One of the major challenges for policymakers in Serbia is to improve the competitiveness of the Serbian economy. Universally applicable solution to this problem does not exist, but there are certain segments which can be a significant driver of improving the effectiveness and productivity of the economy by implementing diverse possibilities offered by the digital economy. A critical factor in the development of digital economy is the sector of information and communication technology (ICT), which has the potential to extremely improve the competitiveness
of Serbia and start production towards modern business processes, but also contribute to a notable synergistic effect in
terms of the competitiveness of micro-enterprises. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a factor for competitiveness and development of the digital economy, to analyze the application of ICT in the economy of Serbia, to highlight the benefits of development and acceptance of new solutions in the field of ICT, to create recommendations that would contribute to improving the business environment in the ICT field, and consequently of the digital economy as a whole. The Lisbon Strategy, as
one of the most important strategic documents that provides guidelines for improving the competitiveness of the EU countries, indicates that strengthening the competitiveness of the EU is based, inter alia, on the efficient use of new information technologies and the creation of common area for innovation and the digital economy. Serbian economy, being underdeveloped and yet transitional economy, requires modern ICT solutions. Only significant investment in the ICT sector and the development of ICT can encourage creation of a strong economy
based on knowledge and information technologies. With that regard, the aim of this paper based on the analysis of the degree of development of ICT in Serbia, is to create guidelines and give recommendations on how to improve the business environment and intensify the development of ICT in Serbia. The methodology used in this paper is based on
the analysis of the indicator of Innovativeness and application of new technologies index by the World Economic Forum and empirical research on the degree of implementation of new technologies in enterprises Serbia. The survey was conducted in the period January-March 2017 and the survey sample consisted of 87 Serbian companies, classified
as medium and large businesses. The survey results indicate a low level of information and communication development in enterprises in Serbia in the field of implementation of modern ICT, as confirmed by the evaluation of the World Economic Forum on the competitiveness of Serbia in the segment of sophistication of business processes
and, consequently, innovation in business. ICT development is a necessary precondition for the economy based on the
implementation of new technologies and the relatively low level of ICT development in Serbia should not be seen as a
constraint, but rather as an opportunity for further improvement. In order to take advantage of the ICT potential, it is necessary to increase investment in this highly productive sector and encourage the production and sale of domestic ICT products, either through tax reliefs to companies from the ICT sector, either through various forms of subsidies
when purchasing domestic ICT products. In addition, it is crucial to impose appropriate educational policies, such as to
increase the enrollment quotas for students of electrical, mechanical, technological and other related orientation relevant to the development of ICT.


A PBD is a systematic detailed list of receipts, expenditures and local spending within a certain period ( 1 year ) arranged in Permendagri No. 16 of 2006, so that the data APBD can be used as guidelines for governments and local expenditures in carrying out activities to raise revenue to maintain economic stability and to avoid inflation and deflation. Government financial institutions in areas such as DPKA Padang, experienced difficulties in identifying the relevance of each archive data on a APBD that so much, that results in a data warehouse, in addition to the administration, APBD in the government of Padang have not been effective. To minimize the difficulty in identifying heap data archive APBD, then the data warehouse can be used to produce a knowledge that by using the techniques of Data Mining ( DM ), the method used is clustering and forecasting, clusterisasi performed using the K-Means Algorithm while for forecasting with multiple linear regression. With this method intended to classify and identify the data in the budget that have certain characteristics in common, and can predict the value of APBD in the future . Keywords : Clustering, K - Means, Forecasting.


Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) is one of the major reliability problems in advanced technologies. NBTI causes threshold voltage degradation in a PMOS transistor which is biased to negative voltage. In an SRAM cell, due to NBTI, threshold voltage degrades in the load PMOS transistors. The degradation has the impact on Static Noise Margin (SNM), which is a measure of read stability of a 6-T SRAM cell. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between NBTI degradation in an SRAM cell and the signal probability. This is because, it is the key parameter of NBTI degradation. Based on the observations, we propose a novel cell-flipping technique in order to make signal probability close to 50%. The long cell-flipping period leads to threshold voltage degradation as large as the original case where the cell-flipping technique is not applied. Thus, we employ the short flipping period to the cell-flipping technique without any stall of operations. In consequence of applying the cell-flipping technique to a register file, we can relieve threshold voltage degradation by 70% after the SRAM cell is used for 3 years.


We describe a case of antiphospholipid associated thrombocytopenia in which warfarin, but not heparin, normalized the platelet count. Systemic lupus erythematosus was present in association with chorea, mitral valve stenosis, and renal thrombotic microangiopathy. No evidence of platelet consumption was detected. Low dose aspirin, pulse methylprednisolone, intravenous gammaglobulin, and cyclophosphamide also partially elevated the platelet count. Platelet activation, measured by P selectin assay, was not present during warfarin or aspirin therapy, suggesting that platelet activation may have been decreased by these treatments. We discuss possible mechanisms for correction of thrombocytopenia in antiphospholipid syndrome by warfarin.


During the Korean War, US-Japan relations changed dramatically from the occupation status into one of a security partnership in Asia. When North Korea invaded South Korea, Washington perceived Japan as the ultimate target. Washington immediately intervened in the Korean peninsula to protect the South on behalf of Japanese security. Japanese security was the most important objective of American policy regarding the Korean War, a reality to which historians have not given legitimate attention. While fighting in Korea, Washington decided to conclude an early peace treaty with Japan to initiate Japanese rearmament. The issue of Japanese rearmament was a focal point in the Japanese peace negotiation. Washington pressed Japan to rearm rapidly, but Tokyo stubbornly opposed. Under pressure from Washington, the Japanese government established the National Police Reserve and had to expand its military forces during the war. When the Korean War ceased in July 1953, Japanese armed forces numbered about 180,000 men. The Korean War also brought a fundamental change to Japanese economic and diplomatic relations in Asia. With a trade embargo on China following the unexpected Chinese intervention in Korea, Washington wanted to forbid Sino-Japanese trade completely. In addition, Washington pressed Tokyo to recognize the Nationalist regime in Taiwan as the representative government of the whole Chinese people. Japan unsuccessfully resisted both policies. Japan wanted to maintain Sino-Japanese trade and recognize the Chinese Communists. The Korean War brought an economic boom to Japan. As a logistical and service supporter for United States war efforts in Korea, Japan received a substantial amount of military procurement orders from Washington, which supplied dollars, technology, and markets for Japan. The Korean War was an economic opportunity for Japan while it was a military opportunity for the United States. The Korean War was the beginning of a new era of American-Japanese military and economic interdependence. This study is based on both American and Japanese sources--primary and secondary.


The paper presents dynamic responses of annular plate composed of three layers. The middle layer of the plate has electrorheological properties expressed by the Bingham body model. The plate is loaded in the plane of facings with time-dependent forces. The electrorheological effect is observed in the area of supercritical plate behaviour. The influence of both material properties and geometrical dimensions of the core on plate behaviour is examined. The problem is solved analytically and numerically using the orthogonalization method and the finite difference method. Comparison of the results obtained using the finite difference and the finite element methods for a plate in critical state is shown. The numerical calculations are carried out for axisymmetric and asymmetric plate modes. The presented diagrams show the plate reaction to the changes in values of plate parameters and indicate that the supercritical control of plate work is possible.


Service is a concept that separates the concerns of an organization into (1) the value created for users and (2) the way the organization manages its resources to provide this value. The discipline of management of information technology (IT) uses services to coordinate and to optimize the use of IT resources (servers, applications, databases, etc.) in a way that brings value to users. The concrete application of the service concept is challenging due to its abstract, interdependent and recursive nature. We experienced this challenge while collaborating with the IT department of our university (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL) when the IT department adopted the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best-practices framework for IT service management. As researchers, we have the goal of improving the understanding of services as a means to structuring what people and organizations do. In the context of the IT department, we studied how to apply the service concept internally within the IT department, and externally (as business services) in the overall organization. In this thesis, we model services by using systems thinking principles. In particular, we use and improve SEAM, the systemic service-modeling method developed in our laboratory. Our main result is an ontology for SEAM service modeling. Our contributions are the heuristics that define how the ontology relates to a perceived reality: for example, the heuristics focus on behavior rather than organization and they put an emphasis on service instances rather than service types. We also define alignment between service systems, based on the properties of the systems' behavior. We show how to model an organization by implementing the concept of service as defined by our ontology. This ontology supports the design of service systems that align across both IT and business services. During our work with over one hundred IT services, we developed several visualization prototypes of a service cartography; we use these prototypes to describe and to relate the different views required for managing services. Our results offer a concrete way to implement the abstract concept of services. This way could be of interest for any organization willing to embark on a large-scale service project.


This paper proposes a VLSI architecture of JPEG2000 encoder, which functionally consists of two parts: discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and embedded block coding with optimized truncation (EBCOT). For DWT, a spatial combinative lifting algorithm (SCLA)-based scheme with both 5/3 reversible and 9/7 irreversible filters is adopted to reduce 50% and 42% multiplication computations, respectively, compared with the conventional lifting-based implementation (LBI). For EBCOT, a dynamic memory control (DMC) strategy of Tier-1 encoding is adopted to reduce 60% scale of the on-chip wavelet coefficient storage and a subband parallel-processing method is employed to speed up the EBCOT context formation (CF) process; an architecture of Tier-2 encoding is presented to reduce the scale of on-chip bitstream buffering from full-tile size down to three-code-block size and considerably eliminate the iterations of the rate-distortion (RD) truncation.


