OBJECTIVE
This is a retrospective study on Pharmacomechanical Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis (PCDT) in the treatment of acute iliofemoral Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
From March 2013 to November 2016, 22 patients (26 limbs), median age 46.7 years with acute (<21 days) extensive iliofemoral DVT underwent Percutaneous Mechanical Thrombectomy (PMT) with Aspirex (Straub Medical, Wangs, Switzerland), followed by Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis (CDT). Subsequent endovascular stenting was performed for underlying obstruction. The follow-ups were conducted up to 1 year, in two Centers by experienced operators. Post-Thrombotic Syndrome (PTS) was evaluated by assessing the Villalta Scale (VS) and measuring orthostatic venous pressure.

RESULTS
Post-operative iliofemoral vein patency was restored in almost all cases (95.5%). Standard urokinase dose was 80.000 IU per hour; mean infusion time was 32.5 hours. Stenting was performed in 15 cases (68%). Median follow-up was 19.9 months (6-48 months); 21/22 patients completed the 12 months follow-up. At 30 days follow-up symptoms disappeared in 21/22 cases (95.5%), with one case (4.5%) of DVT recurrence. At 1-year follow-up there were 3 cases (14.2%) of mild PTS; 18 patients (85.8%) were free from PTS. At 1-year follow-up venous pressure measurement showed normal values in 11 cases (52.4%), mild hypertension in 7 patients (33.3%), moderate hypertension (80-100 mmHg) in 2 cases (9.5%) and severe hypertension (110 mmHg) in one case (4.8%). Neither major nor minor complications were observed.

CONCLUSIONS
PMT with Aspirex combined with CDT with urokinase seems to be a safe and effective treatment for acute iliofemoral DVT and it shows promising results in reducing the risk of PTS. Thus, we suggest a controlled trial with this treatment strategy.


Combined-section columns composed of two separate steel sections present an ideal and economic design for long columns subject to high values of bending moments and axial forces. Research dealing with design of these columns is currently insufficient. At present, most codes of practice consider each column's component to behave either separately or rigidly connected to the other components. As such, the main objective of this research is to scrutinize the behavior of laced-section columns, which are subjected to eccentric loading and propose design criteria for them. In this paper, a non-linear numerical model for these columns is developed based on the finite element method. The results of the numerical model are first verified against the outcomes of experimental investigations available in literature. Then, the model is adopted to simulate the behavior and the capacity of the combined laced columns. The numerical model includes both the geometric and materials nonlinearities along with the effect of initial imperfections.


Parkinson ' s disease (PD) is divided into early-onset (EOPD) occurring at the age of fewer than 45 years of age and late-onset PD (LOPD) above 45 years of age. EOPD accounts for 5 – 10% of all the cases with PD. It is thought that occurrence in this age is connected with genetic factors, mutations in e.g. PRKN, PINK1, DJ-1 and changes in proteins it is encoded. The loss of dopaminergic neurons in the nigrostriatal system leads to decreased dopamine (DA) concentrations. Pathogenic PD proteins may affect the DA level. The lower level of DA may be responsible for movement-related symptoms. EOPDs have a slower progression of the disease and a longer disorder duration but tend to develop dyskinesias and motor fluctuations earlier than LOPD. Currently, the diagnosis of PD is based on clinical criteria, supported neuroimaging like MRI or PET. Understanding the pathogenesis of the EOPD may be contributing to improving diagnostics and effectiveness of pharmacotherapy.


The study was carried out to ascertain effects of agribusiness functions and experience on small scale maize agribusiness operators' net income in Wukari, Taraba State, Nigeria. A purposive sampling was used to select four area-markets namely Rafin-Kada, Gindin-Doruwa, Bantaji and Kente markets, where maize agribusiness owners predominantly carry out production and marketing of maize grain. Fifteen small scale maize agribusiness operators were randomly selected from each of the four areas, making a total of 60 operators as representative sample. Interview method and questionnaire was used to illicit response from respondents. Regression results reveal processing, packaging, in addition to sales volume have positive significant influence on operators' net income, while grading, storage, and transportation functions had positive experience had negative insignificant effect. Model summary shows R-square as 0.969, and adjusted R-square is 0.939 yielding an average R-square of 0.954, implying that 95.4% of the variations in the net incomes of the maize entrepreneurs were explained by the exogenous variables. Results of ANOVA reveal a significant model with P = 0.000, and F*Cal 97.78>F*tab 1.77. Null hypothesis (H0: b = 0) is rejected and the alternative hypothesis (HA: b ≠ 0) accepted since not all the exogenous variables have zero effects. Despite regulating grading, storage, transportation, and financing functions to improve production and sales volume; processing, packaging and sales functions are recommended major criteria for incentive provision by stakeholders given their overriding effects on net income cum shelf life improvement. The study concludes that maize agribusiness is profitable in the study area.

 Key words:  Analyses, maize agribusiness, net income, agribusiness functions, experience.


In this work, the influence of cluster thinning on the amino acids concentration of musts and wines was studied. Three vineyards were selected from Peza district of Crete where the white vine variety Vilana is cultivated. One part of each vineyard, containing 100 vines was divided in two sections. The first was used as reference while in the second section, cluster thinning to 50%, just before veraison, was applied. The experimentation was repeated for two continuous years. In 1996, the reference sections yielded 35.5 – 46.7 t/h while the other sections, where cluster thinning took place, yielded 16.5 – 23.0 t/h. The next year, the yields were 43.2 – 48.4 t/h and 12.6 – 14.0 t/h respectively. In all musts and wines, 18 amino acids were determined with the use of HPLC and proline was determined colorimetrically. The volatile components of the wines were also measured because, as it is known, the amino acids contribute to the formation of some higher alcohols, ethyl esters and acetates. From this work the following conclusions were made:The musts and the wines from Vilana variety are poor in amino acids and their levels vary from one year to another. This variation is related to the climatic conditions of the period of maturation but the profile of these acids seems invariable.The musts of Vilana variety deriving from vineyards with cluster thinning, which lead to low yield, contain higher levels of amino acids. This is important, given that a must rich in amino acids, positively influences not only the fermentation process evolution but also the enrichment of the wines in volatile components. Particularly for the Vilana variety, which is poor in amino acids and without any typical aroma, the high yields have a negative effect on their wine quality.


Recently, multipole plasmonic mode resonances in metal hollow structures, such as dipole, quadrupole, and octupole modes, have been widely investigated by researchers with the aim for potential applications in bio-sensing, fluorescence, nanolasers or nonlinear nano-photonics. Here, in this work, the multipole plasmon resonances in self-assembled metal hollow-nanospheres (HNSs) are theoretically and experimentally demonstrated and the hot spots originating from the higher order mode plasmonic resonance and interparticle coupling effect are proposed to be used for Raman scattering enhancements. Dipole, quadrupole, octupole and hexadecapole mode plasmonic resonances were clearly resolved in the extinction spectra of these Ag HNS arrays showing good agreement with the theoretical simulation results. Strong regular hot spots were obtained around the surface and in the gaps of the Ag HNSs through the higher order mode plasmonic resonances and corresponding interparticle coupling effect between the HNSs. Maximum local field intensity was accomplished by optimizing the size of as well as the coupling distance between the HNSs and then it was applied to SERS sensing. Raman mapping also demonstrated these self-assembled plasmonic cavity arrays to be a stable and uniform SERS-active substrate.


According to empirical observations, some pattern formation phenomena in driven many-particle systems are more pronounced in the presence of a certain noise level. We investigate this phenomenon of fluctuationdriven ordering with a cellular automaton model of interactive motion in space and find an optimal noise strength, while order breaks down at high(er) fluctuation levels. Additionally, we discuss the phenomenon of noiseand drift-induced self-organization in systems that would show disorder in the absence of fluctuations. In the future, related studies may have applications to the control of many-particle systems such as the efficient separation of particles. The rather general formulation of our model in the spirit of game theory may allow to shed some light on several different kinds of noise-induced ordering phenomena observed in physical, chemical, biological, and socio-economic systems (e.g., attractive and repulsive agglomeration, or segregation).


In practice, character education is emphasized on the basic education primary and secondary school with the assumption that the formation of character or behavior will be effective in childhood . On the basis of the idea of government stressed that the priority of character education in basic education . Character education in Indonesia implemented integrated with other subjects. Thus, character education is not only the responsibility of a particular teacher, but it is a shared responsibility of all components of education. Character education in Indonesia with diverse cultural backgrounds and religions to be very important and urgent. In this regard education not only serves to instill the values based on the particular culture but also the values of universal humanity. The diverse cultural wealth is seen as well as a vehicle for learning to appreciate the differences in values, views, and behavior in the association. Thus, it will shape the character of the students who are sensitive to the difference, caring, empathy, and participation in the common interest. These values become the basis for mutual understanding in living together in diversity. Thus, students are equipped with the values of living together in peace is not only a form of co-existence but rather the pro-existence. Education should be able to stop improving values of silence, ignorance, inequality, prejudice, injustice, and indifference is shifted to the values of inclusive, care and share, equality, justice, and sympathy.


Abstract The aim of the present study was to assess the prevalence and types of injuries in 1336 young, non-professional female dancers (age 8–16 years) who participated in a descriptive mixed (cross-sectional/ longitudinal) cohort study. Previous and current injuries were diagnosed and later classified into seven major categories. Our results show that 569 (42.6%) of the dancers examined manifested an injury. Advanced age and increased exposure to dance yielded an equivalent increase in the prevalence of injured girls: from 1 of 10 girls in the 8-year-old age cohort (mean = 1.05 per 1000 h) to 1 of 3 girls in the 14-year-old age cohort (mean = 1.25 per 1000 h). Time elapsing between first and second injuries decreased with age. Among the youngest group of dancers (8–9 years) the most common injury was tendonitis (41%), while in adolescent dancers (14–16 years) knee injuries became the leading cause of complaints (33%). We conclude that young, non-professional dancers are at high risk of injury. Dancers who had been injured in the past were at higher risk for re-injury. Tendonitis in the foot or ankle joint was a common injury among the youngest dancers, while knee injuries were common among adolescent dancers. A routine screening of this dancer population by an expert in dance medicine will reduce the risk for an injury.


