The yield of upland rice (Oryza spp.) per unit area of production in Uganda is low, partly due to low soil fertility, and use of fertilizer and manure is also low. Trials to establish the response of upland rice to applied nutrients and economically optimal nutrient rates (EOR) were determined at Tororo, Kawanda and Kadesok. The increase in paddy yield was in the range of 91 to 173% with application of 50 to 120 kg N ha-1. Application of 10 kg P ha-1 and 20 kg K ha-1 resulted in a 10 to 46% additional increase, respectively. Nitrogen application was profitable for all cost of fertilizer to farm-gate price of produce (CP) ratios, with a three season mean economically optimum nutrient rate (EONR) ranging from 67 to 144 kg ha-1 and CP ratios varying from 2 to 12. Application of 10 kg P and 20 kg K ha-1 together with N reduced the mean EOR to a range of 47 to 97 kg ha-1 depending on the CP ratio. Application of Zn, S, B and Mg together with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizer (NPK) increased paddy yield by 19% above the NPK yield of 3.7 t ha-1, indicating that either Mg, S, Zn and B or their combination limit rice production in Uganda. Trace elements were applied as a mixture. There is a need to establish which element limits rice production in addition to the economics of their use. This information is required for fertilizer blending in the region to produce blends of the right formulation. The cost of fertilizers increases with the nutrients applied, which has an implication for the appropriate quantity of fertilizers to be used. To reduce or stop soil degradation from nutrient mining requires interventions at policy level such as fertilizer subsidies, improved market for produce and input supply efficiency, and increased access to extension, information and credit by farmers.

 Key words: Economic, fertilizer use, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, trace elements, secondary elements.


Blood samples from cats were tested for FeLV group-specific antigen by use of an indirect immunofluorescent antibody (IFA) test, ELISA, or both. Several ELISA kits were evaluated as they would be used in a veterinary clinic, and some ELISA kits were compared with an IFA test for agreement of results. Good agreement of results was evident among the commercially available ELISA kits; results for most blood samples were clearly negative or decidely positive. Occasionally, test results were equivocal and retesting was necessary to obtain clear interpretation. Negative results are highly reliable, which makes ELISA valuable screening tests for FeLV in healthy cats. Results of tests on blood from healthy cats in Alabama indicated positivity rate of 4.0% in 1978 with an IFA test and 4.8% with ELISA in 1988 through 1989. Infection rate in sick cats ranged from 11.6 to 35.8%. The frequency of positive test results for FeLV in cats tested at Auburn University decreased from a 5-year average of 27.7% during 1980 through 1984 to a 5-year average of 14.9% during 1986 through 1990; the rate in 1990 was 11.6%.


This paper states that the violence phenomenon is a topic poorly studied in bioethics and it intends to outline the conditions of possibility of such study from a double challenge: a) the epistemological study of intelligibility and comprehension of violence as a real and "complex" phenomenon; b) the normative and ethical challenge of control and treatment of this "dark" phenomenon. The paper starts with a brief conceptual analysis of the term violence, highlighting the characteristics which are considered pertinent to bioethics. Secondly, it deals with its conceptual history, differentiating three moments in the history of philosophy: I) the archaic or mitopoietic phase; II) the philosophical or rational phase and III) the contemporary or hybrid phase, in which contributions from Rene Girard, Emmanuel Levinas and Judith Butler are presented. It concludes by pointing out the necessity of a proper definition of the category of violence so that it becomes a subject of bioethics, human voluntary acts of morally competent agents that use an unjustifiable strength to impose avoidable and non consented sufferings to moral patients.


During the resettlement of 6500 persons living around the Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric project in Laos, more than 1200 pour‐flush latrines were constructed. To assess the role of these latrines as productive larval habitats for mosquitoes, entomological investigations using Centers for Disease Control (CDC) light traps, visual inspection and emergence trapping were carried out in over 300 latrines during the rainy seasons of 2008–2010. Armigeres subalbatus (Diptera: Culicidae) were nine times more likely to be found in latrines (mean catch: 3.09) than in adjacent bedrooms (mean catch: 0.37) [odds ratio (OR) 9.08, 95% confidence interval (CI) 6.74–15.11] and mosquitoes were active in and around 59% of latrines at dusk. Armigeres subalbatus was strongly associated with latrines with damaged or improperly sealed septic tank covers (OR 5.44, 95% CI 2.02–14.67; P < 0.001). Armigeres subalbatus is a nuisance biter and a putative vector of Japanese encephalitis and dengue viruses. Dengue virus serotype 3 was identified from a single pool of non‐blood‐fed female A. subalbatus using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Maintaining a good seal around septic tanks by covering them with a layer of soil is a simple intervention to block mosquito exit/entry and contribute to vector control in resettlement villages. The scale‐up of this simple, cheap intervention would have global impact in preventing the colonization of septic tanks by nuisance biting and disease‐transmitting mosquitoes.