This study was set out to investigate the influence of dividend payments on stock prices in an inflationary environment. The study also aimed at establishing the rational for and against dividend payments during periods of marked inflation rates, the forms of dividends and the dividend policies pursued by firms in inflationary environments. Dividend paying firms listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange were the primary focus of this study. Random sampling was employed to pick the 20 companies under study. Data was collected using documentary review and questionnaires. A total of 88 company executives from these sampled firms participated in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to analyze the findings. The findings of this paper show that the number of dividend paying firms that paid cash dividends reduced to 40%; about 60% of the firms pursued the residual policy; and the majority of firms distributed value using bonus issues. The statistical analysis employed proved that dividend payouts have an effect on share prices in a hyper-inflationary economy. However, it was also proved that share price increases were due to other factors other than dividend payments. The currency was valueless for inflation rates were far too high for planning purposes and firms were struggling to survive. The few companies that paid dividends were fulfilling their long established obligations to investors and some didn't have good investment projects. The paper recommends that corporate management should carefully examine the inflationary environment when formulating an optimal dividend policy for their firms during periods of marked inflation as survival must be the overriding goal of the organisation. This study has some additional implications for further research. Efforts to analyze the exact extent of price movements triggered by other factors other than dividends in a hyper-inflationary economy would be of great interest.


Summary

General population drinking patterns in the Shetland Islands and their demographic correlates are described. A total of 533 individuals comprising a stratified random sample of the Island's population were interviewed, yielding a response rate of 78 per cent; 35 questionnaires were rejected as incomplete having 498 questionnaires to be utilized in this analysis. Weekly per capita consumption among male drinkers is 17 drinks, and among female drinkers is 2.5 drinks. Approximately 14 per cent of the women and 3 per cent of the men are abstainers. The predominant drinking pattern among women is occasional drinking (50%), and among men moderate drinking (40%). Also 33 per cent of the men are heavy drinkers. The associations between drinking patterns and social and demographic variables do not follow a pattern; the direction of the associations may change according to sex. Of all the demographic variables sex is the best predictor of drinking behaviour, accounting for 42 per cent of the variance explained out of a total of 49 per cent. The relationship of the findings to previous research done in Scotland and England and their implications for prevention are discussed.


Context: High concentrations of crude protein in ruminant diets may lead to excessive production of ruminal ammonia, which may stress the animal's metabolism and impact nitrogen efficiency. This may become a problem in zero-concentrate feeding systems when pasture grass is rich in crude protein. Polyphenols such as tannins may protect part of dietary protein from ruminal degradation and thus inhibit ammonia formation.
Aims: The present study screened mature herbs for their potential to mitigate ruminal ammonia formation in cattle, when provided as a supplement to a forage diet.
Methods: Thirty-five temperate-climate, herbaceous meadow plant species (including three legumes) that appear in biodiverse natural and sown pastures were investigated for their effects on ruminal ammonia production. Aboveground material was harvested during ripening of the seeds and analysed for nutrient and phenol concentrations. Net energy and protein absorbable at the duodenum were calculated. Incubations (24 h) with cattle rumen fluid following the in vitro Hohenheim Gas Test protocol were performed to compare the effects of the test plants on ruminal gas and ammonia formation. Test plants replaced one-third of a basal mixture consisting of 57% Lolium perenne L. and 43% Medicago sativa L. (air-dry-matter basis). Results were compared with those obtained with the basal mixture alone.
Key results: According to regression analysis, ammonia concentration after incubation was negatively related to concentrations of total extractable phenols and total tannins in feed mixtures, whereas the relationship was weakly positive with dietary crude protein. In 23 and 19 of the test diets, respectively, in vitro gas production (indicating ruminal organic matter digestibility) and ammonia concentrations in the incubation medium after 24 h were significantly lower than with the basal mixture alone. Incubations containing Galium verum L., Leontodon hispidus L., Lotus corniculatus L., Onobrychis viciifolia Scop., Plantago lanceolata L., Sanguisorba minor Scop. and Scabiosa columbaria L. maintained gas production and estimated in vitro organic matter digestibility while at the same time lowering ammonia concentrations.
Conclusions: Seven mature herbs of a screening of 35 proved to have potential for positive effects on ruminal protein utilisation without impairing fermentation.
Implications: These herbs are of particular interest as dietary supplements for dairy cows grazing protein-rich pastures.


Serum β-fetoprotein (AFP) values in 61 patients with neonatal hepatitis were compared with the normal ranges of AFP in infants and were expressed as standard deviation (SD) scores. The size of SD score indicates how many standard deviations the measured AFP value is away from the mean value of the normal population. An extremely elevated AFP value is arbitrarily defined as a SD score higher than 4.0, i.e., above mean + 4 SD. The result showed that rapid recovery from jaundice before 6 months of age occurred in 16 of 17 (94%) with SD scores of AFP lower than 4.0. By contrast, in 26 with SD scores of AFP higher than 4.0, 17 (65%) has less favorable clinical courses, either slow in recovery or progressing to chronic liver disease and even death. This correlation between AFP level and prognosis was related to the fact that higher AFP values were associated with more severe inflammatory changes in the liver, as assessed from either biochemical parameters (peak total and direct bilirubin levels) or histotogical findings (portal inflammation and giant cell transformation).


Bilious vomiting syndrome (BVS) is a condition historically associated with early morning vomiting of bile, but it is otherwise poorly characterized. The vomiting is thought to result from a reflux of duodenal fluid into the gastric lumen causing mucosal irritation. Medical records from Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital (CSUVTH) were searched for "canine" and "bilious vomiting syndrome" between 2002 and 2012. Visual inspection confirmed a diagnosis of BVS during the case history. The diagnosis remained BVS for the duration of the dog's contact with the hospital in 17 cases. Therapy involved frequent feedings, late evening meals, gastric acid reducers, prokinetics, and gastroprotectants. Twelve dogs improved with therapy. Five dogs did not improve or were lost to follow-up. The diagnosis of BVS was supplanted in three cases with gastric adenocarcinoma, dietary indiscretion, and hepatopathy. The patient most likely given a diagnosis of BVS would be a young, mixed-breed, castrated male dog with a chronic history of vomiting bile. Response to therapy suggests abnormal gastrointestinal motility, local gastritis, gastric pH, or stimulation of the emetic center may be important factors in BVS. Dogs diagnosed with BVS rarely received a diagnostic evaluation sufficient to qualify it as a diagnosis of exclusion.


Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis confined to the brainstem is associated with poor prognosis. We describe a case of a 10-year-old boy with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis in the brainstem that developed after influenza A infection. A 10-year-old boy presented with fever and prolonged disturbance of consciousness and was admitted to our hospital. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the midbrain, with T2-weighted and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images, suggested acute disseminated encephalomyelitis accompanied by a brainstem lesion. Lumbar puncture showed pleocytosis and increased protein content, including myelin basic protein, interleukin-6, and immunoglobulin G, all suggestive of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis. Treatments such as methylprednisolone pulse therapy, intravenous immunoglobulin, and therapeutic hypothermia were performed. Although the patient presented with anisocoria with increased intracranial pressure monitoring during hypothermia, prompt therapy with d-mannitol and dopamine was effective. Our case results suggest that hypothermia could be included in the choice of therapy for acute disseminated encephalomyelitis with brainstem lesions.


This paper proposes a new triple-band monopole antenna based on Complementary Split Ring Resonators (CSRR) perturbing the ground plane (GND). The antenna consists of an inverted-L-shaped monopole fed by a modified microstrip line with two CSRRs cut out of the ground plane. The operational bands are independently controlled by the CSRR unit cell parameters. In addition, the antenna presents a dual-polarization performance (vertical polarization at 2.4 GHz band and horizontal polarization at both 3.6 and 5.9 GHz bands). The designed antenna is fully planar and low profile avoiding the vias with the ground plane and covering the WLAN, WiMAX, and IEEE 801.11p bands at 2.45, 3.6, and 5.8 GHz. A compact prototype (0.32λ0 × 0.32λ0 being λ0 is the wavelength corresponding to the lowest resonance frequency) has been fabricated and measured showing good agreement between simulations and measurements. The measured impedance bandwidths are 10% (2.38-2.63 GHz), 2.5% (3.54-3.63 GHz), and 20% (5.83-7.12 GHz) whereas the measured gains are 1.34, 0.68, and 2.65 dBi at 2.4, 3.6, and 5.9 GHz respectively.


Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most important cause of chronic liver disease and is considered the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome associated with diabetes mellitus type 2. The prevalence of NAFLD in the general population reaches 15-20%. It is also estimated that nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) affects 3% of the population. NAFLD refers to a wide spectrum of liver damage, which ranges from simple steatosis or intracellular triglyceride accumulation, to inflammation (NASH), fibrosis and cirrhosis. The mechanisms involved in the accumulation of triglycerides in the liver and subsequent hepatocellular damage are multifactorial and are not completely understood. However, metabolic changes such as insulin resistance (IR) are developed, being a common factor in the retention of fatty acids (FA) within the hepatocytes with oxidation and production of free radicals at the mitochondrial level, which are capable of causing lipid peroxidation, cytokine production, and necrosis. In addition, there are alterations in the hepatic bioavailability of long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, conditions that alter the expression of a series of transcriptional factors involved in lipolytic and lipogenic processes in the liver. A greater knowledge of the etiopathogenic mechanisms of NAFLD is fundamental for the development of future effective therapeutic strategies. The pathophysiological fundamentals of liver steatosis are analyzed in this study.