This report describes the process of developing a motor controller for the Suaineadh satellite project. The problem has been worked on before but has never been finished. Several months was committed to completing this project and trying to make it work within the frames of the Suaineadh experiment. The project was changed several times due to specification alterations. In the end it was changed into a demonstration of some various functions needed in the final design. The reason for this was that there wasn't enough time; other things had to take priority. Many things could have been handled better and this report tries to argue how whilst describing the process.There were many bumps and bruises and the project was changed many times. In the end the result of the project was a demonstration of some of the vital functions needed. These functions are respectively; reading data from a sensor using an I2C interface and controlling the rotation of a motor. Tests were also performed in order to assess and ensure the functionality and stability of the components.


Fractography was used in order to investigate the effects of Ta addition on the diffusion behavior of carbon in molybdenum. Mo-1.5mass%Ta alloy was carburized by the solid-state carburization process at a temperature between 1073 and 1473 K. Fracture surface of the specimen was observed before and after the carburization process and carbon diffusion distance was estimated from the change in fracture mode as a function of distance from the specimen surface. Results are as follows. (1) Ta addition slightly decreased the carbon diffusion distance. (2) Ta addition had almost no effect on the activation energy for diffusion. (3) These results suggest preferential combination between carbon atoms and Ta atoms is only minor.


Chemical mechanical polishing has emerged recently as an indispensable processing technique in large scale integration. In chemical and mechanical polishing process, chemical and mechanical principle is the vital factor in the removal process. Little is known about what is occurring beneath a wafer during Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) processes. The paper provides a LIF technology to visualize the fluid flow between the wafer and pad. In this paper, the experiment setup is built. And then, the images of fluorescence intensity excited by LIF have been obtained from CCD. Finally, the relationships between pH, temperature, laser power, film thickness and fluorescence intensity excited by LIF (Laser induced Fluorescence) are studied.


In these notes we review the method to construct integrable deformations of the compactified c = 1 bosonic string theory by primary fields (momentum or winding modes), developed recently in collaboration with S. Alexandrov and V. Kazakov. The method is based on the formulation of the string theory as a matrix model. The flows generated by either momentum or winding modes (but not both) are integrable and satisfy the Toda lattice hierarchy*.


The decision to join the North Atlantic Pact in 1949 constituted a major breakaway from traditional security policies in Denmark and Norway. Even Sweden, which in the end decided to remain nonaligned, went through a period of considerable reevalution of established trends of thought. In this study Professor Magne Skodvin describes and analyzes some major phases in the series of events that caused Norway to become a charter member of the North Atlantic Alliance and directed Denmark to follow. Professor Skodvin has drawn heavily on material from archives in the Norwegian Foreign Office, the Public Record Office in London, and the National Archives in Washington D.C.


Abstract A renewed interest in mineral spheres that exhibit oscillatory layering is assured with the spectacular discovery of hematite beads in Meridiani Planum, Mars. The Martian .blueberries. are variously interpreted as sedimentary concretions, impact spherules, or accretionary lapilli. We draw attention to a possible alternative that the spheres of oxides are of igneous origin in carbonate-rich upper mantle systems. Two spherical oxide assemblages from cabonatitic kimberlites in the central Namibia (formerly South West Africa) volcanic field show similarities and contrasts to orbicular structures in carbonatites from Uganda, South Africa, Germany, Finland, and Russia. Structures have rapakivi appearances that bear upon the controversial issue of a relation between kimberlites and carbonatites. The first example is from a carbonatitic kimberlite adjacent to the Mukorob kimberlite (sesu stricto). Oblate spheroidal nuggets (2 × 1.5 × 0.5 cm) have olivine (now serpentine + calcite) cores with concentrically layered bands of ilmenite + calcite, and pedestals of ilmenite (Ilm55Geik40Hem5) with intergranular calcite; the spheres are matrix-supported in massive ferroan calcite + serpentine, with minor apatite (F = 1.5 wt%) and barite. The matrix contains xenocrystic Mg-Al chromite (55 wt% Cr2O3) mantled by ilmenite (Ilm51Geik43Hem6) but the dominant groundmass oxide mineral is Mg-Al-Ti (MAT) magnetite. The second example is from the carbonatite facies of the Hatzium kimberlite, and is also in a dike. MATmagnetite pellets (2-3 cm) have alternating wide (~1 mm), and thin (~0.25 mm) bands of magnetite nucleated on a complex mixture of calcite (FeO = 0.1 wt%) and serpentine (4 wt% FeO, 0.5-1 wt% Al2O3). The matrix assemblage of serpentine + calcite + MAT-magnetite has mineral compositions similar to the spheroids, but is distinguished by abundant Ba-phlogopite and lesser apatite (F = 2 wt%). Phlogopite is strongly zoned in patches and bands, is kink-banded and contains inclusions of MAT-magnetite + calcite. The assemblage is typical of phoscorites (also known as camaforites) in other carbonatites, but the ilmenite spheroids appear to be restricted to Mukorob. Our interpretation is that both types result from the nucleation of immiscible liquids (a high-density and high-viscosity ore-carbonate-silicate component in a low-viscosity phosphoric carbonatite melt) on olivine or olivine + magnetite, assisted by frothing and slow degassing on decompression and dike intrusion.


Trabecular meshwork (TM) cells are now considered to play an active role in the aqueous outflow mechanism, since they exhibit smooth muscle-like contractile properties. Endothelin-1 (ET-1), a potent vasoconstrictor peptide, has been proposed to play a role in the local regulation of aqueous outflow and intra-ocular pressure control. We propose an in vitro culture model as a method in the study of ET-1-induced human trabecular meshwork (HTM) cell contractility. Experiments were performed on semi-confluent HTM cells (primary cultures established from normotensive human donor eyes) at the 2nd passage with PBS as control, ET-1, sarafotoxin 6c (a selective endothelin B receptor agonist) and Y-27632 (a selective inhibitor of rho-associated kinase). The contractile status of the cells was evaluated by a morphometric analysis of the cell area, assuming that HTM cells in culture are able to reduce their area as a consequence of cytoskeletal contraction rather than regulatory volume decrease. Our data indicate that image analysis of the HTM cell area can be a reliable method in the study of TM cell contractility, since it utilizes human cells and offers versatile opportunities for the pharmacological evaluation of drugs controlling HTM cell status.


When considering introducing new genotypes to a region, determination of their performance and of certain characteristics in the target region is of great value. In this study, we aimed to investigate the grain yield and flour quality characteristics of nine bread wheat cultivars, originated from foreign countries, in the environmental conditions of Canakkale. Field trials were arranged in a randomised complete block design with three replicates in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 growing seasons. Data were collected on grain yield and flour quality traits. Based on the results of the two years of study, genotype x year interaction effect was found to be significant, while there was no significant difference between the grain yields of the tested cultivars. The mean grain yield values varied between 3620 and 4324 kg ha -1 . There was a significant variation among cultivars with regard to most flour quality traits evaluated. Ranges for the investigated traits were as follows: protein concentration 10.5-12.9%, gluten content 30.9-42.2%, sedimentation value 29.0-38.5 mL, modified sedimentation value 19.0-36.3 mL, ash ratio 0.41-0.68%. The cultivar ZA-75 had an advantage over the other cultivars in sedimentation, gluten and protein concentration. Results showed that the environmental impacts had a significant effect on grain yield, as well as on quality traits.


In this paper, we study the problem of feature extraction for knowledge transfer between multiple remotely sensed images in the context of land-cover classification. Several factors such as illumination, atmospheric, and ground conditions cause radiometric differences between images of similar scenes acquired on different geographical areas or over the same scene but at different time instants. Accordingly, a change in the probability distributions of the classes is observed. The purpose of this work is to statistically align in the feature space an image of interest that still has to be classified (the target image) to another image whose ground truth is already available (the source image). Following a specifically designed feature extraction step applied to both images, we show that classifiers trained on the source image can successfully predict the classes of the target image despite the shift that has occurred. In this context, we analyze a recently proposed domain adaptation method aiming at reducing the distance between domains, Transfer Component Analysis, and assess the potential of its unsupervised and semisupervised implementations. In particular, with a dedicated study of its key additional objectives, namely the alignment of the projection with the labels and the preservation of the local data structures, we demonstrate the advantages of Semisupervised Transfer Component Analysis. We compare this approach with other both linear and kernel-based feature extraction techniques. Experiments on multi- and hyperspectral acquisitions show remarkable cross- image classification performances for the considered strategy, thus confirming its suitability when applied to remotely sensed images.


Reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and photodiode array detection were used to analyze the microbial quinones of influent sewage and activated sludge in a sewage treatment plant. Significant differences in quinone patterns were noted between the sewage and activated sludge. Unlike the activated sludge, the sewage had low ratios of menaquinones to ubiquinones, and contained menaquinone-6 as the most abundant menaquinone and negligible amounts of partially hydrogenated menaquinones. A photodiode array analysis revealed that the sewage also contained considerable amounts of plastoquinones and vitamin K,, both of which are specific to photosynthetic electron transport in cyanobacteria and chloroplasts. These results suggest that the microbial population structure of sewage is markedly different from that of activated sludge. Relationships between changes in the community structure of the sewage and activated sludge were also discussed on the basis of the results of a numerical analysis of lipoquinone patterns.


