Background. Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases and is incriminated in a large proportion of cervical, oral and other genital cancers. HPV vaccination was first introduced in 2004 in women, but recently there have been debates about extending the vaccination programme to men. Objective. To measure the knowledge and awareness of human papillomavirus infection among young adults. Subjects and method. The participants are medical students, selected from a larger sample, who completed an anonymous web-based survey measuring awareness and knowledge of HPV infection. The subsample contains 169 students in the age range 18-20 years old, with 32.5% men, who had fully completed the survey. Results. Overall, 70.4% of the sample had heard about HPV before. The awareness of HPV was similar between women (74.6%) and men (61.8%) (p=0.089), but was higher with seniority in medical studies (p=0.020). Among those who had heard about HPV before, while only 4.2% had been HPV vaccinated, 71% knew that the prevention of cervical cancer was possible through HPV vaccination. The highest knowledge score was 18 (out of 23), with a median of 11. The most missed answers were related to questions regarding the types of HPV included in the tetravalent vaccine (12/119 correct answers), and other types of cancer where HPV is incriminated (18/119 correct answers). Conclusions. Our survey indicates that medical students have poor knowledge of HPV and low HPV vaccination rates. These have important implications in prevention strategy. Increasing knowledge about the implications of HPV infection may encourage primary and secondary cervical cancer prevention programs.


Abstract. We present a parameterisation of aerosol activation, including co-condensation of semi-volatile organics, for warm clouds that has applications in large-scale numerical models. The scheme is based on previously developed parameterisations that are in the literature, but has two main modifications. The first is that the total aerosol mass is modified by the condensation of organic vapours entering cloud base, whereas the second is that this addition of mass acts to modify the median diameter and the geometric standard deviation of the aerosol size distribution. It is found that the scheme is consistent with parcel model calculations of co-condensation under different regimes. Such a parameterisation may find use in evaluating important feedbacks in climate models.


The pressure in an osmometer, filled with nitrous oxide-saturated water separated from water by a polyurethane polyether membrane 2.5 microns in thickness, rose slowly by 8 to 20 millimeters (of water) in 10 minutes before gradually returning to close to zero within 2 hours. The permeation coefficient of the membrane was approximately 1000 times greater for water than for gases. The osmotic pressure of water saturated with nitrous oxide at 1 atmosphere, derived from the freezing point of the gas solution, was 1.5 atmospheres. It is concluded that dissolved gases exert osmotic pressure. Partial-pressure gradients of dissolved gases in the tissues of animals and man should cause flows of water along osmotic gradients, which may partially account for some of the symptoms and signs of dysbarism.


: A 4-month-old Holstein bull was examined because of a loud heart murmur and recurring fever. The calf was polycythemic and became cyanotic following and mild exercise. A tetralogy of Fallot was diagnosed echocardiographically. Echo-free spaces were delineated in the left ventricle and interventricular septum. These fluid filled spaces were documented as myocardial abscesses on post-mortem examination.


This letter proposes an in-comparator aperture-time equalization scheme using the impulse response of a clocked comparator. The technique is applied in a wireline link receiver prototype, implemented in CMOS 7-nm FinFET technology. The proposed method controls the aperture properties of the slicers by shaping their impulse sensitivity functions. We demonstrate an aperture skew control range of 4.7 ps with 147-fs accuracy for NRZ signaling at 40 Gb/s. PAM4 signaling at 80 Gb/s is also showcased using the proposed technique. These results serve as a proof of concept for next-generation source-synchronous chip-to-chip dense I/O links where aperture-time skews could be fine adjusted inside each comparator.


Disposal of hydraulic fracturing flowback and produced water into Ordovician and Cambrian formations of the Fort Worth Basin (FWB), coupled with an increase in observed seismicity in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, necessitates an understanding of the geologic character of these disposal targets. More than 2 billion barrels (Bbbls) of wastewater have been disposed into the Ordovician Ellenburger Group of the FWB over the past 35 years. Since the implementation of the TexNet Earthquake Catalog (1 January 2017), more than 20 earthquakes of local magnitude ML2.0 or greater have been detected in the area, with depths ranging from 2 to 10 km (approximately 6500–33,000 ft). The cited mechanism for inducement of these earthquakes is reactivation of basement faults due to pore pressure changes, either directly related to proximal disposal or due to disposal volume buildup over time. Here, we present a stratigraphic and petrophysical analysis of FWB disposal targets and their relation to basement rocks. The Ellenburger consists of alternating layers of limestone and dolomite, with minor siliciclastics above the basement toward the Llano Uplift. Matrix porosity averages <5 porosity units (p.u.), with higher porosity in dolomitic layers than in limestone. Dolomite dominates at the top of the Ellenburger, which was exposed at the end of both the Lower and Upper Ordovician. Where crystalline basement rocks are penetrated, the composition ranges from granitic to chlorite-bearing metamorphosed lithology. The basement-sediment interface is frequently marked by increased porosity. An updated map of structure on top of basement indicates elevations ranging from outcrop at the Llano Uplift to more than [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) subsea toward the northeast. The disposal zone pore volume is estimated from thickness and porosity maps and ranges from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text] billion barrels per square mile ([Formula: see text]).


The Indian debt overhang issue is one of the major reasons that fresh investments are currently not being made in the scale required to promote higher growth and boost employment. Among banks the public sector banks (PSBs) are burdened with the bulk of net non-performing loans (NNPAs). These NNPAs are concentrated in long gestation projects, for example, in the steel, power and infrastructure sectors and most of the lending was to about 50 major borrowers. This paper details the approaches of other countries when their banking sectors were burdened with unsustainable levels of impaired assets. The paper examines the bad debt situation in India, the circumstances under which Asset Reconstruction Companies were registered and the changing regulatory requirements under which they have been operating in India. Till now, the extent to which ARCs have helped towards resolving the debt problem has been limited. Given that fixed costs in setting up ARCs have already been incurred this paper suggests how ARCs could play a catalytic and more significant role in addressing the debt overhang.


Various reasons are attributed to poor student performance in physical science courses such as lack of motivation, lack of ability, and/or the overall difficulty of these courses. One overlooked reason is a lack of self-awareness as to preparation level. Through a study over a two-year period, students at all levels (freshman through M.S.) of a chemistry program were surveyed and asked to self-report predictions of their score on examinations. At all levels, strong evidence of the Kruger–Dunning effect was seen where higher performing students tended to underpredict their examination scores while the lowest performing students tended to grossly overpredict their scores.


With the rapidly growing use of the audio and multimedia information over the Internet, the technology for retrieving speech information using voice queries is becoming more and more important. In this paper, considering the monosyllabic structure of the Chinese language, a whole class of syllable-based indexing features, including overlapping segments of syllables and syllable pairs separated by a few syllables, is extensively investigated based on a Mandarin broadcast news database. The strong discriminating capabilities of such syllable-based features were verified by comparing with the word- or character-based features. Good approaches for better utilizing such capabilities, including fusion with the word- and character-level information and improved approaches to obtain better syllable-based features and query expressions, were extensively investigated. Very encouraging experimental results were obtained.


An alternative to decrease CO2 emissions from OPC production consists on the development of a new kind of eco-cements composed by less calcite demanding phases, such as belite and ye'elimite. That is the case of Belite-Ye'elimite-Ferrite (BYF) cements. Since the reactivity of belite goes slowly, these materials develop low mechanical strengths at intermediate hydration ages. A possible solution to solve this problem consists on the production of cements which contain belite, alite and ye'elimite together, known as Belite-Alite-Ye'elimite (BAY) cements. Consequently, the reaction of alite and ye'elimite with water would develop cements with high mechanical strengths at early ages, while belite will contribute to later ages. The main objective of this work is to understand the hydration reactions of pure ye'elemite (both stoichiometric and pseudo-cubic polymorphs) with pure monoclinic alite (C3S) and with anhydrite, in order to be compared with a BAY eco-cement real system. The effect of the water/cement (w/c) ratio was studied on the hydration kinetic of alite-ye'elimite pastes. BAY pastes will be also analyzed and compared to understand the dissolution/crystallization processes that take place in both cases. The techniques used for this study were in-situ and ex-situ Synchrotron/Laboratory X-ray powder diffraction combined with Rietveld methodology, thermogravimetric and isothermal calorimetric analyses.


Nanostructured materials have extensive variety of applications owing to their nanosize dependent physicochemical properties. A greener production of Copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles without spending toxic and expensive organic solvents have been demonstrated by mean of Aloe-vera leaf extract compared with CuO synthesized by chemical mean. The amorphous characteristics, nanosize particles (~15 nm) and particular monoclinic phase of CuO, confirmed by XRD has been achieved by greener synthesis. Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) revealed the spherical shape with uniform distribution of as-synthesized nanoparticles. Further, vibrational band at 473 cm-1and 624 cm-1in Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) confirms the CuO and Cu2O oxides formation respectively. The CuO nanoparticles synthesized by Aloe-vera leaves exhibited 50 % higher thermal conductivity as compared to chemically synthesized CuO nanoparticles. This approach for the synthesis of CuO nanoparticles could be beneficial for various application because of it easy, eco-friendly and cost-effective synthesis procedure.


