuff because, otherwise, the patient may suffer from a serious haemorrhage of the tumor caused by excessive necrosis. Therefore, lymphomas and leukaemia's can be treated more easily because these tumors have no blood vessels. Consequently, those who have these diseases receive considerably large dose of the medicine.


Social simulation can be a difficult discipline to encompass fully. There are many methods, models, directions, and theories that can be discussed and applied to various social sciences. Anthropology, sociology, political science, economy, government, and management can all benefit from social simulation. Interdisciplinary Applications of Agent-Based Social Simulation and Modeling aims to bring a different perspective to this interdisciplinary topic. This book presents current discussions and new insights on social simulation as a whole, focusing on its dangers, pitfalls, deceits, and challenges. This book is an essential reference for researchers in this field, professionals using social simulation, and even students studying this discipline.


Integrated Science Education Outreach (InSciEd Out) is a collaboration formed between Mayo Clinic, Winona State University, and Rochester Public Schools (MN) with the shared vision of achieving excellence in science education. InSciEd Out employs an equitable partnership model between scientists, teachers, education researchers, and the community. Teams of teachers from all disciplines within a single school experience cutting-edge science using the zebrafish model system, as well as current pedagogical methods, during a summer internship at the Mayo Clinic. Within the internship, the teachers produce new curriculum that directly addresses opportunities for science education improvement at their own school. Zebrafish are introduced within the new curriculum to support a living model of the practice of science. Following partnership with the InSciEd Out program and 2 years of implementation in the classroom, teacher-interns from a K-8 public school reported access to local scientific technology and expertise they had not previously recognized. Teachers also reported improved integration of other disciplines into the scientific curriculum and a flow of concepts vertically from K through 8. Students more than doubled selection of an Honors science track in high school to nearly 90%. 98% of students who took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments in their 5(th) and 8(th) grade year (a span that includes 2 years of InSciEd Out) showed medium or high growth in science proficiency. These metrics indicate that cooperation between educators and scientists can result in positive change in student science proficiency and demonstrate that a higher expectation in science education can be achieved in US public schools.


Although a rigorous theory of thermal diffusion has been developed by Chapman and Enskog, it is desirable to have an approximate but elementary theory which reveals the physical mechanism of the phenomenon. This is given in the present paper by the application of a method similar to that used by Meyer for the treatment of ordinary diffusion in gases. It leads to an approximate formula for the thermal diffusion ratio, a discussion of which shows that it accounts for many of the characteristic properties of thermal diffusion.


Proving ownership rights on outsourced relational databases is a crucial issue in today's internet-based application environments and in many content distribution applications. In this paper, we present a mechanism for proof of ownership based on the secure embedding of a robust imperceptible watermark in relational data. We formulate the watermarking of relational databases as a constrained optimization problem and discuss efficient techniques to solve the optimization problem and to handle the constraints. Our watermarking technique is resilient to watermark synchronization errors because it uses a partitioning approach that does not require marker tuples. Our approach overcomes a major weakness in previously proposed watermarking techniques. Watermark decoding is based on a threshold-based technique characterized by an optimal threshold that minimizes the probability of decoding errors. We implemented a proof of concept implementation of our watermarking technique and showed by experimental results that our technique is resilient to tuple deletion, alteration, and insertion attacks.


The purpose of this investigation is to explore what are the profiles of writers regarding the quality of argumentative productions, as well as to establish relationships of these profiles with the academic language resources (RLA) that students deploy. 126 Chilean 8th-grade students from three educational establishments wrote an essay on the use of the Tablet in the classroom. To evaluate the quality, a rubric was validated and the CHILDES program was used to code RLAs. To determine the profiles, a Latent Class Analysis was performed. 69% of the students were classified in the profile called emergent. The rest of the students belong to the second profile, called in development. The use of RLA was analyzed in these two profiles. In the emergent profile, two classes of students are observed that differ substantially in the use (by presence and/or absence) of nominalizations and transdisciplinary vocabulary. The developing profile also presents two classes: one has a higher frequency, for which the use of resources is homogeneous. Instead, the second group is characterized by the display of transdisciplinary vocabulary, nominalizations, and deontic markers. It is concluded that students need more opportunities to learn to build arguments and deploy academic language resources in order to enhance their points of view.