Abstract The rock pigeon (Columba livia) may serve as a reservoir for several pathogenic agents that can be transmitted to poultry, wildlife, domesticated pets, and/or humans via excreta, secretions, or dust from feathers. In addition, ingestion of infected pigeons by wild and domestic animals can also transmit these pathogenic agents. The health status of 126 free-living pigeons in an urban area was evaluated by microbiologic culture for Salmonella and serologic testing for the presence of antibodies for Toxoplasma gondii and for Newcastle disease virus (NDV) from 120 and 109 pigeons, respectively. After drawing blood, the birds were euthanized, and fragments of the liver, spleen, lungs, and gonads, and feces were cultured for Salmonella spp. Salmonella spp. was isolated from 10 birds (7.94%), of which 8 were Salmonella typhimurium, one was Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serotype 4,12 and one was Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serotype 4,12,i. Six of 109 pigeons (5.50%) were positive for NDV antibodies when using the hemagglutination inhibition test. Toxoplasma gondii antibodies were detected by immunofluorescence in one of 120 sera tested (0.83%). The results indicate that feral rock pigeons were exposed to NDV and T. gondii, although the exposure was low. In addition, these birds had Salmonella spp. and could disseminate this pathogen in the environment.


How does coarsening affect the spectrum of a general graph? We provide conditions such that the principal eigenvalues and eigenspaces of a coarsened and original graph Laplacian matrices are close. The achieved approximation is shown to depend on standard graph-theoretic properties, such as the degree and eigenvalue distributions, as well as on the ratio between the coarsened and actual graph sizes. Our results carry implications for learning methods that utilize coarsening. For the particular case of spectral clustering, they imply that coarse eigenvectors can be used to derive good quality assignments even without refinement---this phenomenon was previously observed, but lacked formal justification.


Introduction Liver stiffness (LS) measured by transient elastography (TE) is related to liver fibrosis, which histologically is categorised into stages which do not have quantitatively relationships. Collagen proportionate area (CPA) measured by computer-assisted digital image analysis (DIA) on biopsies stained with Sirius red is an histological method for quantifying collagen in liver biopsies. The aim of this study is to correlate LS to Ishak score and CPA in patients with chronic viral hepatitis. Methods LS was measured by TE in 100 patients with chronic viral hepatitis (HCV, HBV). Results We evaluated 100 patients: 58 male, mean age 46.4 (±11.5). HCV (n=51), mean age 48.8, 28 males, mean CPA (6.4±6.6), mean LS 12.6 (±15.1). Univariately CPA (r2 0.57 p<0.0001), METAVIR (r2 0.37 p< 0.0001) and Ishak (r2 0.37 p< 0.0001), were correlated with LS but multivariately only CPA was independently associated (p<0.0001, 95% CI 1.139 to 2.789). Ishak and METAVIR were both correlated with CPA univariately, but multivariately only Ishak (p<0.0001, 95% CI 1.544 to 4.135). HBV (n=49), mean age 43.9, 29 males, mean CPA 4.09 (±4.5), mean LS (8.1 ±6.5). Univariately, LS correlated with CPA (r2 0.59, p<0.000), Ishak (r2 0.49, p<0.0001) and METAVIR (r2 0.55, p< 0.000), mutivariately with CPA (p=0.002, 95% CI 0.305 to 1.286) and METAVIR (p=0.03, 95% CI 0.441 to 9.446). METAVIR (r20.69, p< 0.0001) and Ishak (r20.70, p<0.0001) correlated with CPA univariately, but not multivariately. In HCV patients with Ishak stage >4 the AUROC for CPA was 0.96 (95% CI 0.90 to 1.03) and the best cut off was 11.7 (90%sensitivity, 100%specificity). For METAVIR F4 AUROC was 0.98 (95% CI 0.96 to 1.01) and the best cut off for CPA was 12.4 (87%sensitivity, 99%specificity). In HBV patients, the AUROC for CPA was absolute (ie, 1, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.00) in both patients with Ishak >4 and patients with METAVIR F4. In the first case the best cut off was 8.9 (100%sensitivity, 100%specificity), in the latter the best cut off for CPA was 10.3 (100%sensitivity, 100%specificity). Conclusion In chronic viral hepatitis, the measurement of CPA which is a continuous quantitative measurement of liver collagen was correlated well with current stage systems. CPA had a much better correlation with TE than METAVIR or Ishak stages. CPA should replace traditional histological staging systems for quantifying fibrosis in comparison with TE.


This article presents a reflective analysis of a participatory action research between the authors' institution and the Community Development Directorate of Santiago Municipality. This work generated organizational change for implementing new citizen participation policies through a collective reflection about ambiguous roles and organizational paradoxes that allowed to harness the creative potential of emotions and embodied knowledge of public officers. Through workshops of organizational role analysis, a communicative space was built to contain the organizational contradictions generated by the lack of definitions of fieldwork agents' roles and the insufficient institutional support. This led to implement a new approach for citizen participation, with an unprecedented inter-sectoral structure within this municipality. However, in the absence of structural incentives for internal cooperation, this development was abandoned by the authorities at the onset of an unsuccessful re-election campaign. Nevertheless, these temporary achievements show the usefulness of socio-analytic methods for transforming organizations in rigid institutional frameworks. This experience was a first attempt to provide institutional support for inter-sectoral citizen participation policies in Santiago, suggesting ways to generate and sustain long-term changes that are sorely needed in Chilean institutions.


Aim: The prior objective of the current work was to optimize the surfactant concentration and type of polymer to achieve high entrapment efficiency, less particle size, and less drug release rate constant of aqueous core nanocapsules (ACNs) containing lamivudine. Materials and Methods: Modified multiple emulsion technique was used to prepare the nanocapsules with biodegradable polymers, namely, poly (lactide-co-glycolide) and polylactic acid; and the surfactant employed was Span 80. The experiments were designed by one factorial design that was repeated for every categoric factor under response surface methodology of design of experiments using Stat-Ease Design-Expert software. Results: The obtained results of response variable, namely, entrapment efficiency, particle size, and drug release rate constant were statistically treated by ANOVA for response surface quadratic model and found that influence of both factors on all the response variables was significant at P < 0.05. The optimized formulation was found to have the entrapment efficiency of 77.12%, particle size of 250.3 nm, and the drug release rate constant of 0.106 h−1. Conclusion: The results indicated that the objective of this was achieved and ACNs technique was efficient to develop nanoparticles for water-soluble drugs with improved efficiency.


The mechanism through which meter-sized boulders grow to km-sized planetesimals in protoplanetary discs is a subject of active research, since it is critical for planet formation. To avoid spiralling into the protostar due to aerodynamic drag, objects must rapidly grow from cm-sized pebbles, which are tightly coupled to the gas, to large boulders of 1-100m in diameter. It is already well known that over-densities in the gaseous component of the disc provide potential sites for the collection of solids, and that significant density structures in the gaseous component of the disc (e.g., spiral density waves) can trap solids efficiently enough for the solid component of the disc to undergo further gravitational collapse due to their own self-gravity. In this work, we employ the PENCIL CODE to conduct local shearing sheet simulations of massive self-gravitating protoplanetary discs, to study the effect of anticyclonic transient vortices, or eddies, on the evolution of solids in these discs. We find that these types of structures are extremely efficient at concentrating small and intermediate-sized dust particles with friction times comparable to, or less than, the local orbital period of the disc. This can lead to significant over-densities in the solid component of the disc, with density enhancements comparable to, and even higher, than those within spiral density waves; increasing the rate of gravitational collapse of solids into bound structures.


Stochastic disturbances and spikes (sudden sharp fluctuations of any system parameter), commonly observed among natural and laboratory-scale systems, can perturb the multistable dynamics significantly and become a serious impediment when the device is designed for a certain dynamical behavior. We experimentally demonstrate that suitable periodic modulation of any system parameter may efficiently control such stochastic multistability related problems. The control mechanism is verified individually with two standard models (namely, an analog circuit of Lorenz equations and a cavity-loss modulated CO2 laser), against three externally introduced disturbing signals, (namely, white Gaussian noise, pink noise, and train of spikes). Indeed, with both the systems, it has been observed that the modulation is capable to significantly control untoward jumps to coexisting attractors that otherwise would have occurred due to either of the disturbances. These results establish the robustness and wide applicability of this control mechanism in resolving stochastic multistability related problems.


The paper establishes a general approach for analyzing queueing models with repeated inhomogeneous vacations. The server goes on for a vacation if the inactivity prolongs more than the vacation trigger duration. Once the system enters in vacation mode, it may continue for several consecutive vacations, possibly with a different probability distribution. We study a simple M/G/1 queue, which has the advantage of being tractable analytically. The theoretical model is applied to the problem of power saving for mobile devices in which the sleep durations of a device correspond to the server vacations. Various system performance metrics such as the frame response time and the economy of energy are derived. A constrained optimization problem is formulated to maximize the economy of energy in power save mode with QoS constraints. An illustration of the proposed methods is shown with a WiMAX system scenario to obtain design parameters for better performance. Our analysis allows us not only to optimize the system parameters for a given traffic intensity but also to propose parameters that provide the best performance under worst case conditions.


The number of paediatric clinical trials in EU has remarkably increased in the last decade in response to the implementation of the new Paediatric Regulation and incentives aiming to define the need of child-specific drug development. Nevertheless, the gap between the number of paediatric and adult-randomised controlled trials is still substantial in almost every major clinical specialty. Economic, ethical, technological, geographical and cultural factors can influence the paediatric drug development and can represent the challenges to be faced for a smooth conduction of a paediatric clinical trial. The need for trials and paediatric patient's engagement to commensurate with the approved paediatric investigation plans is so high that it is crucial to correctly address key factors. Particular care should be taken to develop well-designed studies, with efficient man agement plans, experienced administrative and healthcare personnel, awareness of socio-cultural features of the geographic areas involved and good communication with patients and their families in order to ensure 'trial preparedness'. A case study on a mul - tinational paediatric clinical trial, presented within the recently ended research project 'DEferiprone Evaluation in Paediatrics (DEEP)', was reported to exemplify some of the challenges encountered by the authors and the actions taken to overcome them.