A new semianalytical solution is developed for the velocity‐dependent dispersion Henry problem using the Fourier‐Galerkin method (FG). The integral arising from the velocity‐dependent dispersion term is evaluated numerically using an accurate technique based on an adaptive scheme. Numerical integration and nonlinear dependence of the dispersion on the velocity render the semianalytical solution impractical. To alleviate this issue and to obtain the solution at affordable computational cost, a robust implementation for solving the nonlinear system arising from the FG method is developed. It allows for reducing the number of attempts of the iterative procedure and the computational cost by iteration. The accuracy of the semianalytical solution is assessed in terms of the truncation orders of the Fourier series. An appropriate algorithm based on the sensitivity of the solution to the number of Fourier modes is used to obtain the required truncation levels. The resulting Fourier series are used to analytically evaluate the position of the principal isochlors and metrics characterizing the saltwater wedge. They are also used to calculate longitudinal and transverse dispersive fluxes and to provide physical insight into the dispersion mechanisms within the mixing zone. The developed semianalytical solutions are compared against numerical solutions obtained using an in house code based on variant techniques for both space and time discretization. The comparison provides better confidence on the accuracy of both numerical and semianalytical results. It shows that the new solutions are highly sensitive to the approximation techniques used in the numerical code which highlights their benefits for code benchmarking.


This paper presents a comparison of genre use at three Swiss universities from different language regions. The methodology is one of contrastive genre mapping in which we connect two lines of re-search usually seen as distinct approaches. The aim of the study is to find ways of comparing the writing cultures of different languages by collecting and comparing the genres used for teaching. Data about genres were gathered through questionnaires in which students and faculty members were asked to describe writing assignments and student texts. From the answers to these questionnaires, genre inventories were constructed and then re-checked with insiders in faculty discussions or inter-views. As results, lists of genres from the individual universities are presented, as are the patterns of genre families into which the genres were classified. It turned out that genre use shows strong similar-ities across the three universities. The main genre families are presented and differences between universities are discussed.


The basic purpose of fish stock assessment is to provide estimates of the state of the stock to assure, in the long run, the self-sustainability of the stock under exploitation. The three commonly used stock assessment models are reviewed in this paper namely Surplus production model, Empirical model, and Analytical Model. The first model is simpler and considers the stock as a homogenous biomass. It ignores the complexities of age structure and spatial structure and assumes compensatory population growth and provides fishery managers with some important management parameters. Nonetheless, it requires a long time series catch and effort data and assumes stock has stabilized at a current rate of fishing and its ability to accurately describe and predict the dynamics of fish populations depends greatly on the nature of the available data. The second model makes a link between some easily measured characteristic of a water body, such as its area/depth, the conductivity of the water or the mean primary production and an expected yield. However, a major limitation of the Empirical model is that previously observed empirical relationships may break down in situations when conditions change substantially. The third model, on the other hand, requires a detailed description of the stock such as size or age structure of the stock as well as growth and mortality parameters that characterize the population under investigation. As an advantage, this model gives a reliable estimation of yield and biomass of fish that could be exploited sustainably from a given water body. However, such model has been poorly used in developing countries. Since, it is complex, slow, costly and time-consuming. In conclusion, understating the limitation, advantages and applications of each stock assessment model is very important to make a reliable estimate of vigorous fisheries management parameters in order to manage our aquatic resources sustainably.


Abstract According to the local climate in Auckland, New Zealand, a house does not normally need any active cooling controls such as air conditioning or ceiling fans during the summer. Temporary heating is mainly needed during the winter night. In addition, winter daytime window ventilation is required to remove moisture arising from daily occupant activities. A previous study (Su, 2008) showed that additional winter energy consumption is needed for space heating, for hot water heating and for other appliances that are impacted by the winter conditions. Winter energy consumption is also a large portion of the annual energy consumption of Auckland houses. This study focuses on the impact of building passive design on housing annual energy consumption. The quantitative relationships between building design data and annual energy consumption data are valuable for developing passive design guides for housing energy efficiency. This paper shows how energy consumption can be reduced by optimizing wall and roof design resulting in between 40 – 70% reductions in energy demand from 2000 levels.


Urban area consumes about main percentage of used energy. Cities need basic review in land management, structure and form to minimize the use of energy which creating environmental pollution. Urban planners and designers are looking for a solution and essential agreement in urban planning and designing principles that can decrease the pollution from rapid urbanization. Travelling is essential for daily needs of most people in urban area. Issues arise when one considers the amount of necessary fossil fuels used in the majority of daily commuting for accessibility to services. It is necessary to design a city to minimize the use of energy which creating environmental pollution. Research conducted in Subang Jaya in Malaysia in 2012 finds a variable which influences on use of car, propose of use of car and commuting distance by car. However it tried to find effect of train station and density on use of car for accessibility to this services and facilities. Findings illustrate neighbourhood distance from train station influences distance to facilities and services in neighbourhoods. However it illustrates derived distance by car was affected by residential lots distance from restaurant, work place, school, park, house area per person, and car ownership.


This study explores the potential impact of residence restrictions on housing availability for registered sex offenders in Camden County, New Jersey (N = 211). The proportion of registered sex offenders who live within typical exclusionary zones of 1,000 and 2,500 ft of schools, day care centers, churches, and parks is determined using the Geographical Information System mapping technology. The majority of sex offenders live within 2,500 ft of schools (71%) and day care centers (80%), and 88% live within 2,500 ft of any of four hot spots. Comparatively, 80% of nonoffending citizens live within 2,500 ft of such places. Offenders of adult victims live significantly closer to schools compared to those with child victims. The results suggest that a majority of sex offenders would be unable to live in their current homes if residence restrictions were in place, and that few options for housing exist outside of common buffer zones.


Today's feature-rich multimedia products require embedded system solution with complex System-on-Chip (SoC) to meet market expectations of high performance at a low cost and lower energy consumption. The memory architecture of the embedded system strongly influences these parameters. Hence the embedded system designer performs a complete memory architecture exploration. This problem is a multi-objective optimization problem and can be tackled as a two-level optimization problem. The outer level explores various memory architecture while the inner level explores placement of data sections (data layout problem) to minimize memory stalls. Further, the designer would be interested in multiple optimal design points to address various market segments. However, tight time-to-market constraints enforces short design cycle time. In this paper we address the multi-level multi-objective memory architecture exploration problem through a combination of Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm (Memory Architecture exploration) and an efficient heuristic data placement algorithm. At the outer level the memory architecture exploration is done by picking memory modules directly from a ASIC memory Library. This helps in performing the memory architecture exploration in a integrated framework, where the memory allocation, memory exploration and data layout works in a tightly coupled way to yield optimal design points with respect to area, power and performance. We experimented our approach for 3 embedded applications and our approach explores several thousand memory architecture for each application, yielding a few hundred optimal design points in a few hours of computation time on a standard desktop


The traffic environment can be characterized as a technical system in which users interact with system objectives to quickly and safely move from one point to another. To achieve the system objectives it is necessary for the system to be easy to understand and comply with. The purpose of the present study is to examine professional driver's understanding of the rule governing giving right of way to pedestrians at unguarded pedestrian crossings as well as their compliance with maximum permitted speeds. One hundred and ninety six professionals from different transport companies located in Sweden participated in the study. The main results showed that the professional drivers' understanding of the rule governing giving right of way to pedestrians was quite insufficient, even though, they had considerable confidence in their understanding of that rule. Furthermore, their general attitude was to comply with the maximum speed permitted, even though, they often exceeded it.


Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) systems (i.e., systems not relying on roadside infrastructure) have the potential to radically improve the safety, efficiency, and comfort of everyday road travel. Their main advantage is that they bypass the need for expensive infrastructure; their major drawback is the comparatively complex networking protocols and the need for significant penetration before their applications can become effective. In this article we present several major classes of applications and the types of services they require from an underlying network. We then proceed to analyze existing networking protocols in a bottom-up fashion, from the physical to the transport layers, as well as security aspects related to IVC systems. We conclude the article by presenting several projects related to IVC as well as a review of common performance evaluation techniques for IVC systems. INTER-VEHICLE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS: A SURVEY 2ND QUARTER 2008, VOLUME 10, NO. 2 www.comsoc.org/pubs/surveys


abstract Recent years have seen rapid developments in automated text analysis methods focused on measuring psychological and demographic properties. While this development has mainly been driven by computer scientists and computational linguists, such methods can be of great value for social scientists in general, and for psychologists in particular. In this paper, we review some of the most popular approaches to automated text analysis from the perspective of social scientists, and give examples of their applications in different theoretical domains. After describing some of the pros and cons of these methods, we speculate about future methodological developments, and how they might change social sciences. We conclude that, despite the fact that current methods have many disadvantages and pitfalls compared to more traditional methods of data collection, the constant increase of computational power and the wide availability of textual data will inevitably make automated text analysis a common tool for psychologists.


The newly introduced CPD structures of post-registration training and learning requirements for registered social workers are already under review to examine whether they are 'fit for purpose'. Quite what 'fit' might mean is no clearer than what the 'purpose' of CPD should be in the fast changing world of health and social care services. The theoretical arguments that I will advance in this paper set out to problematise some of the current conceptions of social work CPD. I will maintain that the continuing professional development and education of social workers requires a more fundamental analysis in order that 'people and practices' can be prioritised. This paper will draw upon social theory and psychological constructivist perspectives with arguments being illustrated through reference to policy documents in this field as well as a small empirical study of post-qualification CPD students carried out by the author.