We study the notion of extensibility in functional data types, as a new approach to the problem of decorating abstract syntax trees with additional information. We observed the need for such extensibility while redesigning the data types representing Haskell abstract syntax inside Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). Specifically, we describe a programming idiom that exploits type-level functions to allow a particular form of extensibility.  The approach scales to support existentials and generalised algebraic data types, and we can use pattern synonyms to make it quite convenient in practice.


'The emperor, 1804–1812' describes the imperial expansion after Napoleon became Emperor. It explains how the new political and military forces unleashed by the French Revolution, which had made possible Napoleon's astonishing conquests and reforms, did not allow him to consolidate and preserve them. Instead, a different geopolitical dynamic took shape. On the level of grand strategy, Napoleon felt increasingly forced into incessant war and annexation, above all because of his inability to overcome his greatest and most supremely frustrating enemy, Great Britain. The brutal Napoleonic wars are described, including the battles at Trafalgar and Austerlitz, defeat of Prussia, and the shortcomings of the French navy. Napoleon was finding it difficult to control events.


By utilizing the parallel axis theorem of moment of inertia and the graphic geometric transformation theory as well as the method of rotating and moving axis, the calculation formula of irregular objects' centroid was derived. And on the basis of a single axis air bearing table which was used for measuring the moment of inertia of objects around a fixed axis, the complete instrument of measuring the irregular objects' centroid was designed. The objects' centroid and moment of inertia could be measured synchronously. Through the analysis of the influence on measuring accuracy caused by measuring factors' errors, the method of improving the measuring accuracy of instrument was derived. The measuring instrument meets the requirement of measuring the irregular objects' centroid precisely.


The research aimed: 1) to investigate the effect of the Test of English for International Communication or TOEIC short-course instruction of Buriram Rajabhat University (BRU) Language Center on teacher candidates and 2) to explore the satisfaction of the samples towards the instruction. This was a 30-hour short-course that focused on grammar, vocabulary and techniques in taking TOEIC. The sample group included 32 eligible teacher candidates under an initiative which recruited teachers to work in their hometowns in October 2017. The samples were also BRU alumni from 10 programs, namely Thai, English, Early Childhood Education, Social Studies, Physics, General Sciences, Physical Education, Music and Thai Dramatic Arts from the Faculty of Education. They were selected by using a purposive sampling method. Data were collected by using 1) pre-test and post-test and 2) satisfaction assessment questionnaire. Statistics used in the data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, and content analysis. The results showed that most of the samples were females (71.9%) and the majority of the samples were from Social Studies (18.8%). The results revealed the effectiveness of the instruction as the post-test score of the samples was significantly higher than the pre-test score at .00. Moreover, the satisfaction of the samples towards the instruction was also at high level (x̅ =4.59). Thus, it was suggested that the TOEIC short-course instruction of BRU Language Center on teacher candidates was effective and can be used to enhance the ability of the teacher candidates in taking TOEIC for their future career. However, limitation and suggestions for further studies should be concerned.


A detailed study of the history of the Polish acoustics does not exist. The easiest way to present such a history might consist in describing the activity of separate teams, gathered around several leading personalities. The following publication is an attempt to present the scientific contribution to Polish acoustics of Professor Ignacy Malecki himself and of the teams which were co-operating with him. The first Polish research on acoustics was started in the middle of the thirties. During the war period, lectures on acoustics were given at the underground Warsaw Technical University. When the country was being rebuilt after the war, solutions of the problems of acoustics of the reconstructed halls, as well as proper solutions for the noise control in the building industry were required. The scientific research at the Warsaw Technical University, and at the Building Research Institute has started. The Electro-acoustical Chair was founded at the Warsaw Technical Unversity. Later on the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research of the Polish Academy of Science was established, where research on acoustics, aimed mainly at the ultrasonic testing, the improvement of noise measurements, and the acoustics of speech, were conducted. Theoretical studies on the electro-mechano-acoustical analogies and the coupled electro-acoustical fields were carried out. Heterogeneous media, especially ceramics, were tested theoretically and experimentally. An interest in hypersounds and in the quantum representation of the acoustical phenomena was growing. The diffraction field and the transport of the vibrations through the ear channel have been described using the quantum method. Focal point has been shiflet from the measurement of the acoustic waves velocity and their attenuation to the investigation of the active phenomenon, i.e. the acoustic emission was performed, and different fields of its application were developed. The acoustic emission during the brittle fracture and during chemical reactions were also studied. Scientific cooperation with other countries and the teaching activity associated with the research undertaken were conducted.


Introduction Skin avulsion of male genital is a rare urological emergency. Although not life-threatening such lesions are both physically and psychologically traumatic. If poorly managed in the acute setting, these injuries may result in long-term problems or permanent disabilities. Methods A 58 year-old male patient was admitted to the Emergency Department of our hospital with a traumatic injury of the penis, caused by a bike trauma. At the inspection, a rather complete degloving of penis and a tear in scrotal skin with no involvement of testes were observed. The skin was completely detached, out of the penis, but for a small flap at the penoscrotal angle. After a careful cleaning, the penis was covered again with the skin attached to penoscrotal angle through multiple circumferential sutures. Results A complete cover of the defects was obtained with one-step surgery. The patients was treated with broad spectrum of antibiotics for 1 month. No infections occurred. The patient was discharged from hospital after 5 days. After 3 months from trauma, the patient is able to achieve a sexual intercourse, with normal erectile function, no painful erections and no penile recurvatum. Conclusions Traumatic skin avulsion of penis is a rare condition; the best aesthetic and functional results depends on the choice of the proper treatment. Conservative approach in selected cases can provide good results both aesthetically and functionally.


A simple method, incorporating protein-precipitation/organic backwashing and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS), has been successfully developed for the simultaneous analysis of four highly water-soluble and less volatile herbicides (paraquat, diquat, glufosinate and glyphosate) in ante- and postmortem blood, urine and gastric content samples. Respective isotopically labeled analogs of these analytes were adopted as internal standards. Acetonitrile and dichloromethane were used for protein precipitation and organic solvent backwashing, respectively, followed by injecting the upper aqueous phase into the LC-MS-MS system. Chromatographic separation was achieved using an Agilent Zorbax SB-Aq analytical column, with gradient elution of 15 mM heptafluorobutyric acid and acetonitrile. Mass spectrometric analysis was performed under electrospray ionization in positive-ion multiple reaction monitoring mode. The precursor ions and the two transition ions (m/z) adopted for each of these four analytes were paraquat (185; 169 and 115), diquat (183; 157 and 78), glufosinate (182; 136 and 119) and glyphosate (170; 88 and 60), respectively. Analyte-free blood and urine samples, fortified with the analytes of interest, were used for method development/validation and yielded acceptable recoveries of the analytes; interday and intraday precision and accuracy data; calibration linearity and limits of detection and quantitation. This method was successfully incorporated into an overall analytical scheme, designed for the analysis of a broad range of compounds present in postmortem samples, helpful to medical examiners' efforts to determine victims' causes of death.


A critical step in retroviral reverse transcription is the initiation of plus-strand DNA synthesis at the polypurine tract (PPT) and strand transfer of the PPT-primed strong-stop DNA to the 5' end of the viral DNA. An attachment site (att) immediately 3' to the PPT is essential for proper integration of proviral DNA into the host chromosome. Plus-strand DNA synthesis is discontinuous in many retroviruses, indicating that sequences upstream of the PPT are also used to initiate plus-strand DNA synthesis (internally initiated DNA). Strand transfer of internally initiated DNA would result in "dead" viral DNA that lacks the att site needed for integration. Strand transfer of the internally initiated DNA could occur if DNA synthesis failed to initiate at the PPT or if the PPT-primed DNA was displaced before strand transfer. We sought to determine the efficiency of DNA synthesis initiating at the PPT and the proportions of PPT-primed DNA and internally initiated DNAs that are utilized for strand transfer. We constructed spleen necrosis virus-based retroviral vectors containing an internal PPT and an att site 5' of the normal PPT and att site. After one replication cycle of the retroviral vectors, the structures of the resulting proviruses were determined by Southern blotting. The analysis suggested that the PPT is an efficient and rapid initiator of plus-strand DNA synthesis and that internally initiated DNAs are rarely utilized for strand transfer. We hypothesize that efficient synthesis and strand transfer of PPT-primed DNA evolved to prevent lethal strand transfers of internally initiated DNAs.


Background: Dhulikhel Hospital (DH) is a Nepalese community hospital serving approximately 1 million people in the district of Kavre and its neighbouring areas. DH also provides services to outreach centres all over Nepal. Trauma is one of the commonest reasons to seek healthcare in this region.Objective: Analyze the epidemiology of trauma at Dhulikhel Hospital.Materials and methods: This is a descriptive study including all trauma patients who arrived at the emergency room in DH between 04.02.2011 and 02.04.2011. The demographics, clinical history, mechanism and severity of injury, treatment, length of hospital stay and mortality was recorded.Results: 369 patients were included in the study. The mean age was 30 years and 47% of the patients were ≤25 years. The male to female ratio was 2,1:1. The major mechanism of accidents were falls 42%, followed by road traffic accidents 34%. 22,5% of the patients were admitted, out of these 72% had surgery. 8% of the patients were transferred to another hospital. The mortality was 0,3%.Conclusion: In the Kavre region of Nepal trauma related injury is an important cause for morbidity among the young population, as almost half of the patients were ≤25 years old . The care received at Dhulikhel seems expedient and of high quality, with a low mortality rate. However the lack of diagnostic tools like a functioning CT scanner forces the doctors at Dhulikhel hospital to transfer patients to hospitals in Kathmandu, causing delay in treatment.