This article examines the history of Israel's lingua franca as a constituent of the Zionist project. Based largely on recent scholarship, this work sheds light on the role of language in the educational and political efforts to create a New Hebrew Man who, in contradistinction to the European Jew, was to live 'as a free man' in his own land. Reflecting Jewish experience in the Russian Empire, these efforts alienated traditional, particularly non-Ashkenazi Jews. The article addresses the question of the uniqueness of the modern Israeli vernacular that contributes to the historical legitimacy of Zionism and the state of Israel.


RATIONALE
Although it has been postulated that liver injury results in impaired clearance of bacteria from the blood, no prior study has evaluated hepatic bacterial clearance during sepsis.

OBJECTIVES
We hypothesized that liver injury during the evolution of sepsis would result in impaired hepatic bacterial clearance.

METHODS
Mild and severe bacteremia were generated in C57BL/6 mice by low- and high-dose intratracheal inoculation with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
The mortality rates with mild and severe bacteremia were 20% and 60%, respectively. Hepatic bacterial clearance was preserved throughout the evolution of mild bacteremia but was lost late with severe bacteremia. The loss of hepatic bacterial clearance resulted in increased systemic bacteremia and mortality. Pretreatment with a caspase inhibitor resulted in preservation of hepatic bacterial clearance with severe bacteremia and eventual control of the bacteremia. When Kupffer cells were ablated before the onset of bacteremia, there was a loss of hepatic bacterial clearance. This converted an initially mild bacteremia into severe bacteremia with increased organ injury and mortality.

CONCLUSIONS
These observations suggest that hepatic bacterial clearance may be lost during the evolution of sepsis, resulting in a failure to control bacteremia. Thus, the capacity of the liver to clear bacteria is an important determinant of the outcome in sepsis.


Abstract Traditionally, collective defined benefit pension schemes have played an important role in the provision of pensions. Various trends such as population ageing put these schemes under serious pressure, however. Whether this is good or bad depends among other things on two factors: one is the value of the risk sharing between generations that is organized by pension schemes, and another is the cost of the distortions of labour supply decisions that these collective schemes imply. This paper constructs a model with overlapping generations of households and a pension scheme to assess the role of these two factors. The paper finds that the welfare gain from intergenerational risk sharing generally dominates the cost of labour supply distortions.


Abstract:In an era of vacillations between threats of a nuclear war and promises of peace breakthroughs in East Asia, this article takes examples from public campaigns of women's peace groups—such as Women's Peace Walk, Women Cross DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone), Women's Active Museum on War and Peace, and PeaceWomen Across the Globe—and argues for feminist scholarship to take an interdisciplinary approach and, in particular, to fuse peace studies with cultural studies, political economy, and global geopolitics. Doing so requires an examination of the history and the scope of the military-industrial complex, its relationship with finance capital, its bonds with governments and political parties, and its business patterns in relation to wars and conflicts all over the world. It also is crucial to sow the seeds of reconciliation and peace into the daily life of ordinary people. Thus, historians, cultural workers, educationists, writers, and scholar activists of different areas must undertake long-term sustained work for reconciliation and peace at the grassroots level as well as networking at the regional and global levels.


We have demonstrated BiFeO3 (BFO) as a potential bilayer electrolyte for 650 °C low temperature solid oxide fuel cell application. The stoichiometric perovskite BFO is synthesized by wet chemistry, calcined at 500 °C and sintered at 850 °C. The crystalline structure is confirmed by X-ray diffraction spectroscopy, the atomic ratios (Bi : Fe) of 1.02 and 1.00 are determined by X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy, respectively. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis indicates the presence of oxygen vacancies which can partially reduce Fe3+ and result in relatively high dielectric constant (6252 at 100 kHz) and ionic conductivity (>10−2 S cm−1 at 650 °C). The BFO is coated with an yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) protective layer to avoid hydrogen reduction of BFO. This bilayer electrolyte exhibits a 1.6 times increase in maximum power density as compared with pure YSZ when a Ni–YSZ anode and lanthanum strontium cobalt ferrite (LSCF) cathode are used in the fuel cell at 650 °C.


Human contact with nature is more important than ever before considering the global confinement brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the increased urbanization of society, and increased rates of mental disorders and threats to human well-being. This article conveys the importance of contact with nature from three perspectives: historical, sociocultural, and scientific. These perspectives convey the many ways in which contact with nature is essential to human life, the multiple ways in which this is expressed, and the broad range of benefits this has. The case for preserving the natural environment continues to be made in light of the dangers of climate change, the deleterious effects of pollution, and the importance of habitats. We add to the case by underscoring how human well-being has depended on contact with natural environments and how the need for this contact is more salient now than ever before.


Based on melt spinning dynamic model and theory, a basic model of superfine denier polyester multifilament was established. Besides the expressions of quench air temperature and quench air velocity for superfine denier filament spinning process have been established in this paper. In different conditions of diameters of spinneret holes, spinning temperature and the quenching process, the degree of orientation, crystallinity and spinning stress of polyester filament in the spinning process was simulated, respectively. The variation of quench air temperature and air velocity of multifilament in different circles of spinneret was mainly discussed. The research was expected to provide basic theory for optimizing production technique and manufacturing high quality superfine denier polyester filament.


In four space-time dimensions, there exists a special infinite-parameter family of chiral modified gravity theories. They are most properly described by a connection field, with space-time metric being a secondary and derived concept. All these theories have the same number of degrees of freedom as general relativity, which is the only parity-invariant member of this family. Modifications of general relativity can be arranged so as to become important in regions with large curvature. In this paper, we review how a certain simple modification of this sort can resolve the Schwarzschild black-hole and Kasner anisotropic singularities of general relativity. In the corresponding solutions, the fundamental connection field is regular in space-time.


We propose and demonstrate a method of real-time dispersion compensation suitable for scanning interferometry and optical coherence tomography. Static grating tilt in a scanning frequency-domain optical delay line is shown to produce dispersion that is linearly proportional to scan position, and we use this property to achieve depth-dependent dispersion compensation during an interferometric scan through a dispersive sample.


We believe there is virtually no other Agriculture Department quite like Conrad Weiser's. This is due in part because our teachers do not run the entire list of department functions. Rather, the students operate and direct the department through leadership, professionalism, and dedication. This makes the Conrad Weiser Agriculture Department a unique learning environment. Each fall, a new generation of students is welcomed into the Conrad Weiser High School Agriculture Department. Seventy-seven eager freshmen fill the seats in the classroom and a dedicated team of "Aggies" is prepared for their arrival. One-of-a-Kind Experience In the case of our department, it is difficult to explain why students are motivated. The answer seems to simply be, "they just are." It is the atmosphere of the classroom and the area surrounding it that makes the experience one-of-a-kind. The students' motivation to delve into agriculture stems from the wry, humorous cajoling from our teachers, Mr. Raymond Edwards and Mr. Stephen Miller, and the dedication of our upperclassmen. For weeks, upperclassmen anxiously organize the department. They commit summer hours to writing lesson plans, assembling bulletin boards, updating record books, and typing agendas. They greet the incoming students with a sense of pride. Their enthusiasm is contagious. Student Engagement Early on, freshmen are eager to explore the opportunities available in the department. New students are introduced to 'crews,' which are small committees that are dedicated to specific projects in the department, such as beekeeping. Each crew is advertised and organized by older students. The success of the group completely depends on the ability of individual students to lead their team and the dedication of the new students eager to learn new tasks and perform them with competence. Students also have the opportunity to join competitive FFA teams devoted to subjects ranging from horse judging to public speaking. Student Leadership As new students mingle with upperclassmen, they develop a desire to discover their own niche in the department. Mr. Miller has a knack for seeking out the capabilities of almost every student that walks into the Agriculture Department. Students enter the department with little to no preconceived purpose, but they come out the other side with knowledge in areas of expertise that they thought they would never have developed. Students are encouraged to explore their own interests and ideas. It is a genuine leadership experience. Students are responsible for organizing each part of the process. They develop a strong sense of ownership of the department, and are willing to commit extra time and hard work. Of course, students make mistakes-they miss deadlines, and plans fall through. The ability to fail is just as important as the ability to succeed. Students are responsible for their mistakes. Every Aggie can recall a tragic error that resulted in "scrub duty" or an afternoon spent cleaning the cockroach cage. …


This paper describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a Dutch social media intervention to recruit more blood donors of African descent. A total of six Facebook Ad Campaigns (FACs) and six linked Landing Pages (LPs) were designed conveying 1) the need of African blood donors (Need‐condition), 2) the ease of donating blood (Ease‐ condition), 3) small facts about blood donation (Fact‐condition), and 4) regular blood bank messaging (Control‐condition). The campaign reached a total of 659,088 Facebook accounts, from which 4,299 (0.65%) clicked on the link to the designated LP and of these 352 (8.44%) registered as a blood donor. The Fact‐condition performed better than the other conditions in terms of advertisement‐to‐website conversions, followed by the Ease‐ condition. Overall, we found that FACs containing an image had more engagements than those with a video, and short LPs performed better than more informative LPs in terms of donor registrations and engagement. The donors recruited during the social media campaign were significantly more often in cities with large migrant populations compared with the total donor population. Based on the blood groups, the results suggest that the social media experiment yielded proportionally more blood donors of African descent.