We study laminar thin film flows with large distortions of the free surface, using the method of averaging across the flow. Two specific problems are studied: the circular hydraulic jump and the flow down an inclined plane. For the circular hydraulic jump our method is able to handle an internal eddy and separated flow. Assuming a variable radial velocity profile as in Kármán–Pohlhausen's method, we obtain a system of two ordinary differential equations for stationary states that can smoothly go through the jump. Solutions of the system are in good agreement with experiments. For the flow down an inclined plane we take a similar approach and derive a simple model in which the velocity profile is not restricted to a parabolic or self-similar form. Two types of solutions with large surface distortions are found: solitary, kink-like propagating fronts, obtained when the flow rate is suddenly changed, and stationary jumps, obtained, for instance, behind a sluice gate. We then include time dependence in the model to study the stability of these waves. This allows us to distinguish between sub- and supercritical flows by calculating dispersion relations for wavelengths of the order of the width of the layer.


Easterlin (1978) attempts to synthesize the demand side of the economic model, which is mostly applicable to developed countries, and the supply side. The synthesis assumes that fertility decision is made once and for all. This discussion is a sequential version of Easterlin's synthesis. It first considers the features of economic model, especially in its application to fertility analysis, and then presents the model in brief before examining the details. A woman's observed fertility is decomposed in the model into the "number of potential endowment of live-births" minus the "number of avoided live-births demanded." The number of potential endowment of live-births, referred to as "potential endowment" is defined as the number of live-births a woman has already had plus the number she would have in the remainder of her reproductive years if she and her husband never practiced deliberate contraception; the number of avoided-live-births demanded is defined as the number of live-births from a woman's potential endowment that is treated as a function both of the price of an avoided-birth and of excess endowment. This decomposition can be used to develop a theorectical framework that provides insights into the channels through which a particular variable affects observed fertility. The resulting framework, an extension of Easterlin's "synthesis model," can enhance knowledge of the determinants of fertility. It also increases the ability to make policy recommendations concerning population size and control. The broad theoretical framework is illustrated graphically. Some interesting theoretical implications of the theoretical framework include: higher fertility is consistent with a wider practice of deliberate contraception if potential endowment (E) rises more than the practice of deliberate contraception (z); and a positive relation between such variables as wife's education and fertility is possible.


The Stoics held that the wise person does not err. This thesis was widely criticized in the ancient world and runs afoul of contemporary fallibilist views in epistemology. Was this view itself an error? On one line, the view can be modified to accommodate many of the critical lines against it. Some of these lines of modification are consistent with traditional Stoic value theory (for example, importing the notion of preferred indifferents into epistemic considerations). However, others require larger modifications to Stoic axiology (in particular, a revision of the equality of errors thesis). A version of the no errors thesis emerges as defensible against the criticisms of the view, but there is then the question as to whether it is an orthodox Stoicism.


A 45‐year‐old man with epilepsy and mental retardation presented to the dermatology clinic with a "mole" on his nose and a "skin tag" on his scrotum. On examination, the patient had multiple, 2–3‐mm, skin‐colored, shiny papules in clusters about the perinasal region, and a large, pedunculated, soft, red tumor extending from the inferior aspect of the scrotum ( Fig. 1 ). A shave biopsy from a nasolabial fold lesion and an excision of the pedunculated tumor were performed. The shave biopsy of the nose showed multiple exophytic papules containing blood vessels and fibrous tissue consistent with angiofibroma. The excision biopsy of the groin showed a large skin polyp with a central fibrovascular core. In addition, it revealed papillomatosis of the epidermis and dilated blood vessels, suggesting that the tumor was a molluscum pendulum seen in patients with tuberous sclerosis complex ( Fig. 2 ). A Verhoff van Gieson stain demonstrated a lack of elastin fibers in the tumor ( Fig. 3 ).


Researchers used a hybrid model (a combination of health resource demand model and disease transmission model), Bayesian model, and susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) model to predict health service utilization and deaths and mixed-effect nonlinear regression. Further, they used the mixture model to predict the number of confirmed cases and deaths or to predict when the curve would flatten. In this article, we show, through scenarios developed using system dynamics methodology, besides close to real-world results, the detrimental effects of ignoring social distancing guidelines (in terms of the number of people infected, which decreased as the percentage of noncompliance decreased).


Chronic acid loads are an obligate consequence of the high animal/grain protein content of the Western diet. The effect of this diet-induced metabolic acidosis on bone mass is controversial. In a randomized, prospective, controlled, double-blind trial, 161 postmenopausal women (age 58.6 +/- 4.8 yr) with low bone mass (T score -1 to -4) were randomly assigned to 30 mEq of oral potassium (K) citrate (Kcitrate) or 30 mEq of K chloride (KCl) daily. The primary end point was the intergroup difference in mean percentage change in bone mineral density (BMD) at lumbar spine (L2 through L4) after 12 mo. Compared with the women who received KCl, women who received Kcitrate exhibited an intergroup increase in BMD (+/-SE) of 1.87 +/- 0.50% at L2 through L4 (P < 0.001), of 1.39 +/- 0.48% (P < 0.001) at femoral neck, and of 1.98 +/- 0.51% (P < 0.001) at total hip. Significant secondary end point intragroup changes also were found: Kcitrate increased L2 through L4 BMD significantly from baseline at months 3, 9, and 12 and reached a month 12 increase of 0.89 +/- 0.30% (P < 0.05), whereas the KCl arm showed a decreased L2 through L4 BMD by -0.98 +/- 0.38% (P < 0.05), significant only at month 12. Intergroup differences for distal radius and total body were NS. The Kcitrate-treated group demonstrated a sustained and significant reduction in urinary calcium excretion and a significant increase in urinary citrate excretion, with increased citrate excretion indicative of sustained systemic alkalization. Urinary bone resorption marker excretion rates were significantly reduced by Kcitrate, and for deoxypyridinoline, the intergroup difference was significant. Urinary net acid excretion correlated inversely and significantly with the change in BMD in a subset of patients. Large and significant reductions in BP were observed for both K supplements during the entire 12 mo. Bone mass can be increased significantly in postmenopausal women with osteopenia by increasing their daily alkali intake as citrate, and the effect is independent of reported skeletal effects of K.


Product design based on mechanical performance requirements and with given boundary conditions is a frequent and demanding engineering problem. In most cases, effectiveness of the design is limited to expertise of the respective designer, which also results in inefficient and incomplete exploration of the product's design space. With a large amount of data available and recent advancements in hardware technology, data-driven methods have become an increasingly common strategy for problems that are difficult to formulate or expensive to solve by creating a physical model, but such methods often lack the application perspective; they are not yet widely applied especially in engineering product development. Generative design (here, more precisely generative engineering) is one such technique which has recently gained importance. Although many preliminary studies demonstrate plausible results from data-driven generative design approaches, a closeloop-3D-generative-design-pipeline that achieves full automation and optimization of the design with respect to the product's functional requirements is still in its nascent stage. This paper proposes a generalized hybrid framework comprised of both data-based and physics-based methods to achieve this objective, as represented by the teaser figure 1. An overview of various possibilities for individual modules of the framework is also discussed.


The author of the article examines forms of English borrowings in sports articles in Latvian and Norwegian during the period 1946–2005. The present contrastive analysis reveals similarities and differences of anglicisms as part of the Latvian and Norwegian language vocabulary and tendencies of equivalent formation. The collected data illustrates assimilated loans, hybrids and non-assimilated words. The English pattern shows a tendency to be more favoured in Norwegian than Latvian. Among non-assimilated forms we find instances of original forms with Norwegian inflections and hybrids where one of the components is English, but the other — Norwegian. The attitude towards borrowing from English seems to be rather similar in both languages though with a stronger tendency towards openness in the Norwegian language environment throughout the whole period under research. It can be explained with several factors, such as the language typology and language contact time scale within the Norwegian speaking society and its English language competence. Though now preference for English borrowings has evened out, there is still greater openness to anglicisms in Norwegian than Latvian.


A β -cyclodextrin bonded silica was synthesized by using a convenient method, and was evaluated as a selective sorbent for the solid-phase extraction of 4-nitrophenol and 2,4-dinitrophenol. When double-distilled water was used as the sample matrix, the sorbent showed a strong capacity to adsorb 4-nitrophenol and 2,4-dinitrophenol; the recoveries were found to be 96% and 99%, respectively, with a 1 L water sample. The selectivity of the sorbent was investigated by using a washing step with methanol. Most of the phenols were washed out with 5 mL of methanol, while 4-nitrophenol and 2,4-dinitrophenol still gave recoveries of 94% and 90%. The solution for efficiently eluting the analytes was optimized and the effect of the inorganic salt on the extraction was examined. In order to investigate the potentiality of the sorbent in dealing with real water samples, water from Donghu lake (Wuhan, China) spiked with nine phenolic compounds at microgram per liter levels were preconcentrated on this cartridge.


Regularization, filtering, and denoising of biomedical images requires the use of appropriate filters and the adoption of efficient regularization criteria. It has been shown that the Stein's Unbiased Risk Estimate (SURE) can be used as a proxy for the mean squared error (MSE), thus giving an effective criterion for choosing the regularization amount as to that minimizing SURE. Often, due to the complexity of the adopted filters and solvers, this proxy must be calculated with a Monte Carlo method. In practical biomedical applications, however, images are affected by spatially-varying noise distributions, which must be taken into account. We propose a modification to the Monte Carlo method, called svSURE, that accounts for the spatial variability of the noise variance, and show that it correctly estimates the MSE in such cases.


Abstract This study contributes to the discussion on the value of education for self-employment among foreign-born persons in Sweden. The case of the deregulated healthcare sector is used to illustrate the importance of the acknowledgement of unaccustomed types of education with regards to a lack of access to the ordinary labour market and for starting a new business. Register-based data on all individuals in Sweden with an education in healthcare are used in the analysis. The overrepresentation of foreign-born persons amongst newly self-employed people is explained by what type of education they have, that is, a highly educated specialised occupation or educations at high and low levels that are classified as 'other' in the register.