Outlier detection is the identification of points in a dataset that do not conform to the norm. Outlier detection is highly sensitive to the choice of the detection algorithm and the feature subspace used by the algorithm. Extracting domain-relevant insights from outliers needs systematic exploration of these choices since diverse outlier sets could lead to complementary insights. This challenge is especially acute in an interactive setting, where the choices must be explored in a time-constrained manner. In this work, we present REMIX, the first system to address the problem of outlier detection in an interactive setting. REMIX uses a novel mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation for automatically selecting and executing a diverse set of outlier detectors within a time limit. This formulation incorporates multiple aspects such as (i) an upper limit on the total execution time of detectors (ii) diversity in the space of algorithms and features, and (iii) meta-learning for evaluating the cost and utility of detectors. REMIX provides two distinct ways for the analyst to consume its results: (i) a partitioning of the detectors explored by REMIX into perspectives through low-rank non-negative matrix factorization; each perspective can be easily visualized as an intuitive heatmap of experiments versus outliers, and (ii) an ensembled set of outliers which combines outlier scores from all detectors. We demonstrate the benefits of REMIX through extensive empirical validation on real-world data.


Self-regulation, the ability to control thoughts, emotions, and behavior for goal-directed activities, shows rapid development in infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool periods. Early self-regulatory skills predict later academic achievement and socioemotional adjustment. An increasing number of studies suggest that screen media use may have negative effects on children's developing self-regulatory skills. In this systematic review, we summarized and integrated the findings of the studies investigating the relationship between young children's screen media use and their self-regulation. We searched the ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science databases and identified 39 relevant articles with 45 studies. We found that screen time in infancy is negatively associated with self-regulation, but findings were more inconsistent for later ages suggesting that screen time does not adequately capture the extent of children's screen media use. The findings further indicated that background TV is negatively related to children's self-regulation, and watching fantastical content seems to have immediate negative effects on children's self-regulatory skills. We suggest that future studies should take the content and context of children's screen media use into account and also focus on parent- and home-related factors such as parental behaviors that foster the development of self-regulatory skills.


Many bacteria possess all the machineries required to grow on fatty acids (FA) as a unique source of carbon and energy. FA degradation proceeds through the β-oxidation cycle that produces acetyl-CoA and reduced NADH and FADH cofactors. In addition to all the enzymes required for β-oxidation, FA degradation also depends on sophisticated systems for its genetic regulation and for FA transport. The fact that these machineries are conserved in bacteria suggests a crucial role in environmental conditions, especially for enterobacteria. Bacteria also possess specific enzymes required for the degradation of FAs from their environment, again showing the importance of this metabolism for bacterial adaptation. In this review, we mainly describe FA degradation in the Escherichia coli model, and along the way, we highlight and discuss important aspects of this metabolism that are still unclear. We do not detail exhaustively the diversity of the machineries found in other bacteria, but we mention them if they bring additional information or enlightenment on specific aspects.


Interaction of Shigella flexneri with epithelial cells includes contact of bacteria with the cell surface and release of Ipa proteins through a specialized type III secreton. A complex signaling process involving activation of small GTPases of the Rho family and c-src causes major rearrangements of the subcortical cytoskeleton, thereby allowing bacterial entry by macropinocytosis. After entry, shigellae escape to the cell cytoplasm and initiate intracytoplasmic movement through polar nucleation and assembly of actin filaments caused by bacterial surface protein IcsA, which binds and activates neuronal Wiskoff-Aldrich syndrome protein (N-WASP), thus inducing actin nucleation in an Arp 2/3-dependent mechanism. Actin-driven motility promotes efficient colonization of the host cell cytoplasm and rapid cell-to-cell spread via protrusions that are engulfed by adjacent cells in a cadherin-dependent process. Bacterial invasion turns infected cells to strongly proinflammatory cells through sustained activation of nuclear factor-kappaB. A major consequence is interleukin (IL)-8 production, which attracts polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs). On transmigration, PMNs disrupt the permeability of this epithelium and promote its invasion by shigellae. At the early stage of infection, M cells of the follicle-associated epithelium allow bacterial translocation. Subsequent apoptotic killing of macrophages in a caspase 1-dependent process causes the release of IL-1beta and IL-18, which accounts for the initial steps of inflammation.


Irrigated production is far from satisfactory in the country. The country's irrigation potential is estimated at 3.7 million hectare, of which only about 190,000 hectare (4.3 percent of the potential) is actually irrigated. The aim of this paper is to identify the impact of small-scale irrigation on household food security based on data obtained from 200 farmers in Ada Liben district of Ethiopia. Different studies revealed that access to reliable irrigation water can enable farmers to adopt new technologies and intensify cultivation, leading to increased productivity, overall higher production, and greater returns from farming. In the study area also about 70 percent of the irrigation users are food secure while only 20 percent of the non-users are found to be food secure. Access to irrigation enabled the sample households to grow crops more than once a year; to insure increased and stable production, income and consumption; and improve their food security status. The study concludes that small-scale irrigation is one of the viable solutions to secure household food needs in the study area but it did not eliminate the food insecurity problem.


As simulation has become a major tool in studying discrete manufacturing systems, experimental design issues have started to receive much attention. Although the importance of proper experimentation is often emphasized in the literature on discrete event simulation, it is neglected in most practical simulation studies. The main reason for this neglect is that the design and analysis of a simulation experiment require expertise in experimental design methodology as well as familiarity with traditional statistical output analysis methods. This article presents an attempt to structure the process of planning and designing simulation experiments, and proposes a knowledge- based system, namely Design Of Experi ments for Simulation (DOES), that assists the inexperienced analyst in this process. The proposed system takes the analyst through a planning process based on the simulation objectives.