Correlational analysis of cerebral metabolic (rCMRglc) data obtained with positron emission tomography (PET) assesses group differences and has demonstrated reduced frontal-parietal rCMRglc interdependencies in Alzheimer's disease (AD). A multivariate analysis of rCMRglc data assesses individual differences. We recently identified discriminant functions, reflecting frontal-parietal rCMRglc interdependencies, that separated AD from control subjects. To test if the functions would identify an AD rCMRglc pattern in older Down syndrome (DS) adults with (DS DAT+) or without (DS DAT-) dementia, we applied the functions to longitudinal rCMRglc data in: young DS (n = 15), DS DAT- (n = 10), DS DAT+ (n = 4), and young controls (n = 15). All DS DAT+ and some of the later DS DAT- scans were classified as AD. The results provide additional validation of the functions and suggest their utility for the early detection of AD.


OBJECTIVES
Cotinine, a nicotine metabolite, can be used to measure exposure to tobacco smoke. The aim of this study was to compare cotinine levels in different biological fluids collected from both smokers and non-smokers and to relate the findings to self-reported smoking status. Data were also collected concerning the acceptability of the differing methods of sample collection.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
Patients recruited to the study were asked to provide samples of urine, blood and saliva (both stimulated and unstimulated). Data collected from patients by questionnaire included information on smoking behaviour such as daily number of cigarettes and environmental exposure to smoke. After the sample collection, patients were asked to rate the acceptability of each sampling method. Samples were analysed using enzyme immunoassay (EIA) kits.

RESULTS
In total, 80 patients participated, with 49 being smokers and 31 being non-smokers. There was clear differentiation between smokers and non-smokers (P < 0.001) for all the different samples in terms of cotinine. A significant relationship was seen between cotinine and daily number of cigarettes for both salivas and urine (all P < 0.001) but not for serum. Participants found serum and urine collection methodologies 'very acceptable' (67 and 66%, respectively) whereas 9% found collection of stimulated saliva 'not at all acceptable'.

CONCLUSION
Cotinine, whatever the collection method and analysed by EIA kits, shows good differentiation between smokers and non-smokers. Salivary samples have the advantage of being non-invasive, although collection methodology is important, as cotinine levels may vary.


Background: Worldwide G. lamblia is the third most common agent of diarrheal disease with over 300 million cases annually. Simple technical notes for clinicians are presented on use of high-frequency ultrasound imaging for duodenography and colonography in patients with Giardia lamblia infection. Methods: Ultrasound images were obtained from 100 consecutive patients with symptomatic giardiasis and 40 healthy controls. High-frequency annular array transducer of 7.5 MHz was used to obtain B-mode ultrasound grayscale and color images of the duodenum and colon with and without water contrast. The diagnosis of G. lamblia was based on clinical presentation, serial stool microscopy, and finding of flagellates in duodenal aspirates. Results: We demonstrated normal duodenum and colon echoanatomy in control subjects. In patients with giardiasis, the lesions of the duodenum and colon were associated with increased dimensions and wall thickness compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05). The ultrasound features of giardial lesions were characterized by increased wall echogenicity, flattening or loss of duodenal folds and/or colonic haustration, hyperechoic floating foci demonstrating chaotic motility, increased perilesional tissue echogenicity, and altered colonic peristalsis. Conclusion: In conclusion, high-frequency B-mode ultrasound imaging with and without water contrast demonstrated the details of duodenal and colonic echoanatomy in normal subjects and patients with giardiasis. The technique could be applied in the clinical setting of rural practitioners.