Following a robust immune response to a foreign pathogen, most activated T cells die whereas a few survive to become memory T cells. Immunologists continue to debate how T cells know whether they are to become effector T cells that die at the end of the immune response or memory T cells that persist ready to respond to the same antigen if it is encountered again. In their Perspective, [Kim and Flavell][1] discuss new findings ([ Madakamutil et al .][2]) that identify the homotypic CD8 molecule, CD8, as the marker that tags a subpopulation of T cells to become memory cells.

 [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/304/5670/529
 [2]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/304/5670/590


Purpose Perioperative cardiac arrests (CAs) are a rare but catastrophic perioperative complication. Much about incidence, risk factors, and outcomes of such events are still unknown. This study investigated anesthesia-related CAs at a tertiary teaching hospital. Methods CA incidence within 24 hours of anesthesia administration was prospectively identified from May 1, 2016 to April 31, 2019. Each CA was matched by four other cases without CA receiving anesthesia on the same date and under similar operating conditions. The CA cases were reviewed and assigned to one of three groups: anesthesia-related, anesthesia-contributing, and anesthesia not related. Results A total of 58,303 patients underwent 73,557 procedures under anesthesia during the study period. In sum, 27 CAs were reported for incidence of 3.7 per 10,000 anesthesia administrations (95% CI 2.3–5.1). Eleven CA were anesthesia-related for incidence of 1.5 per 10,000 anesthesia administrations. Four CA cases were anesthesia-contributing for incidence of 0.5 per 10,000 anesthesia administrations, while 53% of the anesthesia-related and -contributing CAs were due to respiratory problems. American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status score, cardiovascular surgery, emergency surgery, and increased duration of surgery were significantly correlated with CA incidents when compared to the control group. ASA physical status score is an independent risk factor of the occurrence of perioperative CA (OR 7.6, 95% CI 2.6–22.4; P<0.001). Conclusion Identifying factors associated with increased risk for anesthesia-related CA is of great importance in risk stratification for surgical patients. ASA physical status score was found to be a major factor in predicting perioperative CA, since patients with higher ASA scores had a statistically significant increased risk of CA. Therefore, extra precautions must be taken when dealing with unprepared patients who have uncontrolled medical illnesses, especially those who will be undergoing emergency surgery.


This article argues that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine is a physician-centric, guild type doctrine that is misplaced in the present incarnation of the American healthcare system and that does nothing to improve quality, efficiency, or accountability. The paper focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone, as physicians have not been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of healthcare for quite some time. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are not influenced by financial gain, which is evidenced by the federal and state prohibitions against physician self-referral and by the exodus from Medicare and Medicaid that is the result of decreasing reimbursement. Third, the corporate practice of medicine doctrine does nothing to advance error-free, high quality healthcare and may stand in the way of improving the quality of healthcare. Recent reports by the Institute of Medicine demonstrate and emphasize this point. In order to overcome the many manifestations of the state-based corporate practice of medicine doctrine, this article proposes federal legislation to effectuate alignment.


An anatomical analysis of vegetative organs of barrel medic (Medicago truncatula Gaertn.) cultivars was performed using anatomical and stereological methods. The aim was to determine histological bases of the genotypic differences for digestibility, calculate tissue volume densities (Vv), examine the variability and assess tissue proportions along the stem maturity gradient. As the cultivars showed similar proportions of leaf tissues, potential variations in digestibility should be assigned to structural differences observed for the stems. Phloem and xylem Vv increased linearly with stem maturation, whilst Vv of epidermis, mechanical and parenchyma tissue significantly decreased. Secondary xylem was the tissue with the highest potential impact on digestibility. Cultivars 'Mogul' and 'Jemalong' had low proportion of lignified stem tissues, whilst 'Parabinga' and 'Caliph' did not show favourable anatomical characteristics. More advantageous proportions of thick-walled and thin-walled cells were recorded in M. truncatula stems, compared to alfalfa (M. sativa). Therefore, examined cultivars are comparable in anatomical quality parameters to this wellknown forage crop. Leaf parameters did not provide variability necessary for the improvement of forage quality. Stem parameters showed higher within-cultivar variability, which could be useful as a starting point in breeding towards improvement of digestibility. As the secondary xylem was the lignified stem tissue with the highest Vv, we recommend the improvement of M. truncatula digestibility through the reduction of its proportion.


To increase the loading amount of modifier in wood, a simple and universal approach was developed to improve its permeability. The generated pores in wood can be backfilled with modifiers, thereby improving the function of wood. This study aimed to improve the permeability of Eucalyptus urophylla wood using a urea solution. The wood was treated under different conditions, including urea concentration, treatment duration, and temperature, and the wood permeability before and after treatment was measured using water absorption as an indicator. The treatment temperature and solution concentration had considerable effects on the water absorption capacity of the treated wood. The treatment of eucalyptus wood with a 5% urea solution for 12 h, under normal pressure, resulted in the optimal effect; water absorption reached 40%, which was 78.9% higher than that of the untreated eucalyptus. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, component analysis, and BET analysis were performed to examine the mechanism underlying the effect of urea treatment on eucalyptus, which is as follows: a weak alkaline solution can dissolve the internal components of wood, namely, hemicellulose, lignin, and alcohol-benzene, which leads to the destruction of the microstructure of the wood and increases the number of micropores and mesopores in the wood.


Aims and objectives The REALISE™ survey was a large European survey across 11 countries assessing patient attitudes and behaviours towards their asthma. Healthcare utilisation and absenteeism were examined across a subset of countries: UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands (all with patient sample size >850), in relation to predefined attitudinal clusters. The aim was to determine if differences in attitudes affected resource and productivity. Methods Data were collected online from 5,913 asthma patients. Previously reported analyses identified 4 patient clusters (CL); CL1: good control, confident and adherent; CL2: highest control, confident, but relatively non-adherent; CL3: poor control, low confidence and embarrassed about inhaler, but desire to improve control and seeking information; CL4: lowest control, lowest confidence in self-management, desire to improve control. The cluster analysis was used to estimate the utilisation of healthcare resources per patient per year, in relation to CL1. Results Patients in CL3 & CL4 had higher odds of utilising resource than those in CL1 & CL2. The annual mean number of HCP visits per patient was lowest in CL2 (1.62 visits), increasing to 2.54 in CL1, 4.15 in CL4, and 4.24 in CL3. Conclusion The differing resource use by cluster may suggest that patients included in each of the clusters, with different control levels and attitudes towards asthma, require different management strategies. Funded by Mundipharma International Ltd.


The history of France and its empires is one that has been well trodden, particularly the French occupation, and subsequent war, in Algeria. In this companion to his earlier work, 2011's The Colonial Heritage of French Comics,McKinney attempts to examine the reconstruction of French national identity in the wake of decolonisation through the medium of Francophonecomics. He endeavours to study the colonial affrontier (3), the space in which France and its colonies are connected and divided, where they seek to confront each other, or to seek peace and the removal of the division. McKinney argues this affrontier can be found most strongly in the Francophone comics produced dealing with the French colonial experience in Algeria, as well as that of Indochina,and does so from both sides of each conflict. McKinney examines in detail the French colonisation of Algeria (1830sonwards), the French war in Indochina (1946–54) and the Algerian war (1954–62), and his work is the first to approach these well-covered areas of research through the medium of comics. The resulting work takes the form of an investigation into the five forms of genealogical inquiry utilised in comics regarding these conflicts. His approach investigates the familial, ethnic, national, artistic and critical forms of genealogy relating to colonialism and imperialism from a variety of viewpoints, including the previously overlooked perspective of the pieds noirs. He aims to highlight both those cartoonists that critique the colonial ideology, as well as those cartoonists who to some extent attempt to gloss over or even romanticise the French empire, strengthening the affrontier. He positions himself alongside Foucault in seeing genealogy as a useful means of establishing 'historical knowledge of struggles' (Foucault1980, 85), but McKinney looks at the colonial representation in a popular medium,including the recent increase in comics produced which consider the French colonial experience. He argues that this consideration of the present, as well as European imperialism, is absent in the work of Foucault. The text is accompanied by a number of black and white facsimiles of pages from the comics he analyses to illustrate the different and often conflicting positions of cartoonists on these issues. Overall, McKinney's work is a welcome addition to the study of the French colonial experience, which separates its elf from the rest by using Francophonecomics as lenses through which to look at these already well-trodden areas of study. He succeeds in determining if and how cartoonists critique colonial ideology and representations on both sides of the conflicts, a task in which he is unarguably successful. McKinney's work, however, is unfortunately let down by typo graphicerrors, which occur throughout the text.Nevertheless, McKinney's work is another important work in the field of Bande Dessine e scholarship, and useful for anyone interested in the representations of colonialism and imperialism in French comics, accompanied by anencyclopaedic bibliography of comics produced on this topic.


Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an entity that mainly includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn´s disease (CD). Improved health care, diet changes, and higher industrialization are associated with an increase in IBD prevalence. This supports the central role of environmental factors in the pathology of this disease. However, IBD also shows a relevant genetic component as shown by high heritability. Classic genetic studies showed relevant associations between IBD susceptibility and genes involved in the immune response. This is consistent with prior theories about IBD development. According to these, contact of the immune system with a high number of harmless antigens from the diet and the bacterial flora should originate tolerance while preserving response against pathogens. Failure to achieve this balance may originate the typical inflammatory response associated with IBD. Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have confirmed the implication of the immune system, particularly the Th17 immune response, previously associated to other autoimmune diseases, and of autophagy. In this paper, the mechanisms involved in these two relevant pathways and their potential role in the pathogenesis of IBD are reviewed.