Reproductive wastage is a major economic burden in sheep production globally, especially within Australia as livestock production systems face increased pressure from climatic variability (e.g. prolonged droughts or flooding). Sheep are sensitive to acute changes in their environment such as heat stress, which if not adequately monitored will result in significant production losses such as reproductive failure, increased parasite and worm burden, morbidity and mortality risks. Through basic and applied research in the areas of stress and reproductive physiology our team has made significant advancements in the understanding of sheep behaviour and physiological responses to acute and chronic stressors. Using minimally invasive hormone monitoring technology in combination with field based assessment of sheep health and productivity traits, our team has delivered new knowledge on how sheep react to acute environmental stress and how it impacts on sheep reproduction. In this chapter, we evaluated the fertility rates and embryo quality of Merino ewes under AI breeding program. We discuss factors such as heat stress that can impact on ewe and offspring quality.


An ideal triage system should accurately and quickly sort patients according to seriousness of diseases, and ensure that patients in emergency departments (EDs) get adequate management in an appropriate medical environment. Recently, EDs throughout the world have been confronting overcrowding, and are developing a five-level triage system to solve the problems that this presents. Taiwan EDs have used the Taiwan triage system (TTS) since 1999 until recently. In order to follow the trend of the times, EDs in Taiwan adjusted the four-level TTS to a five-level system, and built a computer system which is reliable and effective. This article reviews the literature about emergency triage systems, and describes the differences between the four-level and five-level systems, exploring the reliability, effectiveness, and outcomes of triage systems. Taiwan nurses might treat this article as a basis for reflection on the importance of the five-level triage system.


This study provides detailed description of criminal cases at the Essex County, Massachusetts Court of General Sessions of the Peace from 1700 to 1785 and analyzes the relationship between crime and social tension in Massachusetts during this period. The Court of General Sessions was the county administrative and criminal court in eighteenth century Massachusetts and its records are extensive. Essex County, moreover, was a socially and economically diverse community, and it is an appropriate representative sample of eighteenth century Massachusetts society. Sessions Court records yield a tremendous amount of detailed information about criminal activity in eighteenth century Essex County. The consistent procedural format of court records lists each defendant's name, residence and occupation, his means of referral to court and plea as well as the court's judgement and sentence. Categories of crime include fornication and bastardy, Sabbath violations, thefts and assaults, liquor crimes, contempt and other miscellaneous crimes such as counterfeiting. Tabulation of criminal cases provides for more detail about crime in eighteenth century Massachusetts than have other studies. Moreover, there appears to be a relationship between certain crimes and economic class. Further analysis of court records reveals evidence of the social and economic unrest in eighteenth century Massachusetts described by recent scholars. Other evidence suggests greater sensitivity to deviant behavior during the Great Awakening. The colonial wars and the Revolution also had a noticeable effect on Sessions Court activity. This study's extensive collection of tabulated court data is valuable as a reference for future research. The relationships shown between crime and social stress complement recent studies of social change in eighteenth century Massachusetts.


The London free-energy is regeneralized by the Ginsburg-Landau free-energy density in the presence of both d and s order parameters. We have shown that the strength of the s-d coupling, � , makes an important rule to determine the form of the lattice vortex. Appearance of the ratios of the coherence length to penetration depth in the higher order corrections of the free-energy density will truncate these corrections for even large values of � .


Errorless learning has been demonstrated to be an effective strategy for the cognitive rehabilitation of people with memory impairment. This study aimed to determine whether errorless learning is an effective strategy for teaching a complex procedure. Cognitive impairment has been tentatively linked with outcome after rehabilitation for lower limb amputation. Addressing this impairment may improve outcome. The aim of this study was to determine whether using an errorless learning approach would be beneficial for individuals who are learning how to put on their prosthetic limb. Thirty participants from a prosthetic clinic (WestMARC) were randomly assigned to an intervention (n = 15) or control group (n = 15). Results suggest that errorless learning is beneficial in terms of increasing the number of correct steps recalled from a fitting sequence (Mann-Whitney U = 28; p = 0.000, 2-tailed) compared to the control group. In addition, the errorless learning group made fewer errors during the fitting sequence compared to the control group (Mann-Whitney U = 39; p = 0.002, 2-tailed). The findings suggest that errorless learning is a beneficial approach to use when individuals are learning a procedural memory task.


This study aims to investigate the effect of integrating the Argument-Based Science Inquiry (ABSI) approach with multi-modal representations on students' achievement, and their argumentation and writing skills. The study was conducted with 62 female and 57 male college students at the Central Anatolian Turkish University. All participants were in their third year of the science education program. The study was carried out within four identical sections of a "Laboratory Applications in Science" course with an instructor and two lab assistants in the 2010-11 academic year. While the ABSI approach was implemented in all sections, additional multi- modal awareness and integration instruction was carried out in two of the randomly assigned sections . The collected data included midterm and final exam scores, as well as science activity writing reports. Qualitative and quantitative data was analyzed to explore differences between ABSI only (comparison) and ABSI and Multi- Modal (treatment) groups on science academic achievement, argumentation and writing skills. Analyses yielded that the students in the treatment group not only outscored the students in the comparison group on the science achievement tests, but also demonstrated significantly higher performances in writing and argumentation scores.