National payment policies target a hemoglobin range of 11 to 12.5 g/dl for patients with ESRD. However, clinical complications and provider practices may contribute to wide fluctuations over time. This study evaluated the frequency with which patients maintain stable hemoglobin levels below, within, and above the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services target range and assessed patterns of hemoglobin level change that resulted in large fluctuations across the target range during a 6-mo period. All hemodialysis patients who survived the first 6 mo of 2003, had Medicare as primary payer, and had Medicare outpatient erythropoietin claims in each of the first 6 mo of 2003 (n = 152,846) were studied. Six patient groups were defined on the basis of patterns of hemoglobin level fluctuation: Consistently low (<11 g/dl), consistently target range (11 to 12.5 g/dl), consistently high (> or =12.5 g/dl), low-amplitude fluctuation with low hemoglobin levels, low-amplitude fluctuation with high hemoglobin levels, and high-amplitude fluctuation. Only 10.3% of patients maintained stable hemoglobin levels during the 6 mo and only 6.5% in the target range. The consistently low group had the highest percentage of hospitalizations and the highest number of comorbid conditions. High-amplitude fluctuation was the most common pattern (39.5%), with hemoglobin levels falling below and rising above the target range during the 6-mo period. Hemoglobin levels in almost 90% of patients are in some degree of flux at any point in time, and the fluctuation is highly associated with clinical complications and provider practices.


The top quark was discovered in 1995 at the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). One way to confirm if the observed top quark is really the top quark posited in the Standard Model (SM) is to measure its electric charge. In the Standard Model the top quark is the isospin partner of the bottom quark and is expected to have a charge of +2/3. However, an alternative 'exotic' model has been proposed with a fourth generation exotic quark that has the same characteristics, such as mass, as our observed top but with a charge of -4/3. This thesis presents the first CDF measurement of the top quark's charge via its decay products, a W boson and a bottom quark, using {approx} 1 fb{sup -1} of data. The data were collected by the CDF detector from proton anti-proton (p{bar p}) collisions at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV at Fermilab. We classify events depending on the charges of the bottom quark and associated W boson and count the number of events which appear 'SM-like' or 'exotic-like' with a SM-like event decaying as t {yields} W{sup +}b and an exotic event as t {yields} W{sup -}b. We find the p-value under the Standard Model hypothesis to be 0:35 which is consistent with the Standard Model. We exclude the exotic quark hypothesis at an 81% confidence level, for which we have chosen a priori that the probability of incorrectly rejecting the SM would be 1%. The calculated Bayes Factor (BF) is 2 x Ln(BF)=8.54 which is interpreted as the data strongly favors the Standard Model over the exotic quark hypothesis.


We experimentally study the behavior of a particle slightly denser than the surrounding liquid in solid body rotating flow. Earlier work revealed that a heavy particle has an unstable equilibrium point in unbounded rotating flows[G. O. Roberts, D. M Kornfeld, and W. W Fowlis, J. Fluid Mech.229, 555–567 (Year: 1991)10.1017/S0022112091003166]. In the confinement of the rotational flow by a cylindrical wall a heavy sphere with density 1.05 g/cm3 describes an orbital motion in our experiments. This is due to the effect of the wall near the sphere, i.e., a repulsive force (F W ). We model F W on the sphere as a function of the distance from the wall (L): F W ∝L −4 as proposed by Takemura et al. [J. Fluid Mech.495, 235–253 (Year: 2003)10.1017/S0022112003006232]. Remarkably, the path evaluated from the model including F W reproduces the experimentally measured trajectory. In addition during an orbital motion the particle does not spin around its axis, and we provide a possible explanation for this phenomenon.


During disinfection, dissolved organic matter (DOM) is the major precursor to form disinfection by-products (DBPs), which may be of potential human health concern. Previous research focused on waters of continental climates and less on subtropical environments. However, water sources in subtropical climates are regularly impacted by major rain events during the summer months. This study evaluated the C- and N-DBP precursor removal capacity of two conventional ion exchange (IEX) resins and one magnetic ion exchange (MIEX) resin with a raw water at normal conditions and impacted by a heavy rain event. The rain event introduced 3 mg C/L total organic carbon (TOC) comprised mainly of low to medium molecular weight organics. All three resins were able to remove TOC and DBP precursors (>66%) but being less efficient in reducing turbidity (3–48%) and colour (9–24%). The resin with the smallest bead size was affected the most by the increased medium MW DOM loading resulting in DOM and C-DBP precursor removal performance losses of 10% and 22%. When applied as a pre-treatment for coagulation, MIEX was more efficient in DBP precursor control than coagulation in addressing the additional organic and DBP precursor loading after a heavy rain event.