In reality there are many relational datasets in which both features of instances and the relationships among the instances are recorded, such as hyperlinked web pages, scientific literature with citations, and social net works. Collective classification has been widely used to classify a group of related instances simultaneously. Recently there have been several studies on statistical relational learning for collective classification, including relational dependency networks, relational Markov networks and Markov logic networks. In statistical relational learning models, collective classification is usually formulated as an inference problem over graphical models. Hence the existing collective classification methods are expensive due to the iterative inference procedure required for general graphical models. Procedures that learn collective classifiers are also expensive, especially if they are based on iterative optimization of an expensive iterative inference procedure. Our goal is to develop an efficient model for collective classification for relational datasets.
In my thesis, I have studied a learning scheme called slacked graphical learning. In stacked graphical learning, a base learner is augmented by providing the predicted labels of relevant instances. That is, first, a base learner is applied to the training data to make predictions using a cross validation-like technique. Then we expand the features by adding the predictions of relevant examples into the feature vector. Finally the base learner is applied to the expanded feature sets to make the final predictions. The intuition behind stacked graphical learning is that combining the predictions on the neighbors with local features can capture the dependencies among examples; hence we can rely on the base learner to classify the instances using the expanded feature set.
We have applied stacked graphical learning to many real problems including collective classification, sequential partitioning, information extraction, and multi-task problems in an information extraction system. Stacked graphical learning has been demonstrated to achieve competitive performance to the state-of-art relational graphical models with much less inference time.
In addition to exploring many applications of stacked graphical learning in real problems, we formally analyze an idealized version of the algorithm, which can he formulate as an inhomogeneous Gibbs sampling process with parameters learned in a greedy manner, provide proof of convergence of the idealized version of stacking, and discuss the conditions under which the algorithm of stacked graphical learning is nearly identical to the idealized stacked graphical learning.
We also studied an online version of stacked graphical learning, which integrates a single-pass online learning algorithm Modified Balanced Window with stacked learning. Online stacked graphical learning can save training time and is capable to handle large streaming datasets with minimal memory overhead. We analyze the time and memory cost of online stacked graphical learning and applied it to several real problems.


BACKGROUND
Amebiasis is a parasitic infection with Entamoeba histolytica. Pulmonary amebiasis is rare since the infection is commonly manifested as amebic colitis or liver abscess. Most pleuropulmonary amebiasis is seen in patients with amebic liver abscesses. A pulmonary amebic lesion without either a liver abscess or amebic colitis is extremely rare. Thus, reported cases of sputum cytologic diagnosis of a pulmonary amebic lesion from a patient without a liver abscess are also very rare.

CASE
A 53-year-old man presented with a dry cough and mild fever. Chest radiography revealed an abnormal solitary mass lesion in the right upper lung field. The clinical diagnosis was a bacterial lung abscess. Sputum cytologic examination demonstrated many trophozoites of E. histolytica. Following sputum cytodiagnosis, serologic tests revealed a slightly high but almost normal titer of IgG antibodies to E. histolytica, indicating the possible presence of the pathogen. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using E. histolytica-specific primers for DNA extracted from the sputum sample revealed specific DNA product.

CONCLUSION
Pulmonary amebiasis without either a liver abscess or amebic colitis must be distinguished from bacterial abscesses and neoplastic disease. A sputum cytologic examination combined with PCR for DNA extracted from a sputum sample is a good approach to the diagnosis of a pulmonary amebic abscess.


A source communicates with a remote destination via a number of distributed relays. Communication from source to relays takes place over a (discrete or Gaussian) broadcast channel, while the relays are connected to the receiver via orthogonal finite-capacity links. Unknowns to the source and relays, link failures may occur between any subset of relays and the destination in a nonergodic fashion. Upper and lower bounds are derived on average achievable rates with respect to the prior distribution of the link failures, assuming the relays to be oblivious to the source codebook. The lower bounds are obtained by proposing strategies that combine the broadcast coding approach, previously investigated for quasi-static fading channels, and different robust distributed compression techniques. Numerical results show that lower and upper bounds are quite close over most operating regimes, and provide insight into optimal transmission design choices for the scenario at hand. Extension to the case of nonoblivious relays is also discussed.


Background: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with an inadequate response to TNF antagonists (aTNFs) may switch to an alternative aTNF or start treatment from a different class of drugs, such as rituximab (RTX). It remains unclear in which clinical settings these therapeutic strategies offer most benefit. Objective: To analyse the effectiveness of RTX versus alternative aTNFs on RA disease activity in different subgroups of patients. Methods: A prospective cohort study of patients with RA who discontinued at least one aTNF and subsequently received either RTX or an alternative aTNF, nested within the Swiss RA registry (SCQM-RA) was carried out. The primary outcome, longitudinal improvement in 28-joint count Disease Activity Score (DAS28), was analysed using multivariate regression models for longitudinal data and adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Of the 318 patients with RA included; 155 received RTX and 163 received an alternative aTNF. The relative benefit of RTX varied with the type of prior aTNF failure: when the motive for switching was ineffectiveness to previous aTNFs, the longitudinal improvement in DAS28 was significantly better with RTX than with an alternative aTNF (p = 0.03; at 6 months, −1.34 (95% CI −1.54 to −1.15) vs −0.93 (95% CI −1.28 to −0.59), respectively). When the motive for switching was other causes, the longitudinal improvement in DAS28 was similar for RTX and alternative aTNFs (p = 0.40). These results were not significantly modified by the number of previous aTNF failures, the type of aTNF switches, or the presence of co-treatment with a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug. Conclusion: This observational study suggests that in patients with RA who have stopped a previous aTNF treatment because of ineffectiveness changing to RTX is more effective than switching to an alternative aTNF.


Background: Stimulator of Interferon Genes (STING) is an innate immune sensor for cytosolic DNA. STING signaling activation is indispensable for type I interferon response and the anti-cancer immune response by CD8+ T cells. The aim of this study was to characterize intratumoral STING expression pattern and its clinical implication in colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods: We analyzed STING and CD8 expression in 225 CRC patients who underwent surgical resection. Clinicopathological variables and survival outcomes were analyzed according to STING expression levels. Mice with syngeneic MC38 tumors were also treated with a STING agonist, and tumor microenvironments were analyzed using immunofluorescent staining and flow cytometry. Results: Distinct STING expression was observed in the CRC tumor specimens. Patients with higher STING expression had early stage cancer with increased intratumoral CD8+ T cell infiltration and less frequent lymphovascular invasion. Compared to CRC patients with lower STING expression, those with higher STING expression had longer overall and recurrence-free survival. Multivariate Cox regression model also revealed higher STING expression to be an independent prognostic factor for better overall survival. When MC38 colon tumors were treated with intratumoral injection of STING agonist, tumor growth was remarkably suppressed with increased intratumoral CD8+ T cell infiltration. Moreover, T-cell activation markers, ICOS and IFN-γ, were also upregulated in CD8+ T cells, indicating enhanced effector T cell function after STING treatment. Conclusion: We confirmed the distinct STING expression in CRC and demonstrated its independent prognostic value in survival outcomes. STING could be a potential therapeutic target that enhances anti-cancer immune response in CRC.


As the size of mechanical devices decreases and their power-handling specifications increase, thermal effects will become more and more important. This article is a basic survey of some of the most commonly seen thermal effects in micromechanical optics. The fundamental heat transfer mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation are quickly reviewed in regard to typical micromirror-type plates, and a simple measurement technique to extract thermal conductance is described. Interface thermal conductance is discussed in the light of recent experimental results on actuated micromechanical structures and squeeze-film theory. A new class of devices with tunable thermal conductance using controlled interface contact is discussed. Of particular interest are thermal IR detectors with extended dynamic range. Thermal expansion deformation is particularly detrimental to optics with two or more thin film layers. This is described in terms of an analytical elastic model, but the limitations of this are discussed in light of recent research. The model leads to a method for controlling thermal deformation, and micromirror devices are shown that are thermally invariant within λ/60 over at least 37°C. Finally, thermal fluctuation noise is described and shown to limit the finesse of high performance micromachined optical cavities and degrade the sensitivity of thermal nanomechanical detectors.


This case is one of a series specifically prepared by SNV and local partners for the "Seas of Change" event, taking place in The Hague, 11-13 April 2012. The cases cover a range of commodities and approaches in value chain development across Africa, Asia and Latin America. They usually include several of the following elements: strengthening of producer organisations, productivity improvement and value addition, business development services, inclusive business ventures, contract farming, marketing arrangements and improved chain financing. The work has been done with local entrepreneurs, NGOs and government bodies. Among the international collaborative partners are: IFAD, FAO, EU, USAID, DANIDA, Helvetas and IDB. For an overview of these SNV cases please see www.snvworld.org/en/sectors/agriculture


In this paper, we investigate the network of ownership relationships among European firms and its embedding in the geographical space. We carry out a detailed analysis of geographical distances between pairs of nodes, connected by edges or by shortest paths of varying length. In particular, we study the relation between geographical distance and network distance in comparison with a random spatial network model. While the distribution of geographical distance can be fairly well reproduced, important deviations appear in the network distance and in the size of the largest strongly connected component. Our results show that geographical factors allow us to capture several features of the network, while the deviations quantify the effect of additional economic factors at work in shaping the topology. The analysis is relevant to other types of geographically embedded networks and sheds light on the link formation process in the presence of spatial constraints.


Pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (PanNENs) are rare tumors, but their incidental diagnosis has significantly increased due to the widespread use of imaging studies. Therefore, most PanNENs are now diagnosed when completely asymptomatic and in early stages. PanNENs are classified according to their grade (Ki-67 index) and can be functional (F-) or nonfunctional (NF-) depending on the presence or absence of a clinical, hormonal hypersecretion syndrome. The mainstay treatment of PanNENs is a surgery that is mostly curative but also associated with significant short- and long-term adverse events. Therefore, less invasive alternative locoregional treatment modalities are warranted. Recently, few case reports and two case series have described EUS-guided radiofrequency ablation (EUS-RFA) for the treatment of patients with both F-PanNENs and NF-PanNENs. If for F-PanNENs EUS-RFA can very easily become the standard of care, for NF-PanNENEs it is still controversial how to select patients for EUS-RFA. A balance between overtreatment (i.e., RFA/surgery in patients who will not progress) and undertreatment (locoregional treatments in patients with undetected metastases) needs to be found based on solid data. The decision should also take into account patients' comorbidity and risk of postoperative death, life expectancy, tumor location, risk of postoperative fistula and postoperative morbidity, and risk of long-term exocrine and/or endocrine insufficiency. To answer the important question on which a patient should be treated with EUS-RFA, properly designed studies to evaluate the efficacy of this treatment in large cohorts of patients with NF-PanNENs and to establish prognostic factors associated with treatment response are urgently needed.


A method of semiautomatic specification refinement and program generation using library modules, is described. Users write their specifications and modify and rearrange them so that they can be refined with the aid of the library modules. When a specification is given, a refinement system, called MAPS (module-aided program construction system) searches for library modules applicable to the given specification, replaces the specification with a more detailed description written in the operation part of the modules, and converts the refined specification into a program written in a programming language designated by the user. Case-like expressions or pseudo-natural language expressions are used for describing user's specifications and specifications for library modules. >


Despite their potential for biodiesel synthesis, directly calcined minerals rich in magnesium/calcium carbonates are used at the expense of large amounts of the catalyst, high alcohol loading, long processing times, and severe conditions. We report a facile and low-cost route for preparing calcined porous calcite (CPC) and dolomite (CPD) via simple thermal decomposition of the reaction mixtures of natural calcite and dolomite with stearic acid. CPC and CPD, both of which have porous structures, were compared with previously reported catalysts and examined as promising heterogeneous base catalysts under mild conditions. A 40% increase in conversion through CPC and CDC was achieved compared with that achieved through directly calcined minerals. A systematic understanding of the enhancement and deactivation relationships of the products was established by catalyst characterization, including XRD, BET, CO2-TPD, SEM, TEM, and XPS. The obtained CPC and CPD showed large pore sizes and high active site densities and provided an advantageous environment for transesterification of triglyceride with methanol. CPC and CPD are re-usable and show no loss of activity after regeneration.


This editorial outlines a research agenda for critical exploration of transnational youth mobilities centred on three concepts: emotions, inequity, and temporality. This agenda offers novel perspectives on the interplay between geographies of social difference and the multiscalar forces governing and being made through mobility. Emotions advance theorisations of agency by providing a generative lens to examine how aspirations, social relationships, and political subjectivities intersect to inform young people's lifeworlds and mobilities. Critical analyses of how youth navigate challenging structural conditions are shown to be sharpened by considering the mutually constitutive nature of inequity and (im)mobility. A temporal lens reveals how youth mobilities are driven, experienced, and shaped by structural and social dynamics including, but not limited to, precarity, border regimes, and intergenerationality. We conclude by charting how further explorations into the diverse emotions and temporalities of youth mobility, centred on questions of inequity, can significantly advance scholarly debates within and beyond population geography.


Regulating insider trading lessens the adverse selection problem facing market makers, enabling them to quote better prices. An Optimal enforcement policy must balance these benefits against the costs of enforcement. Such a policy must specify (i) the conditions under which the regulator conducts an investigation, (ii) the penalty schedule imposed if an insider is caught, and (iii) a transaction tax to fund enforcement. We derive the policy that maximizes investors welfare. This policy entails investigations following large trading volumes or large price movements or both. Insiders caught making large trades are assessed the maximum penalty, but small trades are not penalized. Given this policy, insiders trade most aggressively on news with an intermediate price impact but refrain from trading on moderate or extreme news.


Fieldwork in two remote Aboriginal communities in arid South Australia found diverse considerations for sustainability. For Nepabunna in the Flinders Ranges, the main resource and environmental concerns were less problematic than social issues such as population mobility and the small number of young people remaining in the community. Pukatja in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, on the other hand, contends with serious resource and environmental issues. Both communities had sustainability issues for young people that looked similar but which were very different. For Nepabunna, because the number of young people has decreased, there have been flow-on effects of services being threatened, a lack of companionship for those remaining, and concern about future leaders. Pukatja has many young people but without access to better secondary education and employment, boredom is reported to have detrimental effects. All these issues have implications for policy formulation, in particular, the lack of contextualising the evidence for policy has meant that solutions to sustainability issues have not worked. For Nepabunna, policy that is determined by resident population size fails to recognise a larger dependent community, not necessarily resident. Government support for involving relatives and the wider community - who are not necessarily resident in the community - is one possible way to promote community sustainability despite population fluctuations. The real problem, then, is that government laws and policy are typically formulated as general or abstract propositions designed to be implemented in the same way over very diverse contexts. A sustainable, appropriate policy system needs to allow for locally created, managed and implemented policies to ensure rapid and context-driven adaptations to whatever contingencies occur. Our research found that a context driven policy process is more appropriate for diverse, small, remote communities.


An essential and definitive collection of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner's finest essays, reviews, reminiscences and interviews from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. 'The novelist talks as an individual to individuals, in a small personal voice. In an age of committee art, public art, people may begin to feel again a need for the small personal voice; and this will feed confidence into writers and, with confidence because of the knowledge of being needed, the warmth and humanity, and love of people which is essential for a great age of literature.' In this collection of her non-fiction, Lessing's own life and work are the subject of a number of pieces, as are fellow writers such as Isak Dinesen and Kurt Vonnegut. There are essays on Malcolm X and Sufism, discussions of the responsibility of the artist, thoughts on her exile from Southern Rhodesia, and a fascinating memoir of her fraught relationship with her mother. Lit throughout by Doris Lessing's desire for truth-telling, 'A Small Personal Voice' is both an important collection of writings by and a self-portrait of one of the most significant writers of the past century.


s: Aim: To evaluate the usefulness of vaginal ultrasonography in screening for endometrial disease in perimenopausal women with amenorrhea on tamoxifen. Patients & Method:50 breast cancer patients with amenorrhea on tamoxifen were selected to study their endometrial thickness by using vaginal ultrasound, an endometrial thickness of > 5mm used as an abnormal result, and those sent for histopathological examination to see if their endometrium was normal or abnormal and what was the type of the abnormality. Patients with abnormal uterine bleeding excluded from the study. Results: From the 50 studied women, ten were having an endometrial thickness of>5mm (20%). Three cases were having endometrial adenocarcinoma (30%), and the rest with endometrial hyperplasia and polyp (70%). High body mass index was a risk factor for increase endometrial thickness and abnormality with a p-value of 0.007. Conclusion: Regular vaginal ultrasound examination of asymptomatic women with breast cancer on tamoxifen therapy is a valuable tool to follow the endometrium, and send the patient for histopathological examination for the endometrium if the thickness is > 5mm.


Background: Ectomycorrhizal inoculation is a promising strategy to minimise the initial transplant shock and increase plant survival and growth during the first years of out-planting in the field. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of sporal inoculum of three ectomycorrhizal fungi: Cortinarius cedretorum, Amanita vaginata and Inocybe geophylla on tolerance levels of Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica (Endl.) Carrière) seedlings subjected to applied drought stress in nursery conditions.
Methods: Carpophores, seeds and organic forest soil were collected under pure stands of Atlas cedar. After fifteen months of growth, seedlings were subjected to drought stress by withholding water for thirty days; we assessed morphological and physiological variables of all seedling batches (inoculated and uninoculated, controlled and stressed seedlings)
Results: All roots of inoculated stressed seedlings were mycorrhizal. The mycorrhization rates were 67%, 64.6% and 53.6% for stressed seedlings inoculated with Cortinarius cedretorum, Amanita vaginata, Inocybe geophylla, respectively. This root mycorrhization was accompanied by a significant improvement in seedling growth, especially height and length of the main root (10.2 cm, 52 cm) reached in stressed seedlings inoculated with Cortinarius cedretorum. There was a significant increase in relative water content, total chlorophyll, carotenoids, soluble sugars and starch, superoxide dismutase and ascorbate peroxydase enzyme activities in inoculated stressed seedlings compared with uninoculated seedlings.
Conclusions: Inoculation of Atlas cedar seedlings with spores of ectomycorrhizal fungi remains a very effective alternative for improving growth and the morphological and physiological status of seedlings under drought conditions. Cortinarius cedretorum appears to be consistently advantageous followed by Amanita vaginata and Inocybe geophylla.


Moringa oleifera commonly referred to as the drumstick tree is a plant from the Moringaceae family. It is a medicinal plant that was found to be loaded with different bioactive chemicals or secondary metabolites such as vitamins, minerals, saponins, alkaloids, flavonoids, carotenoids etc. which are involved in enhancing a long term health benefits. M. olifera is among the most promising species based on their high antioxidant activity, high contents of micro-nutrients, processing properties, ease of growing, and also on palatability, stability and shelf life of animal products. It has a relatively high protein content which varies from 24% - 32%, the leaves are used as a food source for humans and a dry season feed for animals because of the nutrient contents it contains. It has been traditionally used in the treatment of many ailments throughout the world and has been scientifically proven to act as anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, antiulcer, analgesics, antiepileptic. With the increasing popularity on the usage of Moringa olifera in the diets of animals and the positive impact recorded, this review is a collection of different work by authors on using of Moringa olifera in poultry and African catfish (Clarias gariepinus).