The Biopolymers were used as supports for the preparation of palladium-based nanoparticles (pd- NPs). The chitosan-based Pd (II) catalyst (non-toxic, cheap, eco-friendly) were structurally characterized using a range of methods such as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Differential thermal analysis (DTA), Xray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS ), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM).( Fig 1,2) palladium is commonly known as best catalyst in the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions due to its very high efficiency therefore, using the recently chitosanbased Pd (II) catalyst in the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling reactions, will be described. The reaction optimization and substrate scope will be discussed, and role of rapid catalyst activation in achieving mild reaction conditions will be emphasized.


We propose a post-selection technique, based on quantum error detection, for quantum key distribution (QKD) systems that run over quantum repeaters with encoding. In such repeaters, quantum error correction techniques are used for entanglement distillation. By developing an analytical approach to study such quantum repeaters, we show that, in the context of QKD, it is often more efficient to use the error detection, rather than the error correction, capability of the underlying code to sift out cases where an error has been detected. We implement our technique for three-qubit repetition codes by modelling different sources of error in crucial components of the system. We then investigate in detail the impact of such imperfections on the secret key generation rate of the QKD system, and how one can use the information obtained during entanglement swapping and decoding stages to maximize the rate. For benchmarking purposes, we specify the maximum allowed error rates in different components of the setup below which positive key rates can be obtained.


This paper is based in part on an earlier publication on SMCP development, but includes new chapters on sociolinguistic and cultural issues arising during pilot's taking the vessel into/out of harbour with tug assistance. In this case the multinational, multilingual and multicultural bridge team is further extended onto pilot/s communicating with the tug master(s). A request has been made by the IFSMA2 to provide shipmasters with a set of phrases for pilots and tug masters in their working language - English - to be used during manoeuvring, since the existing Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP) have not been considered elaborate enough for the operation. Maritime English lecturers twinned with maritime professionals have provided a set of appropriate phrases and exercises to help students/ trainees adopt them, as the conclusion of the 2014 seminar organized by G.A.M.E. - Gesellschaft fur Ausbildung in Maritimem Englisch (German Association for Maritime English) with the seat at Bremen University of Applied Sciences, Nautical Department, in order to meet the requirements from the maritime industry. A sociolinguistic and cultural issue has arisen as a result of the IFSMA's invitation to G.A.M.E for a further development of the SMCP Pilotage and Tug Assistance Phrases and for presentation of the newly developed phrases for assessment to the IMO as a most influential safety factor. It would be a great benefit for shipmasters worldwide who regularly find themselves in situations when they cannot follow the pilot's communication with the tug master(s) because it is carried out in a local language and the pilot, due to being involved in communication with several external parties, is often not in the position to translate the communication for the ship's master due to the shortage of time. This intention of the IFSMA has met an overt disagreement by the pilot representatives taking part in the activities of the 2014 G.A.M.E. seminar and previously by the EMPA as their association. Therefore, following the approach starting from Rogers' Diffusion of innovations theory (1960), revised later by Clarke (1999) and Orr (2003), is proposed here to present the stages through which a technological innovation, this extension of SMCP being rightfully considered one, passes on its way to successful adoption.


Mathematics is an indispensable subject of school curriculum and is important in daily living as well as in the study of other subjects. However, there is a common belief that majority of the students dislike mathematics, owing to an array of factors related to instruction and learners' cognitive, affective and psycho-motor attributes, subject matter and the learning environment. This paper elaborates on the affective factors influencing learning of school mathematics as perceived by the learners and it will reduce the factor among the university and lower grade schools. A questionnaire survey will be conducted on a random sample of schools around semen Gonder in Debark, wekn, Dabate, and also for high level education university around Amhara Region. Students' attitude towards mathematics is also affected by factors such as parental influences, teacher affective support and classroom instruction. The purpose of this research will also to examine the inter-relationships between these factors and effects on attitude towards mathematics Keywords: Difficulties in mathematics, affective factors, attitude, students, high level education.


Roll-to-roll production technology specifically designed to produce thin film Si solar cells should lead to a significant reduction of the module production costs. At ECN we developed a roll-to-roll Si coating system which contains novel, linear RF sources for the deposition of nand p-type silicon layers and linear MW sources for the deposition of intrinsic silicon layers. The quality and uniformity of doped and intrinsic silicon layers that are grown by these linear plasma sources are discussed. The layer quality confirms that the RF and MW sources in the roll-to-roll coater are suitable for the growth of micromorph Si solar cells. Preliminary results on amorphous silicon solar cells are presented with an initial efficiency of 4.4%.


A temperature-insensitive fiber bending sensor is demonstrated by using a special optical fiber with cladding-mode resonance. The special fiber with a pure silica core and a fluorine-doped silica inner cladding shows strong cladding-mode resonance. The single-mode fiber (SMF)-special fiber-SMF is proposed as a sensor head to monitor the cladding-mode resonance. The response of the resonant spectrum exhibits high sensitivity to bending curvature and inherent insensitivity to temperature. The proposed special fiber bending sensor is simple and inexpensive.


: During the last 2 years 75 patients referred to our hospital for operation of a persistent tennis elbow were followed prospectively after receiving low-energetic extracorporal shock wave therapy. 3 times in weekly intervals all patients received 1000 impulses of the energy density 0.06 mJ/mm2. Follow-ups were performed at 3, 6, 12, 24 weeks. Statistical analysis showed significant improvement both of subjective and objective criteria. 41 patients became painfree. Only 7 patients decided to have an operation after the 24-weeks-follow-up. Ambulatory shock wave therapy is a considerable alternative before surgical intervention in chronic tennis elbow.


The Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of road traffic bridges and heritage buildings and the reliability assessment of the design of structural members and systems have both received a great deal of attention by researchers in Australia and worldwide, with many methods of monitoring and analysis now being developed.

The objectives of the SHMII-8 Conference are to promote and advance the Field of Structural Health Monitoring in Australia and the southern hemisphere, specifically to showcase achievements, exchange ideas and disseminate knowledge nationally and internationally, and to raise general community awareness on the need for, and value of, SHM research and application.

With a theme of Structural Health Monitoring in Real-world Application, the SHMII-8 Conference will feature a strong program of keynote lectures, invited lectures, technical visit and touring activities.

The three-day Conference program will include keynote lectures, invited lectures, technical visit and touring activities. English will be the official language of the Conference for both oral and written presentation.

ISHMII holds the SHMII official conference every two years and once or more official workshops (such as CSHM), usually in alternating years. SHMII-8 will build on the success of SHMII-1, held in Tokyo 2003, SHMII-2 in Shenzhen 2005, SHMII-3 in Vancouver 2007, SHMII-4 in Zurich 2009, SHMII-5 in Cancun 2011, SHMII-6 in Hong Kong 2013 and SHMII-7 in Turin 2015.

Chair Professor Tommy Chan
Co-chair Dr Saeed Mahini


To improve the fixed bed and continuous stirred-tank reactor (CSTR) technology relative to the rate of treatment of dairy manure (DM), a continuous stirred tank-treated DM with immobilized carrier biofilm was investigated for 20 days (hydraulic retention time (HRT) was 10 d). Methane productivity, biofilm characteristics, and microbial diversities of the biofilm and digestate were measured. The highest content of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), proteins, and polysaccharides occurred at 15 days of digestion. An agglomeration phenomenon was observed using a scanning electron microscope on the biofilm. This indicated that the biofilm consisting of EPS was stable during the second HRT. Microbial diversities in digestate and carrier biofilm were characterized using a 16S rRNA sequencing technique. Results showed that the dominant bacterial communities were Pseudomonas (17% to 26%), Clostridium (13% to 21%), and Bacteroidetes (7% to 16%), while the archaea communities were Methanocorpusculum (25% to 37%), Methanosarcina (15% to 33%), Methanoculleus (11% to 15%), and Methanosaeta (13% to 18%). The methane production rate was significantly correlated with bacterial communities (Pseudomonas, Clostridium, Altererythrobacter atlanticus), archaeal communities (Methanosarcina, Methanoculleus, Methanosaeta, and Methanoplanus), and biofilm characteristics (chemical oxygen demand (COD) and EPS). These findings showed that a carrier biofilm could efficiently increase methane production.


Various features of salmonellosis were examined in a burned-mouse model. In this model, which uses an outbred mouse strain, a challenge dose of ca. 100 CFU with any of several strains of Salmonella typhimurium caused a fatal infection. A variety of mutated strains attenuated for virulence in Salmonella-susceptible parenterally infected mice were also attenuated in the burned-mouse model. When administered as live vaccines injected intraperitoneally the same attenuated strains provided between slight and complete protection against subsequent lethal challenge subcutaneously at the site of a burn. The correspondence of results obtained in the burned-mouse model with those seen in other mouse models coupled with the unique advantages of the burned-mouse model argue for the usefulness of the model in studies of salmonellosis and in testing of strains constructed for use as live vaccines.


This paper describes the photo catalytic degradation of organic pollutants present in them municipal sewage water by using hydrothermally prepared supported photo catalyst. TiO2 deposited calcium aluminosilicate beads (CASB) supports were prepared by hydrothermal technique under mild preparation conditions. The photo catalytic degradation of organic pollutants in the sewage water was investigated under several experimental parameters such as catalyst load, pH, organic concentration, Irradiation time, aeration, stirring, and light sources. The photo catalytic removal of organics and its degradation efficiency was evaluated by determination of reduction in the chemical oxygen demand (COD) values. The organic pollutant degradation efficiency was over a wide range of pH values, irradiation time and optimum catalyst load. In additional effects like aeration and stirring increase the photodegradation efficiency of organic. Easy recovery and reuse of supported photo catalyst, along with higher degradation efficiency is the major advantages and it reduces the over treatment cost.