We present an overview of the AudioBIFS system, part of the Binary Format for Scene Description (BIFS) tool in the MPEG-4 International Standard. AudioBIFS is the tool that integrates the synthetic and natural sound coding functions in MPEG-4. It allows the flexible construction of soundtracks and sound scenes using compressed sound, sound synthesis, streaming audio, interactive and terminal-dependent presentation, three-dimensional (3-D) spatialization, environmental auralization, and dynamic download of custom signal-processing effects algorithms. MPEG-4 sound scenes are based on a model that is a superset of the model in VRML 2.0, and we describe how MPEG-4 is built upon VRML and the new capabilities provided by MPEG-4. We discuss the use of structured audio orchestra language, the MPEG-4 SAOL, for writing downloadable effects, present an example sound scene built with AudioBIFS, and describe the current state of implementations of the standard.


The article deals with the general school culture, the specifity of its space and how it depends on administrators' and teachers' decisions to turn students' movement for an easier control of them and the appropreate teaching conditions. Using the theories of H. Lefebvre, M. de Certeau, G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, it is shown how differently the space is understood, and where "the 3rd space" appears. Usually it created by students themselves for their living at school. The main focus is put on the main school entrance – doors as the crack for the flowing streams from outside to inside and vice versa, for the deterritorization (Deleuze, Guattari) of school life and bringing new inspirations into the framed school culture. The illiustration of such a process of school life is presented by an empirical research on school cultures, which was done in 2014–2015 in six Lithuanian general schools. The data show how administrators and teachers treat the main school entrance-free or as a controlled streaming of students through it, and how students treat this control at the door, also what alternative space is created by students as a consequence of administrators' control.


This paper considers a design of signal constellations for trans-modulation (constellation rearrangement: CoRe) in a relay system with the multiple links in which the same signal is decoded-and-forwarded to the destination over N time slots, each assigned to the different relay node. Demonstrating that the minimal accumulated squared Euclidean distance (MASED) is not an ultimate design metric to minimize the bit error rate (BER), we choose the BER for the joint log-likelihood ratio (LLR) combining scheme as a design metric, so as to find bit-to-symbol mapping for the multiple relay links. To handle the prohibitive amount of computational complexity associated with an exhaustive search over enumeration of all possible mappings, which grows exponentially with the number of relay links, genetic algorithm is employed for searching for the sub-optimal bit-to-symbol mappings in the multiple relay links. We show that a new type of CoRe design without the Gray-mapping constraint is critical for warranting the LLR-combining gain over the multiple relay links, e.g., approximately 4dB gain for 4 relay links at high SNR as compared to the CoRe design for hybrid ARQ.


Stainless steel/TiC nanocomposite powder were prepared by high-energy ball-milling method using 316 stainless steel powder, carbon and titanium powder as raw materials. Microstructure of the nanocomposite powder was investigated with XRD and TEM techniques. The results showed that the stainless steel/TiC nanocomposite powder obtained when the ball-milling time was more than 40 hours. DSC analysis method was used to study the characteristics of oxidation resistance and the oxidation reaction kinetics of the nanocomposites powder. Results show that the oxidant resistance of nanocomposite powder was improved, the activation energy of oxidation reaction increased.


With the death of General Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy, Spain entered a new historical stage and thus opened a new chapter for the performing arts. The constitution of 1978 recognized culture as a right of all citizens and declared that the State was to guarantee their access to it in an equal manner (art. 44.1). Thus from 1978 on the performing arts, along with dance, became a matter of State policy and a series of actions were started by different institutions, bodies and levels of the central government and regional and municipal administrations to favour the creation, dissemination and training of dance. This paper will present the paradigm where dance found itself in 1975 and analyze the policies that were applied in Catalonia between 1975 and 2000 in terms of dance production, exhibition, dissemination and training. It will draw the map and the new paradigm arisen after the first 25 years of democracy with regards to creation (formats and trends), exhibition, dissemination and training, and will analyse the context. The history of 20th century Spain has been marked by political discontinuity: a civil war, forty years of dictatorship and a democracy period. This discontinuity has influenced and affected the development of choreographic culture in each of the levels of creation, its social rooting, the opening of training centres, traditions and styles as well as its research and dissemination as cultural heritage.