The isocitrate dehydrogenase kinase/phosphatase (IDHK/P) of E. coli is a bifunctional enzyme responsible for the reversible phosphorylation of isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) on a seryl residue. As such, it belongs to the serine/threonine protein kinase family. However, only a very limited homology with the well-characterized eukaryotic members of that family was identified so far in its primary structure. In this report, a new region of amino acids including three putative residues involved in the kinase activity of IDHK/P was identified by sequence comparison with eukaryotic protein kinases. In IDHK/P, these residues are Asp-371, Asn-377, and Asp-403. Their counterpart eukaryotic residues have been shown to be involved in either catalysis (former residue) or magnesium binding (the two latter residues). Site-directed mutagenesis was performed on these three IDHK/P residues, and also on the Glu-439 residue equivalent to that of the Ala-Pro-Glu motif found in the eukaryotic protein kinases. Mutations of Asp-371 into either Ala, Glu, or Gln residues drastically lowered the yield and the quality of the purification. Nevertheless, the recovered mutant enzymes were barely able to phosphorylate IDH either in vitro or after expression in an aceK (-) mutant strain. In contrast, mutation of either Asn-377, Asp-403, or Glu-439 into an Ala residue altered neither the yield of purification nor the maximal phosphorylating capacity of the enzyme. However, when IDH was phosphorylated in the presence of increasing concentrations of magnesium ions, the two former mutants displayed a much lower affinity for this cation, with a K(m) value of 0.6 or 0.8 mM, respectively, as compared to 0.1 mM for the wild-type enzyme. On the other hand, the Glu439Ala mutant has an affinity for magnesium essentially unaffected. Therefore, and in contrast to the current opinion, our results suggest that the catalytic mechanism of IDHK/P exhibits some similarities with that found in the eukaryotic members of the protein kinase family.


The focus of soil erosion research has been in two categories: (i) built USLE based on the GIS platform, carried out a dynamic study of the soil erosion in Harbin;(ii) influence of forest cover and landforms on soil erosion comprehensively. Research shows that, the serious erosion area in 1990 and 2005 account for 28% and 41% of the total respectively. It mostly distributed in Shangzhi, Wuchang, Binxian, Acheng, Bayan. And the gully erosion of Bayan, Shangzhi has reached 11,000 t/a. The affect of geomorphology on soil erosion space variation mainly showed the erosion focus on the area with a gradient fewer than 25°, the erosion mostly shared in arable land with a slope between 10°and 25°. The soil erosion changes with the woodland changes, compare 2005 with 1990, the area of woodland has fallen by 3027.48 km2 and the total amount of erosion has increased 4,669.11 t/a.


If animal studies grew largely out of late twentieth-century concerns, then equally, scholarly address towards the prehistory of the posthuman considerations underlying this subdiscipline is an absolute necessity, and one beset by many challenges. The critical topos of the more radical developments in this field poses a unique challenge to scholars of earlier periods. A number of publications on the animal question in the eighteenth century have begun to bring into relief the indispensable genealogy of enlightenment humanism which finds its emergence in the eighteenth century, especially for British culture. At the latter end of the long eighteenth century--Romanticism and its precedents particularly--animal studies is already taken seriously: David Perkins's recent Romanticism and Animal Rights comes to mind. Here I would like not only to address Frank Palmeri's important and useful collection, Humans and Other Animals in Eighteenth-Century British Culture: Representation, Hybridity, Ethics (Ashgate, 2006), but also to put this edited volume into dialogue with broader methodological and disciplinary challenges which (should) preoccupy all critics interested in taking seriously the study of nonhuman animals in the eighteenth century.


The austenite-to-ferrite phase transformation, which is an inherent feature of low-alloyed ultra low carbon steels, has scarcely been investigated to control surface texture and microstructure evolution. This paper investigates the systematic evolution of texture and microstructure at the metal-vapour interface during interrupted annealing in vacuum. Interrupted annealing experiments were carried out on three ultra low carbon steel sheets alloyed with Mn, Al and Si. The texture and microstructures have been investigated by X-ray diffraction and SEM-EBSD techniques. These results reveal a very clear variation in the surface texture components as well as in the surface microstructure after BCC recrystallisation and double  transformation interrupted annealing. The recrystallisation texture consists mainly of a <111>//ND fibre, while the transformation texture at the surface exhibits a <100>// ND fibre in combination with components of the <110> //ND fibre. It has been revealed that the latter specific surface texture was present in a monolayer of outer surface grains which were in direct contact with the vapour atmosphere. This observed phenomenon could be explained by considering the role of surface energy anisotropy occurring during phase transformation annealing.


In many computer systems today, users don't have enough disk space and would welcome a method that made more efficient use of disk. It has long been hoped that compression could be used to increase the amount of user data stored per gigabyte of disk; thus far, attempts to use compression have enjoyed only limited success due to performance degradation, increased hardware cost, or difficulty of implementation. We present and evaluate a method of using compression that does not suffer from the usual drawbacks. The idea is to have the filesystem separate disk storage into two levels of the memory hierarchy. Files that have not been used recently are compressed, while the other files are kept in standard uncompressed form. In this way, the concepts of caching and compression are used to split a single disk into two levels of storage with different cost and performance characteristics. Inactive files are stored more cheaply, but take longer to access. We call this the ATTIC 1 method. It is shown that this approach yields an increase in storage capacity nearly as great as that which could be achieved by compressing every file, with nearly the speed of a filesystem that does no compression. Data is presented showing the long term temporal locality of file accesses for 9 systems from 3 different sites. This locality is what makes file migration practical. An analysis of the performance of compression algorithms is presented. Data compressibility and file access patterns vary from machine to machine, but for many systems, the ATTIC approach would result in twice the effective storage capacity while averaging less than 10 seconds of additional delay per user per day. ATTIC has significant advantages over previous methods. It results in much greater storage capacity than a standard filesystem. It does not require any extra hardware. Once implemented, it can be easily added to existing systems. The compression of files is invisible to users, except for the increased storage and a slight degradation in performance.


Gas permeability of high polymer is important as a physical property in the gas barrier evaluation of vehicle tires and some fuel hoses from the viewpoint of energy-loss. The precise measurement of permeability rate of oxygen and steam is recently required in the field of organic EL display and fuel cell.This review describes the well-known mechanism of the gas permeability in the elastomers and the classification of gas transmission rate measuring methods as standard testing methods. The relationships between gas permeability and manufacturing process factors are also introduced. By using L18 orthogonal array, the results allow not only specifying effective factors and levels but also optimizing those for gas barrier property. Among the eight factors examined, primary factor of gas permeability is found to be the type of polymer, followed by the shape of inorganic filler, while the crosslink density of vulcanized rubber is not so influential.


Containing crime without affecting the livability of the urban environment is a major challenge in our society. Traditionally, researchers relate crime to socio-economic disorganization and people's routine activity, as it influences effective control and suitable targets. An important open question is what the role the urban fabric plays. Although empirical research has shown that the physical urban environment is an essential factor for urban vitality and health, we lack evidence of any clear relationship between the structural characteristics (e.g. roads and land use mix) of neighborhoods and crime. Here, by using open data and mobile phone records, we explore this link with a spatial regression model that analyzes the environmental and the social conditions to which each part of the city is exposed. We found that physical characteristics of the city connected to higher urban diversity better explain the emergence of crime than traditional socio-economic conditions and, together, physical characteristics and socioeconomic conditions improve the performance of previous approaches. This result suggests that urban diversity and natural surveillance theories play an important role in the proliferation of crime, and the knowledge of this role can be exploited in urban planning to reduce crime.


Rationale: Lymphatic embolization is a minimally invasive treatment option for managing chyle leakage after nodal dissection in the neck. After the procedure, the embolic material may cause foreign body granulomatous lymphadenitis and can be a diagnostic challenge for radiologists because of sonographic similarity to metastatic lymph node. Herein, we describe a clinical case of granulomatous lymphadenitis due to embolic material mimicking nodal metastasis detected on ultrasonography (US) with cytologic findings in a patient with thyroid cancer who underwent lymphatic embolization to treat chyle leakage after total thyroidectomy and neck dissection. We also review the relevant literature regarding this disease with technical background of the procedure and suggest the importance of clinical suspicion in diagnosing the granulomatous lymphadenitis in patients with a history of lymphatic embolization. Patient concerns: A 40-year-old man who underwent total thyroidectomy and bilateral modified radical neck dissection due to papillary thyroid carcinoma had suspicious cervical lymph node on US after lymphatic embolization of chyle leakage. Diagnoses: The suspicious cervical lymph node proved to be foreign body granulomatous lymphadenitis due to embolic material by US-guided fine-needle aspiration. Interventions: The patient did not undergone additional surgery because the pathologic cervical lymph node was confirmed to be foreign body granulomatous lymphadenitis. Outcomes: The patient is being followed up regularly at the outpatient department. Lessons: Clinical awareness of the technical background of lymphatic embolization and possible sonographic features of granulomatous lymphadenitis is important for an accurate diagnosis and the appropriate management in patients who underwent lymphatic embolization.


Currently, cloud computing is facing different types of threats whether from inside or outside its environment.  This may cause cloud to be crashed or at least unable to provide services to the requests made by clients. In this paper, a new technique is proposed to make sure that the new node which asks to join the cloud is not composing a threat on the cloud environment. Our new technique checks the node before it will be guaranteed to join the cloud whether it runs malwares or software that could be used to launch an attack. In this way the cloud will allow only the clean node to join it, eliminating the risk of some types of threats that could be caused by infected nodes.


Capacitance, conductance and dielectric loss spectra are obtained, in vivo, for a number of electrode separations in the gastrocnemius muscle of a frog. At each frequency the reciprocals of these parameters are plotted versus electrode separation. From the slopes of the resulting lines the complex permittivity and the conductivity of the muscle can be determined, with electrode effects eliminated. The sequence of power-law responses which is found is consistent with the fractal model proposed by Dissado. The electrical properties measured in vivo with needle electrodes are similar to those measured with surface electrodes for frequencies between 1 kHz and 1 MHz.