This note shows that the main part of the discrepancy between full flight propeller performance and the performance of models in a wind tunnel is due to a scale effect, and that a minor part is caused by body interference. Analyses are made of propeller performances on several standard airplanes, and the actual brake horsepower compared with the power as calculated from model test data. The calculated power is based on that absorbed by a wind tunnel propeller model which is geometrically similar to the full scale propeller and is operating under the same ratio of V/nD.


Despite the need of a reliable technology for solar energy harvesting, research on new materials for third generation photovoltaics is slowed down by the diffuse use of trial and error rather than rational material design approaches. The proposed study investigates the use of alternative strategies to material discovery inspired by drug design and molecular modeling. In particular, training set and test set (for validation purposes) comprising well‐known small molecule‐bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics were built. Molecules were characterized by semiempirical calculated and 3D molecular interaction fields–based descriptors. Then partial least squares algorithm was applied to rationalize structure‐photovoltaic activity relationships, and coefficients were investigated to clarify contributions played by the different molecular properties to the final performance. In addition, a photovoltaic desirability function (PhotD) was also proposed as alternative and versatile novel tool for ranking potential candidates. The partial least squares model and PhotD function were both internally and externally validated demonstrating their ability in estimating new candidates performances. The proposed approach demonstrates that, in the context of computational materials science, chemometrics and molecular modeling tools could effectively boost the discovery of novel promising candidates for photovoltaic application.


The subjects of the paper are carriers of Bulgarian language which brought into contact with the Hebrew language spoken in Israel. A main language condition of the state of Israel is briefly described - the resurrection of Hebrew as spoken, administration and science language. The biggest wave of Jewish immigration from Bulgaria (42 000) arrived in Israel at 1948-1954. The first generation was at least bilingual (Ladino or Yddish at home, and Bulgarian in public cervices). The second generation fits the category of semi-speakers because with few exceptions their parents did not teach them Bulgarian at all. Some examples of the idiolect of an individual of this second generation are given. For the third generation Bulgarian is almost lost. At the nineties 3200 new immigrants form Bulgaria went to Israel. The first generation from nineties usually speaks three languages - Bulgarian, Ladino and English, French or German. Because of their higher education and because of renewed cultural and economic ties with Bulgaria as parents they usually teach
their children in Bulgarian. Some information on "code-switching" and "code-mixing" in different generations is given.


Introduction: Cerebrovascular diseases are the most frequent risk factor for epilepsy in the elderly, and epileptic phenomenon following stroke is known to worsen the prognosis. Although electroencephalography is the gold standard epilepsy biomarker, it is rarely used in post-stroke studies, and the frequency of post-stroke epileptiform activity is still uncertain. Patients and methods: We analysed studies indexed to MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, PsycINFO and OpenGrey (up to March 2015), reporting post-stroke electroencephalographic epileptiform activity frequency in adults. Epileptiform activity was classified as ictal (electrographic seizures) and interictal (non-periodic spikes and sharp waves). Data selection, extraction and appraisal were done in duplicate. Random-effects meta-analysis was used to pool frequencies. Results: The pooled frequency of post-stroke ictal and interictal epileptiform activity was 7% (95%CI 3%-12%) and 8% (95%CI 4%-13%), respectively. The use of continuous electroencephalogram was not associated with an increased frequency of electrographic seizures (p=0.05), nor did the management setting (Intensive Care Unit [ICU] versus nonICU, p=0.31). However, studies with continuous electroencephalogram showed a higher frequency of interictal epileptiform activity (p=0.01). Discussion: This study provides the best available estimates of the frequency of poststroke electroencephalographic epileptiform activity. Due to detection bias, it was not possible to correlate clinical and electrographic seizures. Conclusion: The frequency of ictal and interictal epileptiform activity in the EEG was comparable with previous frequency analyses of clinical seizures. The frequency of ictal epileptiform activity did not change with continuous record or clinical setting, while the frequency of interictal epileptiform activity increased with continuous record. The EEG in Acute Ischaemic Cerebrovascular Disease 62 KEY-WORDS epileptic seizures, stroke, EEG, systematic review, meta-analysis Frequency of post-stroke epileptiform activity: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies 63


The sheet of pure Al (99.99%) single crystal having (1 12)[110] orientation was deformed up to equivalent strain of 6.4 by the accumulative roll-bonding (ARB) process. The microstructures and orientation of the single crystal ARB-processed by various cycles were characterized by the EBSP measurement. After 1cycle-ARB process, the crystal was macroscopically subdivided into two matrices (macroscopic grain subdivision). These matrices exhibits two different variants of brass orientation, which are (1 01)[121] and (011)[211]. In addition to the macroscopic grain subdivision, microscopic grain subdivision also occurred within the matrix to form an ultrafine grained structure in the single crystal specimen after high strains.


In patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, intense control of blood pressure, lipids and glucose, aiming at theoretically ideal values, is bought at a cost. Intense blood pressure control has renal complications. Intense lipid control, thus far, has worked for reduction of low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol, paradoxically at the cost of a small increase in new diabetes. Intense control of glycaemia generally requires insulin added to oral agents, which is consistently accompanied by weight gain, while increased hypoglycaemia has a long-term risk of cerebral damage. Intense glycaemic control has not consistently reduced mortality, whereas a strategy based on tight control of lipids and blood pressure with modestly tight glucose control has succeeded. Looking to the future, incretin mimetics may come to the fore as prime agents because they can reduce weight and glycaemia with little significant hypoglycaemia, thereby making tight glucose control easier to achieve.


Abstract The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected multiple aspects of our lives. This interdisciplinary article reflects on the significance of the pandemic from a largely unexplored angle, through a focus on the key concept of ecological connectivity, which broadly refers to the inter-connections between different elements of an ecosystem. Examining the pandemic through the lens of ecological connectivity, the article also theorizes it (and zoonotic diseases more generally) as a violation of this connectivity. It uses this idea as a core thread for linking COVID-19, international criminal law and transitional justice. Its key argument in this regard is that war crimes and human rights violations can themselves be viewed, in part, as violations of ecological connectivity. This theorization, in turn, provides a novel basis for thinking about the wider ecological dimensions and legacies of war crimes and gross violations of human rights, and, by extension, the potential role of international criminal law and transitional justice in helping to restore damaged connectivities through a relational approach to justice.


Parameterised reconfiguration is a method for dynamic circuit specialization on FPGAs. The main advantage of this new concept is the high resource efficiency. Additionally, there is an automated tool flow, TMAP, that converts a hardware design into a more resource-efficient run-time reconfigurable design without a large design effort. We will start by explaining the core principles behind the dynamic circuit specialization technique. Next, we show the possible gains in encryption applications using an AES encoder. Our AES design shows a 20.6% area gain compared to an unoptimized hardware implementation and a 5.3% gain compared to a manually optimized third-party hardware implementation. We also used TMAP on a Triple-DES and an RC6 implementation, where we achieve a 27.8% and a 72.7% LUT-area gain. In addition, we discuss a run-time reconfigurable DNA aligner. We focus on the optimizations to the dynamic specialization overhead. Our final design is up to 2.80-times more efficient on cheaper FPGAs than the original DNA aligner when at least one DNA sequence is longer than 758 characters. Most sequences in DNA alignment are of the order 213.


The structure of the globular region of the chicken erythrocyte H5 histone has been studied by 270-MHz proton magnetic resonance. The aromatic resonances have been partially assigned by a combination of selective deuteration and iodination with the nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Detailed titration studies have revealed interactions between residues in the structure. A technique involving the measurement of small nuclear Overhauser effects has enabled the assignment of the aromatic residues causing the perturbation of the ring-current-shifted methyl resonances occurring in the upfield region of the spectrum. Spin-decoupling experiments on these peaks has enabled a partial assignment of shifted methyl resonances. The results support the notion that the histone H5 globular structure is different from that of the homologous histone H1 molecule.