Abstract 2366 The bone marrow (BM) is a complex microsystem that supports lifelong blood production and dynamically responds to injury, blood cell loss and senescence. At steady-state most hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) are quiescent. However, in situations of increased demand, their activation is triggered by an array of signals, such as cytokines released during infections. The susceptibility of BM to injury by T cells (TC) is long recognized, e.g. in aplastic anemia, and BM failure syndromes, and the inhibitory effect of IFNg on the proliferative activity of (HSC) is established. How donor TC given as part of an allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) affect the recipient BM microenvironment and influence HSC activity has not been elucidated. Yet, graft TC are believed to be essential to overcome host barriers, especially following lower intensity (non-myeloablative) conditioning that spares host HSC and residual host immunity. We examined in an MHC-matched, minor-antigen-mismatched mouse model of non-myeloablative HCT the impact of graft TC subsets on HSC and hematopoietic reconstitution. BALB.K (H2 k ) and BALB.B (H2 b ) mice were prepared with sublethal radiation at a dose that allows donor cells (AKR/J [H2 k ] and C57BL/6 [H2 b ]) to engraft but also permits survival of host HSC and immune populations. Grafts consisted of purified HSC (KTLS; cKit + Thy1.1 lo Lin − Sca-1 + ) given alone or supplemented with donor TC or TC subsets. Rather than improve engraftment, donor TC, specifically CD4 + cells, resulted in detainment of host HSC in their niches and consequent failure of donor HSC to engraft. These events appeared to be initiated specifically by conventional alloreactive donor CD4 + CD25 − cells. These CD4 + CD25 − cells interacted with immune-competent host cells, stimulating CD11c + dendritic cells to upregulate the activation markers CD40 and MHC II. Following their activation dendritic cells produced excessive amounts of IL-12. IL-12, in turn, activated donor CD4 + cells to produce IFNg. This Th1-response was prominent in BM but absent in the spleen. In this Th1-cytokine environment, high levels of quiescent host HSC were observed, arrested at the short-term HSC stage, while more mature, multipotent progenitors were absent. Moreover, HSC arrest correlated with marrow aplasia, analogous to that seen in BM failure syndromes. This hypocellularity was only observed in recipients of CD4 + containing grafts, while recipients given HSC alone or HSC in combination with CD8 + TC had prompt blood regeneration. When resting HSC were FACS-purified from the BM of recipients of HSC+CD4 + and infused into secondary recipients they promptly expanded and gave rise to all blood lineages. Although recipients of HSC+CD4 + cells ultimately recovered blood formation, B lymphopoiesis was markedly delayed. No clinical signs of graft-versus-host disease were noted in these mice. Lymphocytes that recovered in these recipients of HSC+CD4 + cells were of host type only. In contrast, recipients of pure HSC demonstrated prompt donor cell engraftment, and mixed chimerism in all lymphoid lineages, including T cells. Our model corroborates the importance of the cytokine microenvironment in hematopoietic reconstitution and marrow failure post-transplant. Moreover, our findings underscore the importance of IFNg in BM aplasia and support the idea that IFNg can, under physiologic conditions, exert regulatory effects on hematopoiesis by controlling the exit of ST-HSC out of the marrow niche. Our studies shed new light on understanding the physiology of engraftment and marrow failure after HCT using nonmyeloablative conditioning, and indicate that the composition of the graft is of critical importance due to its effects on the marrow microenvironment We postulate that in some naturally occurring settings of BM inflammation (e.g., infections) detainment of resting HSC in their niche may provide protection of hematopoiesis and that comparable events are relevant for engraftment post-HCT. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Objective. To determine whether the load-carrying capacity of human proximal femora with simulated lytic defects can be predicted using QCT-derived simplified beam theory. Design. The predicted fracture load of simulated defects were calculated using new technique of QCT combined with engineering beam analysis. Patients. Simulated lytic defects were created using a surgical drill in the intertrochanteric region of twenty human cadaveric femora. QCT scans were conducted before and after creating defects on either AM (Anterior-Medial) or PL (Posterior-Lateral) regions. Results. A linear relation could be used to predict failure load from the proposed engineering analysis based on QCT scan. The coefficient of determination analysis of QCT-derived predicted load vs. the measured failure load was R2=0.73 (p<0.0001). Conclusions. The data suggest that three quarters of human femoral failure can be predicted in vivo, i.e. using QCT scan. Combined with information on the loads associated with the activities of daily living, these data may be used to prevent pathologic fractures of patients who had prior surgery of removing tumors on proximal femurs.