We review all cases of gonorrhoea caused by penicillinase producing Neisseria gonorrhoeae (PPNG) seen between 1976 and 1983 at the sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic of this hospital, which accounted for 11% of all such cases reported in that period in the United Kingdom. While the overall incidence of gonorrhoea remained relatively stable in this clinic, that of PPNG rose to 4.4% of all such cases by 1982. Until last year, 75% of these cases were imported, mainly from Nigeria and Ghana, but a marked change was seen in the second half of 1982, when 71% of cases were indigenous in origin. Casual partners and prostitutes in London were mentioned as the source of infection by 34% of patients, a much higher percentage than that seen previously. Such sources are notoriously difficult to trace and these figures show a very disturbing trend. Although rectal infection tends to be asymptomatic, PPNG was isolated in rectal cultures from two of five homosexuals and 19 of 26 women. There is therefore a risk that PPNG could spread rapidly through the homosexual population. We suggest that spectinomycin should no longer be the first drug of choice in the treatment of gonorrhoea caused by PPNG but should be replaced by the newer cephalosporins.


We consider the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation in R. We call multi-solitary waves a solution behaving at large time as a sum of boosted standing waves. Our main result is the existence of such multi-solitary waves, provided the composing boosted standing waves are stable. It is obtained by solving the equation backward in time around a sequence of approximate multisolitary waves and showing convergence to a solution with the desired property. The main ingredients of the proof are finite speed of propagation, variational characterizations of the profiles, modulation theory and energy estimates.


1. The spiral organism isolated from a wild rat has proved identical with that from a human case of rat-bite fever in Mexico City. 2. Rabbits can easily be infected with these organisms. 3. The subcutaneous inoculation of them is followed after 3 to 5 days by a local edema, induration, and inflammation: primary lesion. 4. About 8 days after the appearance of the primary lesion, edematous swellings and inflammation appear on the head and genitals: secondary lesions. 5. The organism can be transmitted from rabbit to rabbit by coitus. 6. Protective antibodies are to be found in the blood of infected rabbits at a time when the local lesions are still active. The peculiar character of certain of the lesions is probably due to the escape of the antibodies from the blood stream. 7. The organism belongs to the genus Treponema.


The administrative models arising from modernity are becoming increasingly obsolete in view of the needs of organizations, especially those which provide health care such as health institutions and their human capital. Since rationality is an essential element for the accomplishment of organizational objectives, modern ethics requires only that workers adjust to their prescribed functions and perform their tasks according to the rules. Post-modernity is characterized by saturation of information and consumption, pleasure of using goods and services, lack of values and meaning of life, reflecting a post-modern apathy. Without projects man's interior life has no substance. Health organizations are being strongly influenced by this context. Hence, ethics needs to be treated in a new way. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to approach nurse's leadership in light of post-modern ethics.


AFM force measurements have been performed to study the influence of the pH value and salt concentration on the interactions between poly(2-vinyl pyridine) brushes and microsized silica spheres, focusing on attractive and adhesion forces. It was found that the interaction was composed of a repulsive component reflecting the conformation of the brush and an additional attractive force. It can therefore be switched reversibly between purely repulsive at pH 2.5 to strong and medium adhesion by changing the pH value to pH 4 and 6, respectively. Addition of KCl showed different effects: at pH 2.5 high salt concentrations induced an attractive force; at pH 4 the interaction changed from strong attraction in the osmotic brush regime to repulsion and weaker adhesion in the salted brush regime; at pH 6 increase of the KCl concentration weakened the attractive force. These effects could partly be explained by the theory of polyelectrolyte brushes; under some conditions the mechanism of the attractive force is still unclear.


Land use and land cover classification system has been used widely in many applications such as for baseline mapping for Geographic Information System (GIS) input and also target identification for identification of roads, clearings and also land and water interface. The research was conducted in Kuala Tiga, Tanah Merah, Kelantan and the study area covers for about 25 km2. The main purpose of this research is to access the possibilities of using remote sensing for the detection of regional land use change by developing land cover classification system. Another goal is to compare the accuracy of supervised and unsupervised classification system by using remote sensing. In this research, both supervised and unsupervised classifications were tested on satellite images of Landsat 7 and 8 in the year 2001 and 2016. As for supervised classification, the satellite images are combined and classified. Information and data from the field and land cover classification is utilized to identify training areas that represent land cover classes.Then, for unsupervised classification, the satellite images is combined and classified by means of unsupervised classification by using an Iterative SelfOrganizing Data Analysis Techniques (ISODATA) algorithm. Information and data from the field and land cover classification is utilized to assign the resulting spectral classes to the land cover classes.This research was then comparing the accuracy of two classification systems at dividing the landscape into five classes; built-up land, agricultural land, bare soil, forest land, water bodies. Overall accuracies for unsupervised classification are 36.34 % for 2016 and 51.76% for 2001 while for supervised classification, accuracy assessments are 95.59 % for 2016 and 96.29 % for 2001.


Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and ideal adult stem cells for alveolar bone regeneration considerably help restore the structure and function of the periodontium and promote the healing of periodontal disease. Thus, BMSC features, especially the mechanism of osteogenic differentiation, has recently become a research hotspot. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), which is the main factor in the periodontal inflammatory microenvironment, is directly related to the osteogenic differentiation of BMSCs. Exploring the TNF-α-regulated differentiation mechanism of BMSCs aids in the search for new treatment targets. Such investigation also promotes the development of stem cell therapy for periodontal diseases. This article aims to describe the potential of TNF-α in regulating the osteogenic differentiation of stem cells.


The purpose of the article is development of the issue of increasing the efficiency of the automation and visu-alization procedure for creating documentation based on the use of XML-files, which, unlike existing ones, simpli-fies data exchange and presentation, which allows to automate document flow while maintaining accurate data description.

Stationary or portable technical devices in which information is stored in XML files are usually used as visu-alization tools. Such files are used to exchange information between the decision maker, users and spatially dis-tributed systems and are called exchange. The XML format significantly minimizes the amount of memory on the media, in this format, any tags are created that are analogous to the fields in the table. The XML exchange file is also one of the tools for filling the cartographic basis of the urban cadastre and cadastres of other natural re-sources.

The study improved the method of monitoring regional resources, based on the methodology of parallel cal-culations, which, in contrast to existing ones, can be used to process large amounts of spatially distributed infor-mation, which improves the monitoring system of regional resources in processing complex structured requests and too many spatial objects. Thus, the control, classification, coding and reliability of information with the re-production of missing data by verification, conversion and validation of archival or new spatially distributed information.

All developed models, methods and software and hardware for building regional resources monitoring have been brought to the level of engineering methods, algorithms and software tools for computer implementation. Methods and algorithms are implemented using Digitals, FastReport software and C # programming languages.

The approbation of the developed technology is carried out on the example of separate parts of the Kharkiv city and the village of Kotlyary territories.


Objective To demonstrate in a mouse model of tuberculosis that excess iron load enhances the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and to assess whether or not iron chelation may abrogate the effect of iron loading on Mycobacterium tuberculosis growth in the mouse model. Methods In the first experiment, female BALB/C mice were infected intravenously with 5.4 × 10 4 CFU of M. tuberculosis H37Rv per mouse. Before infection, half of them were treated for 2 weeks with 50 mg/kg polymaltose ferric hydroxide, a source of iron. In a second experiment, female BALB/C mice were infected intravenously with 9 × 10 4 CFU per mouse and half of them were iron loaded for 2 weeks before infection. Both iron-loaded and non-iron-loaded mice were treated with desferrioxamine (DFO), an iron chelator, or isoniazid. At each sacrifice, mice and their spleens were weighed, lung lesions were noted, and the number of M. tuberculosis CFU determined by quantitative cultures of spleen and lungs. Results In the first experiment, the number of CFU was significantly higher in the spleen of iron-treated mice than in non-iron-loaded mice at days 14 and 28 after infection. In the second experiment, iron loading enhanced the multiplication of M. tuberculosis in the spleen but not in the lungs, DFO displayed a modest but significant effect on the multiplication of M. tuberculosis in iron-loaded mice, and isoniazid therapy was effective in both iron-loaded and non-iron-loaded mice. Conclusions Iron loading of BALB/C mice enhanced the multiplication of M. tuberculosis in the spleens but not in the lungs. DFO exhibited significant activity against M. tuberculosis in iron-loaded mice, and isoniazid therapy was strongly bactericidal in both iron-loaded and non-iron-loaded mice.