Opioid dependence is a highly heterogeneous disease driven by a variety of genetic and environmental risk factors which have yet to be fully elucidated. We interrogated the effects of opioid dependence on the brain using ChIP-seq to quantify patterns of H3K27 acetylation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortical neurons isolated from 51 opioid-overdose cases and 51 accidental death controls. Among opioid cases, we observed global hypoacetylation and identified 388 putative enhancers consistently depleted for H3K27ac. Machine learning on H3K27ac patterns predicts case-control status with high accuracy. We focus on case-specific regulatory alterations, revealing 81,399 hypoacetylation events, uncovering vast inter-patient heterogeneity. We developed a strategy to decode this heterogeneity based on convergence analysis, which leveraged promoter-capture Hi-C to identify five genes over-burdened by alterations in their regulatory network or "plexus": ASTN2, KCNMA1, DUSP4, GABBR2, ENOX1. These convergent loci are enriched for opioid use disorder risk genes and heritability for generalized anxiety, number of sexual partners, and years of education. Overall, our multi-pronged approach uncovers neurobiological aspects of opioid dependence and captures genetic and environmental factors perpetuating the opioid epidemic. (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted June 16, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.15.447736 doi: bioRxiv preprint


This paper examines the relationship between annexation and municipal finance and addresses a gap in the literature by studying the role of revenue structure and fiscal constraints. Using a large national sample of urban municipalities, the analysis shows that territorial expansion by itself does not influence municipal fiscal outcomes with the exception of large single parcels annexations which increase spending. We also observe negative effects of population changes on revenues and spending per capita. Since population changes typically accompany annexation, we conclude that annexing cities tend to use their added tax base to spread the revenue burden more widely rather than to increase the size of government. An important implication of this study is that state‐imposed fiscal constraints do not hamper annexation success and that comprehensive urban development policies may be needed to accommodate growth and development after annexation.


Background: HSP-70s help to reduce infarct area through unclear mechanism. It appears that HSP-70 activates calcineurin and induce antioxidant enzymes such as Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) and catalase. Therefore, we sought to investigate the relationship of HSP-70 with calcineurin, SOD and catalase post-Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI). Methods: An experimental study involved 24 Wistar rats as models of chronic coronary occlusion. The rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: no-intervention after AMI (N), sedentary intervention after AMI (S), exercise intervention after AMI (E), and sham (C). Intervention consisted of 2 weeks of recovery then 4 weeks of sedentary for group S or exercise for group E. HSP-70, calcineurin, SOD, and catalase expression in heart were evaluated the difference among groups. Correlation between HSP-70 to other proteins was analysed also. Results: HSP-70 and calcineurin was higher in group S and E compared to group N and C. HSP-70 (MD=0.97, 95% CI 0.60 to 1.34), calcineurin (MD=1.25, 95% CI 0.68 to 1.82, p<0.05), catalase (MD=0.57, 95% CI 0.25 to 0.88, p<0.05), and SOD (0.42, 95% CI 0.14 to 0.69, p<0.05) significantly higher in Group E compared to S. Sham group had higher SOD and catalase activity than group E. HSP-70 was correlated with calcineurin (r=0.856, p<0.05). HSP-70 was correlated with catalase and SOD when the analysis included only groups who had intervention. Conclusion: HSP-70 correlated with calcineurin and stimulated an increase in calcineurin activity.


The issue of gender imbalance is one that affects almost all industries but is particularly prevalent within technology and engineering. Just 14.4% of the overall science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) workforce in the UK are female (ONS, 2015), and with many years of government efforts having been made to increase the interest of school age girls in STEM subjects, it would be thought that the figures in the workplace would be balancing out. This does not appear to be the case, however. This paper looks into the reasons women are still not choosing engineering and technology careers and the reasons why the women who have broken through into the industry are leaving by examining the opportunities they are offered as well as their motivation at work. The research carried out in this paper acknowledges that psychological differences between men and women mean motivators differ and observes that STEM roles tend not to cater to women's motivational needs. An example supported in this paper is the notion that women find motivation from a good work life balance and that this is generally not accommodated well within STEM roles. The online questionnaire carried out in this study draws concepts from literature to further investigate the opinions of women who are currently working in STEM roles within the UK. The survey is comprised of seventeen questions and relies upon levels of experience and levels of education to analyse. Overall, ninety-nine women took


In this paper, a generalized state-space controller design for the shaping of the output probability density function (PDF) is presented for non-Gaussian dynamical stochastic systems. A radial basis function (RBF) neural network is used to approximate the output PDF of the system. Such a neural network consists of a number of weights and corresponding basis functions. Using such an approximation, the dynamics of the original stochastic system can be expressed as the dynamics between the control input and the weights of the RBF neural network. The task of output PDF control can therefore be reduced to a RBF weight control together with an adaptive tuning of the basis function parameters (i.e., the centers and widths of the basis functions). To achieve this aim, the control horizon is divided into certain intervals hereinafter called batches. Using these definitions, the whole control strategy consists of three stages, namely (a) sub-space parameter identification of the dynamic nonlinear model (that relates the control signal to the weights of the RBF neural network); (b) Weight tracking controller design using an LMI-based convex optimization technique; and (c) RBF basis functions shape tuning in terms of their centers and widths using an iterative learning control (ILC) framework. Among the above stages, the first two are performed within each batch, while stage (c) is carried out between any two adjacent batches. Such an algorithm has the advantage of the batch-by-batch improvement of the closed-loop output PDF tracking performance. Moreover, the controller mentioned in stage (b) is a general controller in a state-space form. Stability analysis has been performed and simulation results are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed method, where encouraging results have been made.