N-Hydroxymethyl-nicotinamide, an antimicrobic agent was prepared in good yield by treating nicotinamide with excess of formaldehyde in the presence of potassium carbonate. The condensation reaction was studied under different conditions, changing the amount of formaldehyde, with different kinds of bases and reaction time. The yield was 72.4% when the reaction was carried out using 3.0 g of nicotinamide, 5.0 ml of formaldehyde (36.8% aq. solution) and 0.03 g of potassium carbonate in boiling water bath for one hour. More than 5.0 ml of formaldehyde did not contribute to higher yield. The results showed that potassium carbonate was better than other bases, and one hour of reaction time was enough.


The utilization of various neuroimaging modalities to illuminate the structural and functional abnormalities detected in neuropsychiatric brain disorders has reached an unprecedented stage of evolvement in the medical community. Advances in structural and functional brain imaging technologies enable the medical community to discover the neurobiological basis of neurological illness in a very precise and dependable manner. Neuroimaging tools such as PET, SPECT and MRI have been better developed in order to further the neuroanatomical and neurophysiological basis of mental illnesses and cognitive disorders. With the advent of radiological innovation in neuroimaging, the focus in the medical community has shifted from the examination and study of single brain regions perhaps responsible for a specific psychiatric illness, to the critical examination of integrated brain systems which may be responsible for the phenotypic expressions of these illnesses. Imaging techniques have now made it quite clear that we must begin to investigate the neural networks involved in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. This paradigm shift, due to the innovations in brain imaging technologies, will likely facilitate the diagnostic reclassification of these complex heterogeneous disorders, enhance our understanding of genetic and environmental causes of the disorders, and improve our ability to treat these patients.