ABSTRACT Despite the fact that e-commerce is likely to have far-reaching implications for the international market, until now only a few studies have explored e-commerce growth in the Gulf region from an international perspective. This paper reviews and explores e-commerce growth internationally with a particular focus on the Gulf region. It examines some of the challenges e-commerce faces by looking at both local and global factors with a particular focus on the area of technological advancement. Based on the review, a list of driving factor s that may contribute to e-commerce evolvement in the region has been drawn up along with recommendations and suggestions for future research. INTRODUCTION An early analysis of web-related information economics was given by Benjamin & Wigand (1995), who argued that the Internet has a great potential for efficiency gains along the whole industry value chain, primarily because of transaction cost savings. The Web not only can help to reduce costs and add value for existing customers, but it also has a potential role in customer acquisition, and in the case of a Web startup, this role is crucial (Bertschek, Fryges & Kaiser, 2006). The Internet is also an important advertising medium (Hofacker, 2001). Drucker (2002) argued that the "truly revolutionary impact of the Internet is e-commerce" (pp. 3 -4). E-commerce can be described as "the sale and purchase of goods or services over the Internet" (Chase Paymentech, 2007), the use of IT to allow direct selling and automatic processing of purchases between parties using the internet (Expedite Email Marketing, 2004) or the substitution of information for physical business processes (Weill & Vitale, 2001). An increasing volume of E-commerce research has been conducted for a diverse range of areas in terms of application areas, technological aspects, support and implementation (Ngai & Wat, 2002) as well as the significance of cost aspects in relation to e-commerce development (Cohen & Kallirroi, 2006). According to Lin, (2007) e-commerce is one of those rare cases where the need to change and emerging technologies come together to re-engineer the way in which business is conducted, improving processes efficiency, allowing for flexibility, working more closely with suppliers, and catering for the needs and expectations of the customers. It allows companies to select the best suppliers regardless of the geographical location and to widen the scope of their market to the global market (Soopramanien, Fildes & Robertson, 2007). Its evolution goes through several stages of growth according to Chan & Swatman (2004). They proposed a four-stages model in relation to B2B E-commerce (table 1): stage 1 : growth: initial e-commerce; stage 2: centralised E-commerce; stage 3: looking inward for benefits: and stage 4: global e-commerce. The readiness for e-commerce or e-readiness, however, may depends on the "state of play of a country's information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and the ability of its consumers, businesses and governments to use ICT to their benefit" (EIU, 2008). E-commerce can be shaped by variety of factors such as the economic, political and social environments in addition to the quality of the ICT infrastructure, however average e-readiness has risen in 2008 in comparison with 2007 (EIU, 2008). Such growth of e-commerce can also be attributed to the unique features of the Internet and the Web such as ubiquity, global reach, universal standards, richness, interactivity, information density, personalization and customization factors (Laudon &Laudon, 2007). Internationally, many developments have occurred in the last 10 years in the world of e-commerce (IGW, 2007) that impacted on business, government and personal computing. Washington-based Software & Information Industry Association' compiled the top 10 list of developments that have most impacted e-commerce. …


Objective: The present study of over 2900 twin pairs born in England and Wales in 1994 examines the influences of genetics and gender on nocturnal bladder control at 3 years of age. Materials and Method: Parent report data was analysed in terms of means and components of variance, using a sex-limitation model to explore genetic and environmental variation within and between the sexes. Results: Both genetics and gender are seen to influence acquisition: bladder control at 3 years is moderately heritable (24%), and girls show on average slightly increased acquisition compared with boys, even within opposite-sex pairs. The sexlimitation modelling showed an interaction between genetic influence and gender whereby nocturnal bladder control was significantly more heritable in boys (33%) than girls (10%). Conclusions: Both genetics and gender are important and interacting factors in the aetiology of nocturnal bladder control.


The Academic Content Collection includes three levels of expository readers designed to introduce academic language for independent, extensive reading. The readers are linked by level to Visions A, B, and C and are supported by workbooks and audio CDs for practice and reinforcement. The Teacher Guide provides extensive teacher support for classroom use, including graphic organizers, summaries, activities, and links to state standards.


Saccadic latencies of visually-guided saccades of 10 right-handed subjects with right-leading eyes were studied. Stimulation paradigm was spatially bidimentional, and stimuli were shown along horizontal and vertical meridians. Three traditional single step GAP - NO DELAY - OVERLAP temporal paradigms were used. In the first experiment, each paradigm was applied separately (simple visual space). In the second experiment, all the three paradigms were varied pseudo-random order and equiprobably, which complicated the time parameters of visual stimulation (complicated visual space). Asymmetry of visually-guided saccades along the vertical and horizontal meridians was revealed. The character of this asymmetry varied between subjects. MANOVA showed that the factor of visual space complicity (simple or complicated visual space) affected the latent period of saccades to a greater extent than the factor of stimulus lateralization (stimulus presentation in the left/right or upper/lower visual hemifields).


The National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA") was an important environmental law for several decades before climate change became an issue of concern. In the 1990s, efforts began to include in NEPA's environmental assessments and environmental impact statements both the impact of federal government actions on climate change and the impact of climate change on proposed federal actions. These efforts were encouraged by the Council on Environmental Quality ("CEQ"). However, implementation at the agency level has since been uneven. Some federal agencies have resisted making serious efforts to incorporate climate change impacts into their decision-making process. Moreover, the courts have not been consistent in their reviews of agency compliance with NEPA, and the judiciary often gives substantial deference to an agency's minimal NEPA compliance. Since 2017, determining NEPA's requirements for climate change analysis has become more challenging because the Trump administration is changing federal environmental policies and regulations in order to encourage fossil fuel energy development and use, which will increase the emissions of greenhouse gases ("GHG").


Abstract : The objective of this research is to improve the performance of mid-infrared semiconductor quantum-well lasers. Lasers operating in the mid-infrared are useful for many Air Force applications which include infrared (IR) countermeasures in particular. Countermeasure applications require lasers that are compact, and able to emit at high powers while operating at room temperature. Limits to power increases are seen in the transverse modal development of laser oscillation. These modes typically form in the waveguiding active region contributing to the laser output. However, competing modes outside of this region also develop when the confining structural layers have the right characteristics. These competing modes may draw power away from the main lasing mode, causing efficiency to drop. Therefore, theoretical models indicate that these "ghost" modes should be extinguished. The goal of this work is to incorporate antimony-based semiconductor laser devices into a time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) experiment to examine modal development immediately after excitation. TRPL utilizes a non-linear wave mixing technique known as frequency upconversion to resolve sub-picosecond luminescence occurrences after excitation. Modification to the experiment is performed to produce laser emission from five mid-IR semiconductor laser samples. Both spontaneous and stimulated emission spectra are recorded. Alignment of the experiment is also carried out to produce upconversion of the PL signal to prepare for the incorporation of laser emission.


Understanding the influence of row spacing and plant density on grain yield and yield components of crambe is critical in order to obtain higher grain yields. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of row spacing and plant density on grain yield and its components in crambe in two distinct regions of Brazil (Marechal Candido Rondon-PR, MCR-PR, and Botucatu-SP, BTU-SP). Narrow and wide row spacing (0.20 and 0.40 m) combined with four plant densities (15, 25, 35, and 45 plants m-1) were evaluated in a randomized block layout with four replications in a 2 × 4 factorial design. The experiment at BTU-SP was run under rainfed conditions with supplementary irrigation, whereas the experiment at MCR-PR was run under rainfed conditions without supplementary irrigation. Both experiments were run in soils classified as Oxisols. There was no interaction between row spacing and plant density. Highest grain yield with supplementary irrigation was observed at 0.20 m row spacing. Without irrigation, row spacing did not affect grain yield owing to the plasticity of crop. The highest grain yield was observed with approximately 30 plants m-1 at both experimental locations. A strong negative correlation was observed between final plant population and number of grains per plant. There was high plant mortality, particularly at high plant densities cultivated under irrigation. Higher mortality occurred because of high intraspecific competition and a larger disease incidence due to the higher humidity in the irrigated experiment. A mechanism of self-adjustment by plant density was observed in crambe, with its intensity dependent on plant density and environmental conditions, such as water and nutrient availability and light incidence.


The impact of space and furniture on children starts to be taken into consideration in the mid 19 th century, in France. New legislations change the face of the school and the reflection around architecture and learning spaces. Nowadays, learning spaces are an important part of the school design: numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of space on learning abilities, cognitive performances or well-being. In this piece, we are trying to explain the French point of view, and the goals to achieve regarding the relationship between space, architecture and happiness – as a holistic approach of the well-being and performance – at school.


This article explores the conceptual problem of popular insurgency in Haitian revolutionary historiography. Framed by fundamental questions of legitimate versus illegitimate insurgency, of the relationship between the elites and the people, and of the process of democratization and the rule of law, the article argues that the problem of popular insurgency is one way to link together analysis of past and present Haitian history and to focus on the role of the Haitian people in making that history.


The depth-resolved micromodification of single-crystalline femtosecond laser irradiated Nd3+ doped MgO:LiNbO3 crystals is investigated by means of micro-Raman and microluminescence experiments. We have found that a permanent tensile stress of the order of 2GPa is induced in the vicinity of ablated volume as a consequence of the pressure-wave propagation due to the thermoelastic relaxation of the laser irradiated material. Microluminescence experiments have revealed that, as a consequence of the permanent laser induced microstress, a localized redshift of the F3∕24→I9∕24 luminescence band of Nd3+ ions also takes place due to a crystal field modification. The analysis of Raman and fluorescence bandwidths indicates that a slight lattice disorder and densification is induced by femtosecond laser irradiation.


User Generated Content (UGC) in Education is not a new idea.
BBC Learning has been involved with User Generated Content projects going back to the analogue world of the mid 1980s and even earlier. Modern digital technology just makes it more possible for the user and easier to organise.
In this illustrated talk I will show what happens when a public service organisation such as the BBC gets involved with User Generated Content of various kinds, what the issues are regarding Intellectual Property Rights, Moral Rights, Quality Control, decency and so on. I will discuss how UGC introduces a degree of symmetry that is needed for any educational system to be truly successful, what the potential learning outcomes can be and how it changes the relationship with our audiences.
The areas I will cover will be primary, secondary and higher education.


STUDY QUESTION
What causal relationships underlie the associations between ovarian stimulation, the IVF procedure, parental-, fertility- and child characteristics, and blood pressure (BP) and anthropometrics of 4-year-old IVF children?