The pulse oximetry device has been used for decades to monitor human pulse rate and oxygen saturation. There are two types of pulse oximetry which are transmission and reflection based. However, most devices are unsuitable for daily health monitoring due to the bulkiness and inconvenience of long-term monitoring while continuously doing everyday activities. Therefore, developing a wearable device such as a patch would benefit the users. Several factors can be considered for such a system. One of them is the distance between the source and detector since both are the major components of this system. However, there is still a lack of information in this regard. This study used the ray-tracing Monte Carlo method to simulate transmittance and reflectance-based oximetry principles with a 663 nm wavelength as the light source. The results show the ray tracing behavior from the light source to the photodetector in the biological tissue under two different structures mentioned previously. The separation between the light source and the detector should be less than 3 mm for the reflection type. A significant difference was observed for a distance greater than 3 mm compared with the transmission-based, which has a higher photocurrent even at a 7 mm distance. However, this transmission-based device is limited to the placement of the device on the body part. It is due to the thickness, which varies depending on the body parts themselves. Therefore, wearable pulse oximetry devices with the reflectance-based principle are better due to higher signal acquisition than the transmittance-based, especially for the daily health monitoring system. Furthermore, it also can be used throughout any body part. This reflection-based device can fully utilize microfabrication to integrate the light source and photodetector.Keywords: PPG sensor, Monte Carlo, tissue optics, pulse oximetry, photoplethysmography.


Analyzing Electroencephalography (EEG)/Magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain source signals allows for a better understanding and diagnosis of various brain-related activities or injuries. Due to the high complexity of the mentioned measurements and their low spatial resolution, different techniques have been employed to enhance the quality of the obtained results. The objective of this work is to employ state-of-the-art approaches and develop algorithms with higher analysis reliability. As a pre-processing method, subspace denoising and artifact removal approaches are taken into consideration, to provide a method that automates and improves the estimation of the Number of Component (NoC) for artifacts such as Eye Blinking (EB). By using synthetic EEG-like simulation and real MEG data, it is shown that the proposed method is more reliable over the conventional manual method in estimating the NoC. For Independent Component Analysis (ICA)-based approaches, the proposed method in this thesis provides an estimation for the number of components with an accuracy of 98.7%. The thesis is also devoted to improving source localization techniques, which aims to estimate the location of the source within the brain, which elicit time-series measurements. In this context, after obtaining a practical insight into the performance of the popular L2-Regularization based approaches, a post-processing thresholding method is introduced. The proposed method improves the spatial resolution of the L2-Regularization inverse solutions, especially for Standard Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (sLORETA), which is a well-known and widely used inverse solution. As a part of the proposed method, a novel noise variance estimation is introduced, which combines the kurtosis statistical parameter and data (noise) entropy. This new noise variance estimation technique allows for a superior performance of the proposed method compared to the existing ones. The algorithm is validated on the synthetic EEG data using well-established validation metrics. It is shown that the proposed solution improves the resolution of conventional methods in the process of thresholding/denoising automatically and without loss of any critical information.


R&D productivity in the pharmaceutical business has gradually decreased during the last decades. While companies are spending more on R&D, fewer drugs are reaching the market. It is said that the cost of bringing a successful drug to the market is now $1 billion, which includes all failure drugs. At the same time, governmental regulations for drugs development have become tighter. Companies are therefore desperately trying to find new ways to develop more innovative drugs more effectively. There is a growing need for more knowledge about Drug R&D Management in the industry, which is the reason for KTH Industrial Economics and Management initiating a research program in this field. The present study is a feasibility study of this research endeavor. It outlines the scope of the field and explores areas for further study. Anchored in interviews with key industrial actors, the aim is to identify which organizational challenges practitioners are presently facing for successful drug R&D management. Four themes of challenges within the business have been identified. These are: Specialization within the R&D Process – There is a trend that different actors specialize within the innovation process of developing new drugs. The concept is to source activities to organizations that have the best capabilities. What are the consequences of this business model? What is the core competence of different actors? Balancing Freedom and Control in R&D Operations – R&D by definition, comprises activities with unknown outcomes. Work in projects most probably takes trajectories that were not originally thought of. Typically the most suitable individuals for performing such activities are scientists with a deep specialization within the field of research. How are freedom and control of work balanced within R&D? What type of control is most suitable? How can scientists be managed? Resource Allocation and Project Portfolio Management – Projects in a project portfolio are dependent on each other and on their environment. The ecology in which a project lives will determine how it is evaluated and financed, and how risk-willing its owners are. There is a need of knowledge to describe how different project environments are organized. Organizing for Knowledge Exchange – Knowledge in biosciences is growing exponentially. Managing knowledge is therefore crucial, but how to do it successfully is the question. Working in big collaborative networks requires companies to manage knowledge outside the boundaries of the firm. There is also a need to bring in knowledge from other industries. The themes can encompass different theoretical disciplines from a strategic point of view to a cognitive aspect of innovation. This study argues for a comparative multiple case study approach focusing on the preconditions and business logics of different R&D organizations. The cases should look into the different organizational domains of Biotech firms and Big Pharma multinationals, comparing the two business logics and strategies. Innovation in the context of single firms in the pharmaceutical industry can thus be explored and give rise to knowledge through examples of practical problem solving and methodology in drug R&D management.