We propose a novel landmarks-assisted collaborative end-to-end deep framework for 4D facial expression recognition (FER). Using 4D face scan data, we calculate its various geometrical images, and afterwards use rank pooling to generate their dynamic images encapsulating important facial muscle movements over time. As well, the given 3D landmarks are projected on a 2D plane as binary images and convolutional layers are used to extract sequences of feature vectors for every landmark video. During the training stage, the dynamic images are used to train an end-to-end deep network, while the feature vectors of landmark images are used train a long short-term memory (LSTM) network. The finally improved set of expression predictions are obtained when the dynamic and landmark images collaborate over multi-views using the proposed deep framework. Performance results obtained from extensive experimentation on the widely-adopted BU-4DFE database under globally used settings prove that our proposed collaborative framework outperforms the state-of-the-art 4D FER methods and reach a promising classification accuracy of 96.7% demonstrating its effectiveness.


SUMMARY: A new isolate of Neurospora crassa displays a rhythm in its growth pattern. As the mycelium grows along the surface of the medium it begins, after the 12th hr, to form aerial hyphae at the growing front. This aerial growth continues until the 24th hr of growth and then stops. Surface growth continues until about the 32nd hr, when aerial hyphae are again formed. This alternation of surface and aerial hyphae results in a colony with zones or bands of mycelia of different densities. The rhythm is circadian, about 24 hr, and is perpetuated under conditions of constant light, temperature and humidity. The rhythm has remained steady in continuous darkness for over 2 months. Banding can be somewhat influenced by temperature and light but is not synchronized by these factors. A heat sensitive factor can be isolated from the growth medium which will eliminate the rhythm.


Controlled nanoscale assemblies of conjugated polymers are of considerable interest due to their potential for optimised energy transport properties. Recent progress in the development of conjugated block copolymers (BCPs) and their self-assembly have yielded controlled nanostructures unattainable using conventional synthesis via step-growth polymerisation. The self-assembly procedures, however, often require tedious and complicated manipulations during and/or after the polymerisation, and simple, efficient methods for the preparation of such conjugated block copolymer nanostructures have remained a formidable challenge. Herein, we report the preparation of fluorescent poly(p-phenylenevinylene) (PPV) BCP nanostructures in a dimensionally controlled manner through a simple, one-shot ring-opening metathesis polymerisation wherein the BCP formation and self-assembly occur simultaneously. The driving force of the in situ self-assembly is ascribed to the insolubility and the strong interchain π–π interactions of the core-forming block, making it possible to use a fluorescent block with low crystallinity. The introduction of an appropriate non-conjugated solubilizing block renders the nanostructures water-dispersible, and they exhibit a morphology-dependent fluorescence quenching response in the presence of trace amounts of nitroaromatics, including 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). The quenching response shows remarkable discrimination against paraquat, a widely used electron-acceptor and a strong quencher, in favor of neutral analytes.


Novel lower and upper bounds on the symbol error rate of the minimum distance detector are derived for signal constellations impaired by additive isotropic (i.e. spherically symmetric) generalised Gaussian noise (GGN). The proposed bounds depend only on the constellation dimensionality, the shape parameter of the GGN distribution and the maximum and minimum distances between the constellation points. They are expressed in terms of the well-known Gamma and upper incomplete Gamma functions. An asymptotic analysis of the proposed bounds establishes the sphere hardening effect, which plays a prominent role in the design of high-performance modulation systems, in the case of additive isotropic GGN channels.


Visual photoreceptors in fish are usually adjusted to the light environment to ensure the highest efficiency and best adaptation. In the Senegalese sole, metamorphosis determines migration from pelagic to benthic habitats, with marked differences in both light intensity and spectrum. Here, we analysed the ontogeny of six visual photopigments, namely, rod opsin (rh1), short wavelength-sensitive (sws1 and sws2), medium wavelength-sensitive (rh2.3 and rh2.4), and long wavelength-sensitive (lws) cone opsins, in sole specimens maintained in light-dark cycles of white (LDW), blue (LDB), red (LDR), and continuous white (LL) lights by using RT-qPCR and in situ hybridisation. Most of the opsins displayed a similar developmental expression pattern under all tested conditions. However, lower transcripts were detected under LDR and LL compared to LDW and LDB. A significant increase in gene expression was detected before and after metamorphosis, reaching minimum transcript levels at hatching and during metamorphosis. Interestingly, green opsins (rh2.3 and rh2.4) displayed a significant increase only before metamorphosis, with their expression remaining low during and after metamorphosis. The rod opsin and short-, medium-, and long-wavelength sensitive cone opsins were detected in retinal photoreceptors of the sole from pre-metamorphic to adult stages by in situ hybridisation. In adults, the short-wavelength cone opsins (sws1 and sws2) were found in single cones, whereas the medium- (rh2.4) and long-wavelength (lws) cone opsins were present in double cones. The results obtained by in situ hybridisation in the retina of developing sole, in terms of number of positive cells and/or intensity of labelling, were consistent with the ontogenetic transcript patterns found by RT-qPCR, suggesting that most of the visual opsin expressions detected in the whole specimens could correspond to retinal expression. Taken together, our results pointed out that the ontogeny of the Senegalese sole is accompanied by remodelling in opsin gene expression, with the green-cone opsins being the most abundant photopigments in pre-metamorphosis and rod opsin the dominant visual photopigment from the completion of metamorphosis onwards. These results enlarge our knowledge of flatfish metamorphosis and ecology and provide useful information to develop light protocols adapted to different ontogenetic stages that could improve welfare and production in sole aquaculture.


A large portion of electoral irregularities in developing countries stem from administrative deficiencies, rather than deliberate fraud. This is particularly evident when it comes to voter registration and identification: the quality of a voter list depends on the existence of effective mechanisms to register and identify citizens and electors, which might not be easily at hand in many developing countries. Democratization in these countries has been accompanied by intense polemics about the quality of the voter rolls and the identification of electors, which have threatened democratic consolidation. Biometric technology has been recently heralded as a possible solution, but its effective potential is disputable. In order to understand how problems with registering and identifying voters have affected democratization, this article reviews the contrasting experiences of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. In Côte d'Ivoire, the problem of the reliability of the voter register has been entangled since the 1990s with the politicization of the citizenship question. As a consequence, compiling an acceptable voter register has proven extremely difficult and cumbersome. In Ghana, an effective electoral administration has been key to overcoming the mistrust of the political parties about the fairness of the voter process.


Fibroadenomatoid hyperplasia of the breast (FAHB) is a rare benign breast lesion and its clinical features are similar to fibroadenoma and fibrocystic changes. FAHB has been previously termed sclerosing lobular hyperplasia, fibroadenomatosis, fibroadenomatoid change, or fibroadenomatoid mastopathy. Typically, FAHB is derived from stroma and epithelia. The pathologic characteristics of FAHB are microfocal lobulocentric proliferation of stroma accompanied by epithelial and myoepithelial components resembling similar histological changes, as found in fibroadenoma, apocrine hyperplasia, intraductal hyperplasia, and lobular hyperplasia. FAHB could be present as a localized or diffused pattern in pathology. Most cases show no well-circumscribed mass lesions and no apparent capsules; it is usually identified as an incidental finding in other benign lesions or in random sampling in cancerous breast tissues. FAHB is categorized as a benign proliferative breast disease and it has previously been reported; however, the authors believe this study may be the first case with two giant masses reported. Fiber adenoma hyperplasia is a rare cystic hyperplasia of breast pathology and its ultrasonographic manifestations are easily confused with breast cancer. Comparative MRI ultrasound analysis will help make the differential diagnosis.


The perimeter security and economic competitiveness initiative is a bold undertaking — the first, potentially major, bilateral initiative in more than two decades.  The agenda for negotiations is intended to streamline access for people, goods and services, improve cooperation between border agencies and law enforcement officials, and alleviate the regulatory over-burden that stifles the efficiency of a highly integrated North American economy. Border issues have languished for the past decade. New monitoring and surveillance technologies, all in the name of enhanced security, frustrate rather than facilitate trade. New inspection procedures and reporting mechanisms were introduced, contributing to long line ups at border crossings and undermining the practical advantage of "Just-in-time" deliveries for tightly organized cross-border supply chains. In an age of new security threats, including from cyberspace, it makes sense to heighten surveillance and joint monitoring capacities. Likewise, the forces of globalization oblige countries like Canada and the U.S. to revitalize trade flows and break down regulatory barriers. There are no guarantees of success and much hard negotiation lies ahead.  A key ingredient will be firm, persistent political prodding from the top.  The new majority government in Ottawa should help.


In this study, fuller's earth (FE) modified with sodium dodecylbenzene sulphonic acid was used for adsorptive removal of fenoxaprop-p-ethyl (FPE) herbicide from water samples and statistical validation of the experimental observations was accomplished. All the adsorption experiments were conducted in batch mode. The effect of pH, agitation time, adsorbent dose and initial herbicide concentration on adsorption process was studied. About 98.5% adsorption efficiency was achieved at initial analyte concentration of 1000 mg L-1 at pH 6 within 60 min at adsorbent dose of 0.1 g. The adsorption kinetics were studied and pseudo-second-order kinetic model was found to follow the adsorption kinetics with R2=0.998. The isotherm studies show that the adsorption data fit well to the Freundlich isotherms. In statistical evaluation, the individual as well as the interaction effect of various factors on adsorption was investigated and it was found that concentration, pH and adsorbent dose are the significant factors with p values of 0.0001, 0.004 and 0.006 respectively, while contact time was found statistically insignificant having p value greater than 0.05. The coefficient of determination (R2=0.930) shows that % adsorption is highly dependent on the studied factors and their interactions. Under the optimized set of conditions, high absorption capacity of 200.22 mg g-1 was achieved.