Background Approximately one third of all stillbirths occur at term. These losses are potentially preventable by early delivery at 37 weeks. One means of screening to detect babies at risk of term stillbirth would be to use ultrasound to assess abnormalities of fetal growth. However, there is limited information on the importance of fetal growth in determining the risk of stillbirth at term. Methods/Results We studied registries of Scottish maternity and stillbirth data and identified 668,887 eligible records of term births since 1992. Birth weight was classified on the basis of sex and gestational age specific percentiles. The relationship between birth weight percentile and the risk of stillbirth (all causes except congenital anomaly) was assessed referent to birth weight percentiles in the range 20–80th. The risk (odds ratio [95% CI] P) of stillbirth was increased with birth weight between the 1st–3rd percentile (OR = 8.2 [CI:6.8–9.9] P < 0.001), 4th–10th percentile (OR = 3.5 [CI:2.8–4.0] P < 0.001) and the 11th–20th percentile (OR = 1. 8 [CI:1.4–2.2] P < 0.001). The risk of stillbirth was also increasing among the largest infants: 98th–100th percentile (OR = 2.3 [CI:1.7–3.1] P < 0.001). The attributable fraction for stillbirth associated with these birth weight categories was 33% (95% CI: 28 to 37%). The associations were minimally affected by adjusting for maternal characteristics, including smoking. Conclusion Approximately one third of all term stillbirths are associated with growth abnormality. These data indicate that population screening for growth abnormality could identify babies at increased risk of term stillbirth.


This book is the first in a new series entitled "Intelligent Systems Reference Library". It is a collection of chapters written by leading experts, covering a rich and diverse variety of computer-based techniques, all involving some aspect of computational intelligence (CI). Authors in this collection recognize the limitations of individual paradigms, and propose some practical and novel ways in which different CI techniques can be combined with each other, or with more traditional computational techniques, to produce powerful problem-solving environments. Common themes to be found in the various chapters of this collection include the following: Fusion, Collaboration, and Emergence. Fusion describes the hybridization of two or more techniques, at least one of which will involve CI. Collaboration ensures that the different techniques work effectively together. Finally, Emergence refers to the phenomenon that complex behaviour can arise as a result of collaboration between simple processing elements. The book covers a wide range of cutting edge techniques and applications, and is divided into the following parts: I. Introduction II. Fusing evolutionary algorithms and fuzzy logic III. Adaptive solution schemes IV. Multi-agent systems V. Computer vision VI. Communication for CI systems VII. Artificial immune systems VIII. Parallel evolutionary algorithms IX. CI for clustering and classification


Firms accumulate knowledge through product development activities such as efficient product design, various experimental data, and know-how of project management. By exploiting this knowledge, firms are able to improve product quality, reduce cost, and shorten the development lead time. The more firms accumulate knowledge, the more they are able to gain competitiveness by exploiting their knowledge. However, because of efficiency gained by exploitation, firms can sometimes excessively exploit their knowledge, thus making their products too similar to and less attractive than earlier products and, as a result, lose competitiveness. In this paper, we employ a time series analysis to show that excess exploitation of know-how reduced product creativity in the Japanese video game industry.


Research has shown that autoimmune diseases have a significant prevalence within the female population, and a considerable portion of women who are mothers. According to Khashan et al., 44.3% of women who develop an autoimmune disease have onset after the first year of pregnancy. During pregnancy, the fetus develops a separate circulatory system, however the fetus's and mother's blood often mix. This fetomaternal trafficking is known as microchimerism. Fetal components, such as DNA, may remain in the mother's system for decades after childbirth, while maternal components remain in the offspring as well. There are certain conditions causing a higher percentage of blood mixing, such as hypertension or preeclampsia. The literature shows that complications during pregnancy can also progress into the development of postpartum autoimmune diseases. When the fetus's blood mixes with maternal circulation, an autoimmune response is initiated. The mother's immune system reacts to this blood as a foreign substance, releasing autoantibodies. For example; according to research, scleroderma is one of autoimmune diseases that follows this pattern of development after pregnancy. The review of literature supports a correlation of parity and the development of autoimmune disease. Recognition of this development may provide information of risk factors, development of screening tools, or lead to new evidenced based practices.


This research was directed to find out "penerpan" model of investigative group in the learning process to support the preparation of candidates for professional teachers in the Faculty of Education in University of Tanjungpura. The approach used in this study is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches (mixing qualitative and quantitative method), which was developed through the course of Professional Education on research subjects of Physics Education Study Program students who take these courses. The study found that the group investigating models were able to improve their knowledge and understanding about the implementation of the learning process in schools. Similarly, this model was able to increase the the students' dimensions of values applied to improve the ability of students. This is the model of investigative group designed and implemented in an integrated manner for the subject courses of Professional Education, by optimizing the active role of students as well as institutional support. This study recommends that this model was developed for a wider variety of courses for improving the knowledge and the expansion of the students' experience. In addition, the need for further research deepens or extends the findings of this study.


Both a history and a metahistory, "Representing Electrons" focuses on the development of various theoretical representations of electrons from the late 1890s to 1925 and the methodological problems associated with writing about unobservable scientific entities. Using the electron - or rather its representation - as a historical actor, Theodore Arabatzis illustrates the emergence and gradual consolidation of its representation in physics, its career throughout old quantum theory, and its appropriation and reinterpretation by chemists. As Arabatzis develops this novel biographical approach, he portrays scientific representations as partly autonomous agents with lives of their own. Furthermore, he argues that the considerable variance in the representation of the electron does not undermine its stable identity or existence. Raising philosophical issues of contentious debate in the history and philosophy of science - namely, scientific realism and meaning change - Arabatzis addresses the history of the electron across disciplines, integrating historical narrative with philosophical analysis in a book that will be a touch-stone for historians and philosophers of science and scientists alike.


The paper examines the concept of international power in connection with demographic trends as forecast by the United Nations. It focuses its attention on the situation of Africa, a region projected to become the second largest in terms of population by the turn of the century. The argument to be developed is that the large number of new entrants to labor markets of African countries will likely be deprived of the labor skills necessary to allow them earn a livelihood. The "demographic dividend" will thus be denied and the consequences will be felt not only in Africa but in the world at large, most acutely in Europe. To prevent the rise of this "disruptive" power in Africa the paper offers some novel ideas on how to redesign Official Development Assistance (ODA) so as to promote human capital investment.


Graph Networks (GNs) enable the fusion of prior knowledge and relational reasoning with flexible function approximations. In this work, a general GN-based model is proposed which takes full advantage of the relational modeling capabilities of GNs and extends these to probabilistic modeling with Variational Bayes (VB). To that end, we combine complementary pre-existing approaches on VB for graph data and propose an approach that relies on graph-structured latent and conditioning variables. It is demonstrated that Neural Processes can also be viewed through the lens of the proposed model. We show applications on the problem of structured probability density modeling for simulated and real wind farm monitoring data, as well as on the meta-learning of simulated Gaussian Process data. We release the source code, along with the simulated datasets.


PURPOSE
To investigate the association of the percent tissue altered (PTA) with the occurrence of ectasia after LASIK in eyes with suspicious preoperative corneal topography.

METHODS
This retrospective comparative case-control study compared associations of reported ectasia risk factors in 129 eyes, including 57 eyes with suspicious preoperative Placido-based corneal topography that developed ectasia after LASIK (suspect ectasia group), 32 eyes with suspicious topography that remained stable for at least 3 years after LASIK (suspect control group), and 30 eyes that developed ectasia with bilateral normal topography (normal topography ectasia group). Groups were subdivided based on topographic asymmetry into high- or low-suspect groups. The PTA, preoperative central corneal thickness (CCT), residual stromal bed (RSB), and age (years) were evaluated in univariate and multivariate analyses.

RESULTS
Average PTA values for normal topography ectasia (45), low-suspect ectasia (39), high-suspect ectasia (36), low-suspect control (32), and high-suspect control (29) were significantly different from one another in all comparisons (P < .003) except high- and low-suspect ectasia groups (P = .033), and presented the highest discriminative capability of all variables evaluated. Age was only significantly different between the high-suspect ectasia and normal topography ectasia groups, and CCT was not significantly different between any groups. Stepwise logistic regression revealed the PTA as the most significant independent variable (P < .0001), with RSB the next most significant parameter.

CONCLUSIONS
There remains a significant correlation between PTA values and ectasia risk after LASIK, even in eyes with suspicious corneal topography. Less tissue alteration, or a lower PTA value, was necessary to induce ectasia in eyes with more remarkable signs of topographic abnormality, and PTA provided better discriminative capabilities than RSB for all study populations.


Determining when software testing should be begun and the resources that may be required to find and fix defects is complicated. Being able to predict the number of defects for an upcoming software product given the current development team enables the project managers to make better decisions. A majority of reported defects are managed and tracked using a repository system, which tracks a defect throughout its lifetime. The defect life cycle (DLC) begins when a defect is found and ends when the resolution is verified and the defect is closed. Defects transition through different states according to the evolution of the project, which involves testing, debugging, and verification. All of these defect transitions should be logged using the defect tracking systems (DTS). We construct a Markov chain theory-based defect prediction model for consecutive software products using defect transition history. During model construction, the state of each defect is modelled using the DLC states. The proposed model can predict the defect trends such as total number of defects and defect distribution states in the consecutive products. The model is evaluated using an actual industrial mobile product software project and found to be well suited for the selected domain.