SUMMARY ANSWER
Causal models compatible with the data suggest the presence of positive direct effects of controlled ovarian hyperstimulation as applied in IVF (COH-IVF) on systolic blood pressure (SBP) percentiles and subscapular skinfold thickness.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
Increasing evidence suggests that IVF is associated with higher blood pressure and altered body fat distribution in offspring, but underlying mechanisms describing the causal relationships between the variables are largely unknown.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
In this assessor-blinded follow-up study, 194 children were assessed. The attrition rate until the 4-year-old assessment was 10%.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS
We measured blood pressure and anthropometrics of 4-year-old singletons born following COH-IVF (n = 63), or born following modified natural cycle IVF (MNC-IVF, n = 52) or born to subfertile couples who conceived naturally (Sub-NC, n = 79). Primary outcome measures were the SBP and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) percentiles. Anthropometrics included triceps and subscapular skinfold thickness. Causal inference search algorithms and structural equation modeling were applied.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
Explorative analyses suggested a direct effect of COH on SBP percentiles and on subscapular skinfold thickness. This hypothesis needs confirmation with additional, preferably larger, studies.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
Search algorithms were used as explorative tools to generate hypotheses on the causal mechanisms underlying fertility treatment, blood pressure, anthropometrics and other variables. More studies using larger groups are needed to draw firm conclusions.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
Our findings are in line with other studies describing adverse effects of IVF on cardiometabolic outcome, but this is the first study suggesting a causal mechanism underlying this association. Perhaps ovarian hyperstimulation negatively influences cardiometabolic outcome via changes in the early environment of the oocyte and/or embryo, possibly resulting in epigenetic modifications of key metabolic systems that are involved in BP regulation. Future research needs to confirm the role of ovarian stimulation in poorer cardiometabolic outcome and should investigate the underlying mechanisms. Our proposed causal models provide research hypotheses to be tested with new data from preferably larger studies.

STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S)
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. The study was supported by the University Medical Center Groningen, the Cornelia Foundation and the school for Behavioral- and Cognitive Neurosciences. The sponsors of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the report.


Within the specialty mechatronics a plurality of disciplines such as mechanics, electronics, software and control are combined to develop extremely accurate precision machinery. Examples are ultra-precise measuring equipment with nanometer accuracy, stages for lithography applications and stages for electron microscopes. The accuracy of mechatronic systems is rapidly increasing. Key in the development of such highly precise machinery is to control the disturbances affecting the accuracy of the machine. A systematic way to do so, is to define a "dynamic error budget" which is divided amongst the different disturbances. Many different disturbances need to be considered. To mention a few: floor vibrations, vibrations generated internally by the machine, acoustic excitation due to flow and/or cleanroom air-conditioning systems, etc. The latter disturbance, acoustic excitation, claims a significant part to the error budget, especially for extremely accurate precision machinery.In order to estimate the contribution to the dynamic error budget already in the design phase of the machine, it is necessary to predict the response of the system to acoustic excitation. In the design phase of a machine only approximate dimensions are available, which calls for approximate estimates of the machines sensitivity to acoustic excitation. The paper discusses such an approximate method, which considers rigid body motion of the machine only, excited by plane acoustic waves. The method uses an analytical model. The analytical model is derived, and the theory is validated by means of experiments.


The aim of this paper is to empirically investigate the in sample and out of sample forecasting performance of several GARCH-type models such as GARCH, EGARCH and APARCH model with Gaussian, student-t, Generalized error distribution (GED), student-t with fixed DOF 10 and GED with fixed parameter 1.5 distributional assumption in case of Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), Sri Lanka. The daily All Share Price Index (ASPI) of CSE from January 02, 1998 to December 29, 2006 for a total number of 2150 observations is used for empirical analysis. We consider first 1950 observations for in sample estimation and last 200 observations for out of sample forecasting evaluation. Our empirical study showed that fixed DOF 10 of student-t density and fixed parameter 1.5 of GED density fail to improve the in sample estimation performance compared to student-t and GED distributional assumption. Among all of these models, APARCH model with student-t density give better in sample estimation results. In case of out-of-sample forecasting performance we found that APARCH model with all distributional assumption give lower value of Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE). According to the densities student-t distribution with fixed DOF 10, student-t and Gaussian distributional assumptions give better results in case of GARCH, EGARCH and APARCH model respectively. The estimation results of SPA test suggest that APARCH model with Gaussian distributional assumption give better forecasting performance in case of all share price index of CSE, Sri Lanka.


: Sagebrush ecosystems ( Artemisia spp.) face many threats including large wildfires and conversion to invasive annuals, and thus are the focus of intense restoration efforts across the western United States. Specific attention has been given to restoration of sagebrush systems for threatened herbivores, such as Greater Sage-Grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus ) and pygmy rabbits ( Brachylagus idahoensis ), reliant on sagebrush as forage. Despite this, plant chemistry (e.g., crude protein, monoterpenes and phenolics) is rarely considered during reseeding efforts or when deciding which areas to conserve. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) has proven effective in predicting plant chemistry under laboratory conditions in a variety of ecosystems, including the sagebrush steppe. Our objectives were to demonstrate the scalability of these models from the laboratory to the field, and in the air with a hyperspectral sensor on an unoccupied aerial system (UAS). Sagebrush leaf samples were collected at a study site in eastern Idaho, USA. Plants were scanned with an ASD FieldSpec 4 spectroradiometer in the field and laboratory, and a subset of the same plants were imaged with a SteadiDrone Hexacopter UAS equipped with a Rikola hyperspectral sensor (HSI). All three sensors generated spectral patterns that were distinct among species and morphotypes of sagebrush at specific wavelengths. Lab-based NIRS was accurate for predicting crude protein and total monoterpenes (R 2 = 0.7-0.8), but the same NIRS sensor in the field was unable to predict either crude protein or total monoterpenes (R 2 < 0.1). The hyperspectral sensor on the UAS was unable to predict most chemicals (R 2 < 0.2), likely due to a combination of too few bands in the Rikola HSI camera (16 bands), the range of wavelengths (500-900 nm), and small sample size of overlapping plants (n = 28-60). These results show both the potential for scaling NIRS from the lab to the field and the challenges in predicting complex plant chemistry with hyperspectral UAS. We conclude with recommendations for next steps in applying UAS to sagebrush ecosystems with a variety of new sensors.


BACKGROUND:
 The NIHSS is an indispensable tool that aids in the decision-making of acute stroke management. Posterior circulation strokes often have lower NIHSS scores. This may result in withholding treatment with IV tPA and poor outcome in this population. We aimed to assess the predictive value of the NIHSS on poor functional outcome in anterior circulation (AC) versus posterior circulation (PC) strokes.

 METHODS:
 This was a retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected database from a single center. Adult patients admitted to the stroke service with acute ischemic stroke from January 2000 through December 2011 were included. Data collected included demographics, initial NIHSS, vascular distribution of infarct, complications, and outcome at 3 months. Since this study focused on minor strokes, death or disability was defined as death or a score of < 18 on the modified Barthel Index (BI) scale.

 RESULTS:
 The analysis included 1,197 patients with AC stroke and 372 with PC stroke. Table 1 lists the characteristics of the two groups. The NIHSS score on admission was lower in PC stroke and the majority (63%) of PC stroke patients had baseline NIHSS scores < 4. AC stroke patients were more likely to be treated with IV tPA or endovascular treatment. Surprisingly, 15% of patients with posterior circulation strokes and admission NIHSS score < 4 had death or disability at 3 months. On multivariable analyses, higher NIHSS score was an independent predictor of death or disability at 3 months in both AC (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.17-1.23, p <0.001) and PC (1.15, 1.08-1.21, p <0.001) stroke. In PC stroke, treatment with IV tPA was a strong predictor of excellent outcome at 3 months (OR 5.62, 95% CI 1.06-29.9, p < 0.05).

 CONCLUSION:
 There is a potential risk for death or disability in patients with PC stroke even with low NIHSS scores. These data suggest that treatment with IV tPA should not be withheld from patients with PC stroke syndromes based on the NIHSS score.


Strawberry anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum acutatum is often asymp- tomatic on plants in sprinkler-irrigated nurseries but destructive after transplantation into fruiting fields. This study evaluated the impact of strawberry nursery sprinkler and drip irrigation in the presence or absence of C. acutatum on post-transplantation plant growth, mortality, and fruit yield in fruiting fields in California. In a 2005 nursery at Tulelake, CA, dip infestation of mother plants with C. acutatum reduced early-season mother plant canopy size by 21% and delayed runner production in mother plants but otherwise had no obvious disease symptoms. In comparison with sprinkler-irrigated treatments in the nursery, drip irrigation of infested nursery plots reduced plant losses in fruit production fields by 86% at Watsonville, CA, in 2005 and 50% and 75% at Oxnard, CA, in 2005 and 2008. Transplants from infested nursery treatments had a 33% to 60% smaller canopy and 11% to 42% lower yield than transplants from uninfested nursery treatments. However, transplant canopy size and yield from the infested and then drip- irrigated nursery treatment were similar to the sprinkler-irrigated, non-infested nursery treatment. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction measurements of C. acutatum in crown tissue of fruiting field plants seven weeks after transplanting showed significantly more C. acutatum ('11·) in their crowns in sprinkler-irrigated than drip-irrigated, infested nursery transplant treatments. During the course of fruit production, the amount of C. acutatum in crown tissue increased in all treatments. However, at the end of the fruit season, there was still significantly more ('8·) C. acutatum in the crowns of the plants produced bysprinkler irrigation thanby drip irrigation in the nursery. These data suggest that if C. acutatum is present in the nursery, drip irrigation can reduce subsequent plant stunting and yield losses in strawberry production fields.