This literature review was requested by the Community Justice division of the Scottish Government to advise on and inform the development of a user engagement strategy for criminal justice policy and practice. The purpose of the review was to provide an overview of existing research evidence relating to the concept, practice and value of user engagement in criminal justice policy and practice.


Summary The unique relationship between fault shape and hanging-wall deformation in extensional settings is explained by the rollover concepts. These concepts are modeled and described along with factors controlling deformational geometries such as fault shape, sedimentation and slip ratios, hanging-wall shear direction and shear angles. The concepts are applied to model and predict a fault deep shape from seismic images where the fault may not be visible.


A central concern in economics is to understand the interplay between institutions and labor markets. In this paper we argue that laboratory experiments are a powerful tool for studying labor market institutions. One of the most important advantages is the ability to implement truly exogenous institutional change, in order to make clear causal inferences. We exemplify the usefulness of lab experiments by surveying evidence from three studies, each of which investigates a different, crucial labor market institution: minimum wage laws, employment protection legislation and workfare.


Monitoring phase is an important area in the operation of information security management system (ISMS) according to ISO 27001. Its aim is to obtain an overview of the situation in the area of information security in organization. This overview can be created based on events and security alerts from various systems. However, the complexity and diversity of these systems, a number of different reports about various security incidents make this task difficult. A complete overview of the security situation is not so easy to obtain. In this paper, we describe some problems in creating an overview of the security situation and propose a model to assess the current state of the security. The model includes the processing of security reports using methods based on data mining, transformation of data into a uniform format and a use of Dempster-Shafer theory to describe the state of information security in organization. The application demonstrates that the proposed model is effective and can be an important tool for monitoring phase in the operation of information security management system.