SUMMARY A general tomographic technique is designed in order (i) to operate in anisotropic media; (ii) to account for the uneven seismic sampling and (iii) to handle massive data sets in a reasonable computing time. One modus operandi to compute a 3-D body wave velocity model relies on surface wave phase velocity measurements. An intermediate step, shared by other approaches, consists in translating, for each period of a given mode branch, the phase velocities integrated along ray paths into local velocity perturbations. To this end, we develop a method, which accounts for the azimuthal anisotropy in its comprehensive form. The weakly non- linear forward problem allows to use a conjugate gradient optimization. The Earth's surface is regularly discretized and the partial derivatives are assigned to the individual grid points. Possible lack of lateral resolution, due to the inescapable uneven ray path coverage, is taken into account through the a priori covariances on parameters with laterally variable correlation lengths. This method allows to efficiently separate the 2ψ and the 4ψ anisotropic effects from the isotropic perturbations. Fundamental mode and overtone phase velocity maps, derived with real Rayleigh wave data sets, are presented and compared with previous maps. The isotropic models concur well with the results of Trampert & Woodhouse. Large 4ψ heterogeneities are located in the tectonically active regions and over the continental lithospheres such as North America, Antarctica or Australia. At various periods, a significant 4ψ signature is correlated with the Hawaii hotspot track. Finally, concurring with the conclusions of Trampert & Woodhouse, our phase velocity maps show that Rayleigh wave data sets do need both 2ψ and 4ψ anisotropic terms.


Detection and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may reveal insights into the diagnosis and treatment of malignant disease. Technologies for isolating CTCs developed thus far suffer from one or more limitations, such as low throughput, inability to release captured cells, and reliance on expensive instrumentation for enrichment or subsequent characterization. We report a continuing development of a magnetic separation device, the magnetic sifter, which is a miniature microfluidic chip with a dense array of magnetic pores. It offers high efficiency capture of tumor cells, labeled with magnetic nanoparticles, from whole blood with high throughput and efficient release of captured cells. For subsequent characterization of CTCs, an assay, using a protein chip with giant magnetoresistive nanosensors, has been implemented for mutational analysis of CTCs enriched with the magnetic sifter. The use of these magnetic technologies, which are separate devices, may lead the way to routine preparation and characterization of "liquid biopsies" from cancer patients.


Considerable evidence points to an increase in workplace bullying, in large part as a consequence of competitive pressures, the predominance of business values, and concomitantly, the declining legitimacy ascribed to fairness and social justice. This paper examines workplace bullying in the context of the recent employment relations legislation in Australia (WorkChoices). It is shown that the legislation will enhance and extend women's labour market disadvantage by shifting the employment relationship to the private sphere, together with informalisation of workplace relations, reduced access to formal procedures and reduced accountability and transparency. Moreover, overt government support of business wishes will enable managers and employers to condone or encourage bullying. In exploring these issues, the paper will draw on a 'Swiss Cheese' model, which highlights the factors that might enhance or prevent workplace bullying. This journal article is available in Illawarra Unity Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: http://ro.uow.edu.au/unity/vol6/iss2/4


Transmission switching can improve the economic benefits of a power system through changing its topology during operations. However, the switching operation itself represents a step change in power systems, which is, to some extent, similar to a contingency that can bring disturbances into systems. This paper proposes a new model for multi-period, static-security-constrained transmission switching. Because the power flow on the network will be redistributed instantaneously after the switching operations, the new model involves using disjunctive programming, which considers two sets of power flow equations under possibly different topologies before/after switching. Each switchable transmission element is modeled into four actions or disjunctions. An action transition diagram coupling of four actions in different hours is used to represent feasible paths of instantaneous changes in the element status. Disjunctive formulations are transformed into mixed-integer programming problems. We compare the difference of the previous transmission switching model and the proposed one by using several numerical tests and verify the effectiveness of our solution methodology in the six-bus and RTS-96 systems.


Geographic profiling uses locations of series crimes to detect the most probable residence of the offender. However, because of shortage of other information, the method doesn't perform well. To Solve this problem, the concept of geographic profiling was extended and a concept of human geographic profiling (HGP) was put forward to take offender's bias, victims' characteristics, and geographical circumstances into account. The physical geographic profiling (PGP) was obtained by combining an improved "spatial mean" method and an improved criminal geographic targeting (CGT) model by using a precisely deduced "Combination Function". Afterwards, HGP and PCG were combined by the same function. The resultant product was a three-dimentional probability map. Simulation result indicated high accuracy rates among which the lowest is 66% under an ideal situation. The introduction of HGP and deduction of combination function are discussed originally and are of great importance in this paper.


Background: Plantar heel pain is a clinical syndrome characterized by pain and tenderness beneath the heel which is typically worse in the morning and improves after the first few steps in the day. It is a common and frequently disabling clinical complaint that may be caused by a broad spectrum of osseous or soft tissue disorders.
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of an operation of multiple drilling of calcaneum for resistant plantar heel pain syndrome.
Methods: During the period from November 2012 to August 2016, 17 patients (17heels) were enrolled in a cohort clinical study at the orthopedic unit in AL-Sheikh Zayed and Al-Wassity Hospitals.
 Result: Drilling of the calcaneum is a simple procedure achieving 70.6% cure in resistant ases with few complications provided good patient selection was done.
Conclusion: Abnormalities in the intraosseous pressure within the calcaneum are a possible cause of plantar heel pain in some patients who failed to respond to conservative treatment


Self-supervised learning (SSL) has recently emerged as a promising paradigm for training generalisable models on large-scale data in the fields of vision, text, and speech. Although SSL has been proven effective in speech and audio, its application to music audio has yet to be thoroughly explored. This is primarily due to the distinctive challenges associated with modelling musical knowledge, particularly its tonal and pitched characteristics of music. To address this research gap, we propose an acoustic Music undERstanding model with large-scale self-supervised Training (MERT), which incorporates teacher models to provide pseudo labels in the masked language modelling (MLM) style acoustic pre-training. In our exploration, we identified a superior combination of teacher models, which outperforms conventional speech and audio approaches in terms of performance. This combination includes an acoustic teacher based on Residual Vector Quantization - Variational AutoEncoder (RVQ-VAE) and a musical teacher based on the Constant-Q Transform (CQT). These teachers effectively guide our student model, a BERT-style transformer encoder, to better model music audio. In addition, we introduce an in-batch noise mixture augmentation to enhance the representation robustness. Furthermore, we explore a wide range of settings to overcome the instability in acoustic language model pre-training, which allows our designed paradigm to scale from 95M to 330M parameters. Experimental results indicate that our model can generalise and perform well on 14 music understanding tasks and attains state-of-the-art (SOTA) overall scores. The code and models are online: https://github.com/yizhilll/MERT.


This report is the result of dialogue and research focusing on the World Dialogue on Regulation (WDR) theme Stimulating Investment in Network Development: Roles for Regulators. The World Dialogue on Regulation for Network Economies (WDR) is an infoDev-funded project that is helping to facilitate infoDev's objectives to broaden the reach and affordability of ICTs for all through its program of applied research, web-based dialogue, expert forum meetings with policymakers and regulators, and publication of timely research and reference material, such as this report. Stimulating investment in network development is a fundamental issue for developing countries, and unfortunately in far too many countries telecom policy and regulation tends to increase rather than decrease investment risk. This report focuses specifically on the roles of telecom regulation in stimulating or retarding network investment opportunities in developing countries. By detailed hands-on case studies in seven countries and in-depth analysis of some key generic issues, the report is able to draw out the key problems and point directions for their resolution.


We explore the use of ultra-capacitors as backup storage for solar powered electronic devices. We discuss two use cases: routers in off-grid broadband networks consuming a few Watt and wireless sensor network nodes using a few mW when operating and a few μW in quiescent mode. We have been testing batteries with ultra-capacitor based cells, both EDLC and LIC, in the range from 40 to 3000F. We found them viable alternatives in some applications and started long term field tests to sort out some unclear aspects regarding maximum discharge levels. Besides the traditional function of a backup battery storage in low-power applications, the very low internal resistance of capacitors make them useful also in hybrid solutions to accommodate transient needs for high currents that traditional batteries cannot deliver. Due to the low resistance, charging/discharging can be very fast. We also show how a very simple design requiring only one LIC capacitor can power a WSN mote sending at 1 packet/minute for 6 weeks on a single charge.


Shifting Kenya's private sector into higher gear: a trade and competitiveness agenda' was born out of the World Bank's Trade and Competitiveness (T&C) Global Practice recent stock taking of its work in Kenya. This was part of a Programmatic Approach that aimed to organize T&C's knowledge, advisory, and convening services to address Kenya's development challenges in the private sector space. By Sub-Saharan African standards, Kenya has a large private sector, which accounts for around 70 percent of total formal employment. As a result, the dynamics of the private sector are a key determinant of the trajectory of the Kenyan economy. The country's product market regulations a restrictive for domestic competitors and foreign entrants, and the actions of cartels and behavior of dominant firms across sectors undermines competition and hurts consumers. The Kenyan Government recognizes these challenges and has invested significantly in unlocking these bottlenecks with impressive results so far and several important laws passed. Additional efforts to ease regulatory constraints and expedite important legislative changes could improve the investment climate at national and county levels.


In the documents on the modernization of higher education, three priority areas of education in the modern information society are clearly identified: informatization of education, foreign languages teaching and mastering socio-economic knowledge. Today, many English teachers consider the person-oriented approach as a system-forming link in foreign languages teaching. Recently, ICTs have been widely used in educational institutions. This phenomenon contributed to the intensive development of educational software, which allows you to solve many problems in the modern educational system: a variety of forms in educational material presentation, access to education, the use of new technologies and methods in education, and many others.
The relevance of new ICT application is dictated, first of all, by pedagogical needs to increase the effectiveness of developing learning, in particular, the need to form skills of independent learning activity, a research, creative approach to learning, the formation of critical thinking, and a new culture. The use of new technologies in teaching English is not only determined by the desire for novelty, this learning allows you to implement a person-oriented approach, which is the main conceptual direction in XXI century education.
To organize various types of classes, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of ICTs. The problem of increasing the effectiveness in educational activities by means of ICTs addresses the issues of using person-oriented software to organize independent learning activities at home. Teachers consider the problem of motivation in the context of person-oriented learning, study the didactic possibilities of using ICTs in the learning process, some ICT software tools for influencing the motivation in learning activities.
Today, foreign languages and information technologies are necessary for specialists in any field of professional activity. Of particular importance is the knowledge of a foreign language. Thus, no matter what field of activity today's students are preparing themselves, they need knowledge of a foreign language to become good specialists, able to use modern information technologies and participate in international cooperation.