ABSTRACT
The world's ever growing need for energy, and the rising standard of living in developing
countries like China and India puts a great strain on the climate of the Earth. Also, the
growing need for energy in already established industrial nations like the United States and
Russia adds to the pressure on the climate. Carbon dioxide, released by the burning of
fossil fuels, is a major contributor to the rising emission of greenhouse gasses and must be
reduced in order to mitigate the climate changes. One technology that can be applied to
capture the CO2 is post-combustion capture. The advantage when using post-combustion as
a way to reduce CO2 emissions is that it is applicable to the majority of already existing coal
fired power plants. This means, that post-combustion presents us with the greatest nearterm
potential for reducing emission, because it can be retrofitted to existing power plants.
The post-combustion capture of CO2 is most often done by reversible absorption with
aqueous amine, because CO2 and amines react to form water soluble compounds. The
amine-CO2 solution is then passed through a desorption unit, where the CO2 is separated
from the amine, which is in turn regenerated and recycled.
A major issue, however, is the reduced efficiency of a power plant with a post combustion
CO2 capture unit. The capture unit itself requires a significant amount of energy, which
would increase the cost of electricity by as much as 20%. This is caused by the great
amount of heat required for solvent regeneration, CO2 compression and purchasing of
construction materials. It is therefore of great importance to develop carbon capture units
that are energy effcient and relatively simple to construct. This project focuses on the
desorption part of a post-combustion carbon capture unit. The long-term goal is to provide
an effective design proposal for the implementation of a desorber into the existing CO2
absorption section of the carbon capture pilot plant at The Technical University of Denmark
(DTU).
Experiments with a heated pressure cell and subsequent mathematical modelling have been
utilized to investigate the reaction kinetics of desorption of carbon dioxide from an aqueous
monoethanolamine (MEA) solution. Through 43 experiments using 30 wt% MEA with an
approximate CO2 loading of 0.3 a mathematical mass balance model based on the carbamic
acid reaction mechanism has been constructed in order to evaluate the reaction kinetics.
The experiments cover a pressure range from 1 bar abs. to 5 bar abs. and a temperature
span from 353 Kelvin to 393 Kelvin. The amount of CO2 in the exit gas from the pressure
cell was measured and the Barium chloride method was used to analytically determine the
concentration of CO2-MEA complex in the aqueous mixture before and after each
experiment. The key findings in this project are; the reaction order and reaction rate
coefficient for the liquid phase reaction.
Prior to the collection of experimental data a versatile and simple experimental setup for
measuring the desorption of CO2 from various solutions of different alkanolamines was
constructed. The majority of the results obtained from kinetic data indicate a reaction order
of approximately 1. However, some data for lower temperature experiments (363 K)
indicates a higher reaction order of magnitude 3. The reaction rate constant was found to
increase with temperature from 5.72E-5 at 353 K to 1.4E-3 at 393 K, but to be unaffected by
the pressure.


This study investigated the effect of ginsenoside‑Rg5 on the degradation of articular cartilage in osteoarthritis rat model and on induction of chondrocyte apoptosis. Osteoarthritis rat model was prepared by ligament transection and medial meniscus resection. The rats were then treated with different doses (1, 2, 5, 10 and 15 µM) of ginsenoside‑Rg5 for 48 h. The results from histopathological analysis revealed a significant (P=0.005) prevention of cartilage degradation in OA rat model by ginsenoside‑Rg5 treatment at 15 µM. Ginsenoside‑Rg5 treatment prevented the disintegration of synovial membrane to a significant (P=0.005) extent. The proportion of apoptotic cells in the knee joints was reduced to 7% by ginsenoside‑Rg5 treatment after one month compared to the control. Treatment of the rats with ginsenoside‑Rg5 caused increase in the levels of proteoglycan, collagen and type II collagen by 5-, 3- and 4-fold compared to the control group. Immunohistochemistry revealed that the level of MMP-13 was reduced to 45% and that of TIMP‑1 was increased by 67% on treatment with ginsenoside‑Rg5. The levels of interleukin-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α, nitric oxide and inducible nitric oxide synthetase were reduced by 67, 54, 32 ad 49%, respectively after one month of treatment with 15 mg/kg dose of ginsenoside‑Rg5. The expression was increased to 67 and 52% for BMP-2 and TGF-β1, respectively on treatment with ginsenoside‑Rg5. Thus ginsenoside‑Rg5 prevents cartilage degradation in the OA rats and inhibits cartilage apoptosis, therefore it can be used for osteoarthritis treatment.


Osteoarthritis and its associated comorbidities are important clinical problems that have a negative impact on the quality of life, and its treatment remains unresolved. We investigated whether the systemic administration of slow-releasing hydrogen sulfide (H2S) donors, allyl isothiocyanate (A-ITC) and phenyl isothiocyanate (P-ITC), alleviates chronic osteoarthritis pain and the associated emotional disorders. In C57BL/6 female mice with osteoarthritis pain induced by the intra-articular injection of monosodium iodoacetate, we evaluated the effects of repeated administration of A-ITC and P-ITC on the (i) mechanical allodynia and grip strength deficits; (ii) emotional conducts; and (iii) glial activity and expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (NOS2), phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt), and antioxidant enzymes (heme oxygenase 1, NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase-1, glutathione S-transferase mu 1 and alpha 1) in the hippocampus. The administration of A-ITC and P-ITC inhibited the mechanical allodynia, the grip strength deficits, and the depressive-like behaviors accompanying osteoarthritis. Both treatments inhibited microglial activation, normalized the upregulation of NOS2 and PI3K/p-Akt, and maintained high levels of antioxidant/detoxificant enzymes in the hippocampus. Data suggest that treatment with low doses of slow-releasing H2S donors might be an interesting strategy for the treatment of nociception, functional disability, and emotional disorders associated with osteoarthritis pain.