With growing data volumes from synoptic surveys, astronomers necessarily must become more abstracted from the discovery and introspection processes. Given the scarcity of follow-up resources, there is a particularly sharp onus on the frameworks that replace these human roles to provide accurate and well-calibrated probabilistic classification catalogs. Such catalogs inform the subsequent follow-up, allowing consumers to optimize the selection of specific sources for further study and permitting rigorous treatment of classification purities and efficiencies for population studies. Here, we describe a process to produce a probabilistic classification catalog of variability with machine learning from a multi-epoch photometric survey. In addition to producing accurate classifications, we show how to estimate calibrated class probabilities and motivate the importance of probability calibration. We also introduce a methodology for feature-based anomaly detection, which allows discovery of objects in the survey that do not fit within the predefined class taxonomy. Finally, we apply these methods to sources observed by the All-Sky Automated Survey (ASAS), and release the Machine-learned ASAS Classification Catalog (MACC), a 28 class probabilistic classification catalog of 50,124 ASAS sources in the ASAS Catalog of Variable Stars. We estimate that MACC achieves a sub-20% classification error rate and demonstrate that the class posterior probabilities are reasonably calibrated. MACC classifications compare favorably to the classifications of several previous domain-specific ASAS papers and to the ASAS Catalog of Variable Stars, which had classified only 24% of those sources into one of 12 science classes.


Clinical manifestations of the brucellosis may show extensive appearance because of its wide signs and symptoms. Patients with brucellosis are usually symptomatically treated by using different antibiotics at private clinics due to misdiagnosis of clinical laboratory findings specially those chronic forms. These subjects will have been hospitalized with a complicated form of signs after changing a few therapies (1). At this time, classical methods such as culture based and serological procedures could not alone meet of clinicians' demands. Many researchers have been being tried to introduce an alternative method better in accuracy, reliability and efficiency aspects. However, most reported comparison studies were not able to present desired results. There are not any significant points in existence of various and even contradictory results in laboratory interpretation reports. Those patients with recent brucellosis involvement or acute disease are better diagnosed than those hospitalized or chronic cases. Unfortunately, it is being observed the most researchers are not attending the patient clinical infectious form. Obviously, in-patients have more problematical conditions that results to have lower sensitivity rate in some test or even different from each other. Unfortunately, this concern has not been noticed in the majority of molecular epidemiology studies. Analyzed results of various tests are not fully in agreement with each other in these reports, confirming each test is better suited for some specific clinical conditions (2). Another important problem is applying home brew protocols in all comparative studies. This type of  non-commercial diagnostic protocol are being surprisingly applied in most small Iranian clinical laboratories. These assays have been being followed from some reported papers without any proper optimization experiments or exact clinical trial specifically for Iranian populations, particularly when several of the effective parameters in the optimization may not be well reflected in these released reports. Some of them for proper optimization and standardization are mentioned in other studies (3).  Proper selecting sampling is additional problems. Serum specimens would not be preferred samples since Brucella spp. agents are intracellular which is integrated in PMN cells. Serum specimens may give positive results, but in those has high antibody titer or acute cases. Although it is used as applied specimens instead of peripheral anti-coagulated blood (4). The chance of the recovery Brucella spp. DNA is obviously reduced in those chronic and complicated subjects. In addition, sampling from patients undergoing treatment may have low positive predictive value results (5,6). It would seem international approved extraction method accompanied with internal control as control the DNA isolation procedure and to check for possible PCR inhibition should be used in molecular diagnostic settings (4,7). Finally the last point, various pathogenic Brucella species involve in many countries. At present, we have no significant documentary reports in frequency rate of Brucella spp.  in our community. Some reports represent considerable rate for B. abortus while some not. Therefore, applied protocol must be enough sensitive to detect and even differentiate at least B. abortus from  B. melitensis, although some reports illustrate the presence of B. canis as well as in Iran (8).


This paper analyzes the size and the determinants of unexpected changes in EU countries' tax revenues and their impact on the ability of EU governments to use fiscal policy as a macroeconomic stabilisation device. We make use of information taken from the Stability and Convergence Programmes (SCP) setting countries' medium-term fiscal plans and focus on the period preceding the 2008/2009 global financial crisis. Tax revenue surprises are found to have fluctuated widely, alternating periods of sizeable windfalls and periods of substantial shortfalls.. When analysing the determinants of these unexpected changes in tax revenues, we find that GDP growth surprises and, in some cases (i.e. Ireland, Spain the UK and Finland) asset prices fluctuations have exerted the most significant influence. In the sequel we provide evidence on the incidence of these unexpected changes in governments' tax revenues on the ability of governments to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policies, which are desirable from a macroeconomic perspective. We find that countries that have experienced the largest tax revenue windfalls in the run-up to the 2008/2009 crisis have also tended to run more pro-cyclical fiscal policies although these results vary depending on the use of ex-post vs. real-time data and on the method used to calculate the cyclical position of the economy. Put differently, these results tend to indicate that while tax revenue windfalls may be good for the public purse during favourable times they may also (paradoxically) dwindle the ability of the countries concerned to run countercyclical fiscal policies when cyclical conditions revert. 1 The views expressed in this paper are not necessarily those of the Banca d'Italia nor of the European Commission. The authors are especially grateful to Lucio Pench, Sandro Momigliano and Jacopo Cimadomo for very useful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this paper. A previous version of the paper was presented at the ECB Public Finance Workshop Dec. 2008 under the title: "Governments' revenues windfalls and the stabilisation function of fiscal policies".


Reactive cap technology is a promising in-situ remediation solution for contaminated sediment, mainly because it has the potential to reduce costs and environmental impacts when compared to solutions that rely solely on dredging and disposal. Reactive capping mats have been recently used in demonstration projects as a passive remediation technology for contaminated sediment. The mats used in this research were comprised of two geosynthetic fabrics bound to a fibrous core filled with a reactive material. The type of geotextiles and reactive material are selected based on the characteristics of the contaminated material and the contaminants on site. The mat is deployed on top of the sediment to trap the contaminants as they migrate out of the sediment via diffusion or advection. The upper geosynthetic acts as a filter and prevents clean sediment migration into the cap, while the bottom geosynthetic provides strength to the mat during installation and recovery of the system. The reactive mat is deployed over the sediment and is typically protected by 0.3 m of clean permeable sand or silt. Fine grained submerged sediment is a challenging geotechnical material because its soft nature has the potential for complex consolidation behavior, variable permeability, and transport of contaminants. The sediment experiences a self-weight consolidation process in addition to the consolidation induced by the weight of the reactive cap. The installation of the cap applies a load on top of the sediment and induces pore pressure build-up that is dissipated over time, and gradually changes the void ratio and permeability of the underlying sediment, which in turn causes a change in the ground water flow regime. This complex behavior modifies the transport of contaminants within the sediment over time, and it may also modify the efficiency of the reactive cap. Current engineering practice accounts for these aspects only in a very simplistic manner as part of the design process of in-situ caps, even though they define the long and short term performance of the reactive cap. This dissertation presents a detailed study on each of these subjects, and how the interactions affect the efficiency and performance of reactive cap technology.


The intrinsic architecture and complexity of the brain restricts the capacity of therapeutic molecules to reach their potential targets, thereby limiting therapeutic possibilities concerning neurological ailments and brain malignancy. As conventional models fail to recapitulate the complexity of the brain, progress in the field of microfluidics has facilitated the development of advanced in vitro platforms that could imitate the in vivo microenvironments and pathological features of the blood–brain barrier (BBB). It is highly desirous that developed in vitro BBB-on-chip models serve as a platform to investigate cancer metastasis of the brain along with the possibility of efficiently screening chemotherapeutic agents against brain malignancies. In order to improve the proficiency of BBB-on-chip models, hydrogels have been widely explored due to their unique physical and chemical properties, which mimic the three-dimensional (3D) micro architecture of tissues. Hydrogel-based BBB-on-chip models serves as a stage which is conducive for cell growth and allows the exchange of gases and nutrients and the removal of metabolic wastes between cells and the cell/extra cellular matrix (ECM) interface. Here, we present recent advancements in BBB-on-chip models targeting brain malignancies and examine the utility of hydrogel-based BBB models that could further strengthen the future application of microfluidic devices in oncology research.


Automated fact-checking (AFC) systems exist to combat disinformation, however their complexity makes them opaque to the end user, making it difficult to foster trust. In this paper, we introduce the E-BART model with the hope of making progress on this front. E-BART is able to provide a veracity prediction for a claim, and jointly generate a human-readable explanation for this decision. We show that E-BART is competitive with the state-of-theart on the e-FEVER and e-SNLI tasks. In addition, we validate the joint-prediction architecture by showing 1) that generating explanations does not significantly impede the model from performing well in its main task of veracity prediction, and 2) that predicted veracity and explanations are more internally coherent when generated jointly than separately. Finally, we also conduct human evaluations on the impact of generated explanations and observe that explanations increase human ability to spot misinformation and make people more skeptical about claims.


Interleukin 16 (IL-16) has been shown to diminish HIV and SIV replication through inhibition of HIV and SIV mRNA transcription. To evaluate its role in the FIV cat model, we cloned and expressed feline IL-16 and determined its ability to induce chemotaxis as well as to inhibit FIV replication in cultured PBMCs. Sequence comparison of rfIL-16 with human, African green monkey, rhesus macaque, and mouse IL-16 showed 84.2, 84.5, 84.4, and 79.4% identity at the nucleotide sequence level and 93, 91.5, 90.7, and 87.2% identity at the amino acid sequence level, respectively. Biocharacterization of rfIL-16 revealed potent induction of chemotaxis (p < 0.05). In addition, p24 production from feline PBMCs infected with FIV Zurich 2 in vitro was decreased up to 87% (p < 0.05). These data demonstrate biologic and antiviral functionality of rfIL-16.