Lipid and fatty acid profiles were described for copepod nauplii Apocy clops panamensis from fertilized brackish water ponds, and after being acclimated to fullsea water salinity. Mean total lipid content of copepod nauplii collected from ponds fertilized with inorganic fertilizer combined either with alfalfa meal, rice bran, wheat bran, and a combination of these fertilizers ranged from 5.66 ± 0.15 to 7.76% ± 0.27%. Non-polar (neutral) lipid fraction of pond copepod nauplii was a significantly higher percentage of the total lipid content (74.5 ± 1.8 - 93.5% ± 1.0%) compared to those of polar lipid (6.5 ± 1.0 - 21.3% ± 1.8%) (P= 0.000). DHA/EPA ratio in neutral lipids ranged from 1.8 ± 0.2 - 2.0 ± 0.1 with no significant differences in three fertilization regimes. DHA was 27.5% ± 0.56% of the neutral lipids and EPA 14.8% ± 0.8%. Acclimation of copepod nauplii for six hours from brackish to full-sea water salinity reduced their lipid content and individual dry weight significantly. Mean total lipid content was reduced 44.2%, non-polar lipid was reduced 46.9% and polar lipid was reduced 24.4%. Acclimation altered the DHA/EPA ratio, in the neutral fraction the ratio increased 26.3% but in the polar fraction it decreased 25%.


It is now thirty years since Americans finally departed from Saigon in 1975.That this longest war in U.S.history still electrifies the political climate was abundantly evident in the last presidential election. John Kerry opened his campaign with a dramatic rendering of his heroic feats as a swift-boat commander in Vietnam to which members of his crew gave testimony. Anti-Kerry political ads followed, sponsored by the putative Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth, who sought to portray him as utterly unworthy of his wartime honors. Another pro-Republican group depicted Kerry as a national anti-war activist who debased the coinage of traditional patriotism, and thereby disqualified himself from leading the nation in the war in Iraq as well as in the struggle against terrorism. Anti-Bush ads then challenged the integrity of the President's record as a reserve Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War. Within the preceding context, it is clear that any contemporary historian engaged in writing about Vietnam must be aware that the very process itself entails a political act. The war there has affected the deep stories of all those who were, and are, either defenders or opponents of America's involvement in that military action. There is also the inevitable distortion of memory and of bias among those who viewed the war from such varying perspectives as that of the church, of the larger society, as well as of the academy. Yawning generation gaps were current during the "war and still affect our perspectives today. Any historian examining so divisive a conflict must struggle to achieve the necessary scholarly detachment, even when he or she has access to what seem to be voluminous records. In writing about Catholic Relief Services I have the luxury of rich documentation that reveals both sides in a war that polarized the nation. Nevertheless, there is always a danger of interpretive prejudices unwittingly creeping into any narrative of conflict. Introduction: The Context In 1943, during Franklin D. Roosevelt's post-World War II planning to incorporate religious voluntary agencies into relief and recovery efforts, Catholic War Relief Services-NCWC was established by the Catholic bishops' National Catholic Welfare Conference. After 1955 it was renamed Catholic Relief Services-NCWC. As a participant in the National War Fund, CRS was allotted 2.4 million dollars for immediate projects to respond to the needs of Polish refugees in Mexico, Palestine, and other Catholic refugees and prisoners of war. Of course, CRS could not use the funds for ecclesiastical purposes or any kind of religious activity, but all funds were to go for health and general-welfare projects. CRS was almost entirely dependent upon U.S. aid; it also received the funds collected in every diocese on Laetare Sunday that originated in a 1941 collection for overseas aid. Over the years Church World Service (which included the major Protestant denominations and the Orthodox Church) and the United Jewish Appeal collected funds on that same weekend, marking it a special time for reflection on the needs of the human family. Eileen Egan, author of a history of CRS, captured the significance of the appeals by the principal faiths: "By their efficacy in mobilizing their communities to make sacrifices for suffering in far corners of the globe, the faith-related volunteer agencies earned the respect of the U.S. government, of foreign governments . . . and of intergovernmental agencies. ... In the post-war decades, over threefourths of all voluntary aid from the American people was donated by the three great faith-related agencies."1 Of course, this voluntary aid could be used for religious activities. In postwar Europe CRS had the advantage of funneling its U.S. aid for the social welfare and medical needs of people through the Church's extensive networks of institutions, i.e., hospitals, orphanages, and other charities. It was the only agency overseas recognized by many countries, making it the largest relief service. …


Three 54ha "farmlets" were established in 2000 near Uralla, NSW to trial high input, moderate input and intensive rotational grazing systems. A representative farm approach was used to interpret the profitability results of the trial from July 2000 to June 2005 at a commercial scale level to make research results more relevant to farmers. At the gross margin level, the high input farmlet had the highest annual gross margins, but this farmlet had the worst whole farm performance. These contrasting results support the claim that annual activity gross margins cannot alone indicate the profitability of an investment. This demonstrates that whole farm analysis is the most suitable method to assess different grazing systems.


The chemical construction of organized architectures is an important aspect of innovative materials synthesis. Bicontinuous water-filled microemulsions can be used as preorganized systems for the fabrication of crystalline calcium phosphate materials with extended reticulated microstructures. These macroporous materials are formed by mineralization reactions located within the interconnecting water channels of the bicontinuous network. The resulting materials represent replicas of the microemulsion architecture, but the pore sizes are incommensurate, suggesting that secondary modifications in the bicontinuous microstructure occur during crystal growth. Synthetic macroporous calcium phosphates could have uses in biomaterial implants.


OBJECTIVE
To determine serum levels of lipid, cholesterol, triglycerides and lipoproteins in newborns and their mothers and to know the association between them.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Blood samples were taken from 200 newborns and from their mothers, and analyzed for lipid, cholesterol, triglyceride and lipoprotein content in an autoanalyzer. Data were analyzed with the Epi Info 6 program. Central tendency measurements, variance analysis and Pearson correlation coefficient were obtained.

RESULTS
Average lipid levels in newborn blood samples was 625.2 +/- 130, 158.8 +/- 44 mg/dl of cholesterol, 136.9 +/- 97 mg/dl of triglycerides, 70.5 +/- 23.9 mg/dl LDL, 52.7 +/- 14 mg/dl HDL and 26.5 +/- 15.5 mg/dl VLDL.

CONCLUSIONS
Newborn cholesterol levels were similar to values reported by Alpers and higher than levels published by the American Committee of Pediatric Biochemistry in USA. An association between levels in mothers and their children was found.


Background: In youth, higher morning serum cortisol has been associated with fasting glucose, however the direct role of psychosocial stress as risk factor type 2 diabetes has not been well established; therefore, in this study, we examined the associations between perceived stress and fasting serum cortisol with fasting and 2-hour post glucose challenge and hemoglobin A1c.
 Methods: In this cross-sectional study among Latino and African American youth with overweight or obesity (n=195, age=14.6±2.8yrs) we measured psychosocial stress with the 14-item Perceived Stress Scale for children and glucose concentrations at fasting and 2-hour post glucose challenge (1.75g oral glucose solution/kg body weight to a maximum 75g) . Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and morning serum cortisol were measured from the fasting blood draw. Linear regression models assessed the relationships between perceived stress and morning cortisol with fasting glucose, 2-hour glucose, and HbA1c. With logistic regression models, we tested if perceived stress and morning serum cortisol associated with impaired fasting glucose, impaired glucose tolerance, or impaired HbA1c status. A priori covariates included age, sex, and ethnicity.
 Results: Perceived stress scores were not associated with any glycemic measures (all p>0.05) . Morning serum cortisol was positively associated with HbA1c (β=0.016; 95%CI=0.002,0.030) and impaired HbA1c status (OR=1.090; 95%CI=1.006,1.181) in unadjusted models and results were largely unchanged in adjusted models.
 Conclusion: Perceived stress, a common way to measure psychosocial stress, was not associated with any glycemic measures. Morning fasting cortisol was not associated with glucose levels, but was associated with HbA1c, a novel finding in this population of minority children. This finding adds to previous literature which showed that fasting serum cortisol associates with fasting glucose in children with overweight and obesity.

 K.Felix: None. M.Weigensberg: None. C.M.Toledo-corral: None.

 National Institutes of Health (P60 MD00254) National Institutes of Health (UL1GM118976) National Institutes of Health (RLGM118975) National Institutes of Health (TL4GM118977)


We propose an iterative algorithm to select the smoothing parameters in additive quantile regression, wherein the functional forms of the covariate effects are unspecified and expressed via B-spline bases with difference penalties on the spline coefficients. The proposed algorithm relies on viewing the penalized coefficients as random effects from the symmetric Laplace distribution, and it turns out to be very efficient and particularly attractive with multiple smooth terms. Through simulations we compare our proposal with some alternative approaches, including the traditional ones based on minimization of the Schwarz Information Criterion. A real-data analysis is presented to illustrate the method in practice.