Although transmural healing (TH) has not yet been considered a formal target in CD, it is considered a desired goal, as it seems to be associated with better outcomes. Early biologic treatment has been shown to lead to higher clinical remission and increased endoscopic healing. However, to date, there is no information on the impact of disease duration on TH. We aimed to assess the efficacy of early biologic treatment on the achievement of TH.

 Unicentre retrospective cohort study comparing patients who started early and late biologic therapy (defined as ≤ 12 months vs > 12 months from diagnosis). We included patients with CD who were receiving biologic therapy, and had a baseline computed tomography enterography (CTE) or magnetic resonance enterography (MRE) before the initiation of a biologic (median 2.5, IQR 0–50 months), and a follow-up CTE/MRE performed 12 ± 6 months after therapy initiation. Endoscopic healing was defined as a SES-CD score <3. Three experienced radiologists blinded to the therapeutic group reviewed every CTE and MRE and assessed several pre-defined parameters of cross-sectional inflammation. TH was defined as the absence of active inflammation, extra-enteric signs, and CD-related complications (strictures, fistulas or abscesses). The effect of early biologic treatment on transmural healing was analysed using logistic regression.

 60 patients were included (51.7% males), with a median age at diagnosis of 24.5 years old (IQR 17.5–32.5). Most patients had ileocolonic disease (58.3%) and non-stricturing non-penetrating phenotype (60%). Twenty-eight patients (46.7%) started biologic therapy within the first 12 months of diagnosis. There were no significant differences in baseline clinical features or baseline radiologic assessment between the groups, except for the extension of the most affected segment, which was higher in the group of late biologic therapy (197 vs 129.5mm, p=0.05) (Table 1). Patients on early biologic treatment achieved endoscopic healing more frequently than those on late biologic treatment (65.4% vs 23.3%, p=0.002). Early biologic treatment was also associated with increased transmural healing (OR 4.1, 95% CI 1.2–13.6, p=0.02). In a multivariate model including baseline characteristics of the disease, only the use of biologics within the first 12 months and the absence of ileocolonic disease were significant predictors of the achievement of transmural healing (Figure 1).

 Early biologic treatment seems to be independently associated with higher transmural healing rates, further adding to the relevance of early intervention in CD. Our findings are limited by the small sample size and short follow-up.


The knee is one of the most commonly injured joints in the body. A thorough history and physical examination of the knee facilitates accurate diagnosis of ligament injury. Several examination techniques for the knee ligaments that were developed before advanced imaging remain as accurate or more accurate than these newer imaging modalities. Proper use of these examination techniques requires an understanding of the anatomy and pathophysiology of knee ligament injuries. Advanced imaging can be used to augment a history and examination when necessary, but should not replace a thorough history and physical examination.


Visual evoked potentials (VEP) in response to reverse chess patterns were studied in 68 patients aged 7-14 years with pathological convolutions of internal carotid arteries and 25 healthy children. The latent period was increased and the amplitude of P100 peak decreased in the patients, which was indicative of dysfunction of the visual route. VEP changed at early stages of cerebral circulation insufficiency. The relationship between hemodynamic parameters and VEP values was proven. Increased latent period and decreased amplitude of the positive peak are the criteria of neurophysiological significance of pathological convolutions in the internal carotid arteries.


Using correlated photon pairs produced via spontaneous parametric down-conversion, we have measured the absolute single-photon detection efficiencies and time responses of four detectors: two solid-state photomultipliers (SSPM's) manufactured by Rockwell International Corp., and two custom-modified single-photon counting modules (SSPM's) manufactured by EG G, Canada. The highest observed efficiencies were 70.9[plus minus]1.9% (with an SSPM, at a wavelength of 632 nm) and 76.4[plus minus]2.3% (with an SPCM, at 702 nm). We believe these to be the highest reported single-photon detection efficiencies in the visible spectrum; they are important for quantum cryptography and loophole-free tests of Bell's inequalities, as well as more prosaic applications such as photon correlation spectroscopy and velocimetry. We found that the time profile for coincidences between the SSPM and the SPCM consisted of a main peak with a 3.5-ns full width at half maximum (FWHM) preceded by a smaller peak by 11 ns. A similar time profile between two SPCM's displayed only one peak, with a 300-ps FWHM. Afterpulses were detected in the SPCM's at a level of less than 10[sup [minus]4] of the counting rate, with an exponential decay time constant of 4.5 [mu]s.


We investigate the response characteristics of a two-dimensional neuron model exposed to an externally applied extremely low frequency (ELF) sinusoidal electric field and the synchronization of neurons weakly coupled with gap junction. We find, by numerical simulations, that neurons can exhibit different spiking patterns, which are well observed in the structure of the recurrence plot (RP). We further study the synchronization between weakly coupled neurons in chaotic regimes under the influence of a weak ELF electric field. In general, detecting the phases of chaotic spiky signals is not easy by using standard methods. Recurrence analysis provides a reliable tool for defining phases even for noncoherent regimes or spiky signals. Recurrence-based synchronization analysis reveals that, even in the range of weak coupling, phase synchronization of the coupled neurons occurs and, by adding an ELF electric field, this synchronization increases depending on the amplitude of the externally applied ELF electric field. We further suggest a novel measure for RP-based phase synchronization analysis, which better takes into account the probabilities of recurrences.


Subunits of the NMDA receptor (NMDAR) associate with many postsynaptic proteins that substantially broaden its signaling capacity. Although much work has been focused on the signaling of NR2 subunits, little is known about the role of the NR1 subunit. We set out to elucidate the role of the C terminus of the NR1 subunit in NMDAR signaling. By introducing a C-terminal deletion mutant of the NR1 subunit into cultured neurons from NR1−/− mice, we found that the C terminus was essential for NMDAR inactivation, downstream signaling, and gene expression, but not for global increases in intracellular Ca2+. Therefore, whereas NMDARs can increase Ca2+ throughout the neuron, NMDAR-dependent signaling, both local and long range, requires coupling through the NR1 C terminus. Two major NR1 splice variants differ by the presence or absence of a C-terminal domain, C1, which is determined by alternative splicing of exon 21. Analysis of these two variants showed that removal of this domain significantly reduced the efficacy of NMDAR-induced gene expression without affecting receptor inactivation. Thus, the NR1 C terminus couples to multiple downstream signaling pathways that can be modulated selectively by RNA splicing.


We report preliminary results from our analysis of the stability of periods observed in the pulsating hydrogen atmosphere white dwarf ZZ Ceti (R548) based on observations that span 37 years from 1970 to 2007. We determine the rate of change of period with time to be dP/dt = (0.8±1.9)×10-15 s/s using the O-C method and dP/dt = (4.3±1.2)×10-15 s/s using the direct non-linear least squares fit NLSPDOT for the dominant period 213.13260643 s after correcting for proper motion. We do not claim either of these values as a measurement at this time, but hope to arrive at a conclusive result in the near future with more observations. The reduced uncertainty for both methods shows the improvement we obtained over the previous evolutionary constraint on ZZ Ceti (Mukadam et al. 2003). These dP/dt values are consistent within uncertainties with the measurement of dP/dt = (3.57 ±0.82)×10-15 s/s for the period 215.2 s observed in another pulsating white dwarf G117-B15A (Kepler et al. 2005). Using the 213 s triplet spacing of 4μHz, we compute the rotation period of ZZ Ceti to be 1.5 days.