Scirpus grossus L. is a principal rhizomatous weed in the rice fields, drainage and irrigation canals, river banks, abandoned rice fields and wasteland in Malaysia. This study describes the modular dynamics, spatio-temporal growth patterns of aerial plant and sub-terranean rhizome populations of this scourge on fertilized and unfertilized peat and paddy soils. The NPK fertilizer application at 100:30:30 ha-1 resulted in more robust aerial plant growth with ca. 253.5 ramets m-2 (mean dry aerial biomass of 23.2 g plant-1) compared with 235.6 ramets m-2 (16.3 g plant-1) in unfertilized peat soils24 weeks after planting of the mother plant. The parallel figures for plants growing on paddy soils of the Jawa series were ca. 97.08 ramets m-1 (12.19 g plant-1)(fertilized paddy soils) and 83.67 ramets m-1 (10.89 g plant-1) (unfertilized paddy soils) 24 weeks after planting of the mother plant. Mean ramets mortality was significantly higher in unfertilized paddy soils at 121.3 ramets m-2, while in the fertilized paddy soils this was only 34.7 ramets m-2, resulting respective net populations of ca. 218.8 ramets m -2 and 114.3 ramets m -2 in fertilized and unfertilized plots. In paddy soils mean ramets mortality in unfertilized paddy soils was ca. 8.58 ramets m-2, while this was only ca. 5.67 ramets m-2, leading to the respective resultant net populations of 91.41m-2 and 75.09 ramets m-2. Flowering set in earlier among ramets in fertilized peat soils with 103.2 ramets m-2 vis-a-vis 77.5 ramets m-2, 24 weeks after transplanting of the mother plant in unfertilized soil. Flowering set in earlier among ramets in fertilized paddy soils with 49.56 ramets m-2vis-a-vis the unfertilized soil registering ca. 47.79 ramets m-2, 24 weeks after transplanting of the mother plant. Fertilizer applications to either peat or paddy soils did not register any significant difference in mean plant height, chlorophyll contents, and chlorophyll fluorescence measurements vis-a-vis those plants devoid of
fertilizer application. No measurable differences were registered in rhizome lengths over time of S. grossus plants devoid of fertilizer application compared with those growing in fertilized peat soils. Similarly patterns were observed among S. grossus populations in both fertilized and unfertilized paddy soils. The time- and space-mediated clonal growth of S. grossus did not register any significant preferential directionality and dispersion of aerial plants and their sub-terranean rhizomes irrespective of fertilizer application or soil types, but rather displaying opportunistic resource capture by aerial and sub-terranean modules.
ANOVA and Tukey's HSD tests, response surface, fractal dimension and fractal topography analysis under fertilizer application factor and differences soils (peat soils - paddy soils) were used in the study from the first week to the 24th week. Dispersion analyses of rhizomes was also employed.
In circular statistics r (concentration), s (angular deviation), Rayleigh's R and Rayleigh's z were computed on the emerged ramets of S. grossus. Results of Rayleigh's z test showed significant mean direction of ramets emergence for all replicates in the fertilized plots (p > 0.01). Significant mean direction was obtained only for replicate R1 for the unfertilized plots. No significant mean direction for replicates R2 and R3 of the unfertilized plots means that ramets emergence is distributed uniformly around the circle, that is originating from the mother plant. They occur when s, the dispersion given by the angular deviation is near the maximum (where 0 < s < 83.01). Dispersion analysis of ramets by circular statistics on S. grossus generated no special preferences in the direction of modules or emerged ramets as explained by the Rayleigh's r, Rayleigh's z, and mean angle of dispersion in pest and paddy soils. However, there were heavier concentrations of ramets in the eastern sector of the plot, presumably due to phototropic effect of sunlight.
In response surface analyses in peat soils results showed the stationary points obtained for the unfertilized plots is at x-distance = 0.03 m, y-distance = - 0.06 m and time (t) = 9.8 months. This function predicted a maximum density of 178 plants m-2 to occur at the location and time. For the fertilized plot, the stationary point is at x-distance = 0.20 m, y-distance = -0.82 m and t = 11.31 months. The predicted density obtained was 291.02 plants m-2. While in paddy soils the best location and time in unfertilized soil was between x- distance 0.00 m and y- distance -0.14 m at t = 8.16 month, while in fertilized soil the location was between x- distance -0.13 m and y- distance 0.20 m and the best time at t = 8.48 month.
In fractal topography analysis results showed value fractal dimension from gl=0 – gl=100 between area-covering and ranched network (1 2). The area-covering concentrated at gl=0 and gl=40 in both peat and paddy soils (fertilized and unfertilized). While after gl=100 – gl=255 sporadic distribution (D- 0) in peat (fertilizer and unfertilized) and unfertilized paddy soils. While for fertilized paddy soil, gl=100 – gl=255.
The fractal dimension analysis method allows the structural complexity of such associations to be compared between plant communities, with regard to their potential for soil resource acquisition and utilization. In peat soil, distinct and partly not significant differences are found (fractal dimension between 1.52 ± 0.53 and 1.50 ± 0.59) in unfertilized and fertilized plots. In paddy soil, fractal dimension between 1.53 ± 0.55 and 1.52 ± 0.49) in unfertilized and fertilized plots. We found distinct and partly not significant differences between plant in peat and paddy soils, when analysing many small units of a complex root system association. In larger plant communities, a broad variety of below-ground structures are recorded in its entirety, integrating the specific features of single sub-structures. In that way, extreme fractal dimensions are lost and the diversity decreases. Therefore, the analysis of larger units of root system associations provides a general knowledge of the complexity of root system structures for heterogeneous plant communities.
Under the prevailing experimental conditions in the studies, the following conclusions can be drawn, viz: (i) The optimal period of clonal growth for Scirpus grossus, in general was between 10-18 weeks after planting; (ii) Augmentation with different NPK fertilizer concentrations and at different water depths had the following effects on S. grossus growth in both fertilized and unfertilized peat and paddy soils, (a) Increased rate of natality and the population number of ramets, fortified by enhanced proliferation of subterranean rhizomes; (b) Decreased rates of ramets mortality; (c) Increased rate and production of inflorescence of the weed; and (d) Enhanced production of biomass vis-a-vis the control of various plant components. However, the NPK fertilizer treatment did not have a significant impact on the plant height; chlorophyll content; and chlorophyll fluorescence, registering non-significant difference in both fertilizer and control plants; (iii) Fertilizer concentration with water depth did have a significant impact on the following parameters; namely (a) plant height; and (b) inflorescence number; (iv) Aerial modular growth, dispersion, response surface, plant topography-fractal analyses on emerged ramets, and fractal dimension boxing analyses of subterranean rhizome modules confirmed that the fertilizer treatment (at NPK 100:30:30) did not have a significant and prevalent impact on the growth patterns of S. grossus.


Extrachromosomal human T cell leukaemia virus type 1 (HTLV-I) proviruses are persistently maintained in HTLV-I-infected human promyelocytic leukaemia (HL60) cells even 24 months after viral infection. By successive recloning of these HTLV-I-infected clones, and by Southern blot analysis of their HTLV-I proviruses, we concluded the following. The copy number of extrachromosomal proviruses fluctuated, and this fluctuation was probably dependent on the epigenetic conditions in the host cell, HL60. The transient appearance of a high copy number of extrachromosomal proviruses was followed by an increase in the copy number of integrated proviruses. Persistence of extrachromosomal proviruses appeared to be caused by an intracellular rather than an intercellular mechanism.


Abstract The Fe oxide mineralogy behind the reddish colour (up to Munsell 10R) of a soil and four Quaternary surface deposits from central Jutland (Denmark) was investigated by XRD, TEM, Mössbauer spectroscopy and bulk saturation magnetization. The red soil (Naesset) consists of a 1 m deep patch, ~10 m2 in area. It is one of at least 5-10 isolated spots of limited size which contain hematite and maghemite, and are probably due to local fire. The four more extended (several hundred m2) red sediments (Salten Skov, Salten, Pot Molle and Laasby) all occur at the feet of slopes and formed from Fe2+-containing seepage water. They contain 25 - ~100% Fe oxides, originally consisting of ferrihydrite. The well-drained parts of the deposits are at present all dominated by goethite. Hematite and maghemite were also identified at two sites in the top ~25 cm, one site containing goethite and hematite and probably a little maghemite, and the other goethite and probably hematite. The presence of hematite and particularly maghemite in the surface sediments could be explained by heating of goethite. However, there is no historic or prehistoric evidence of heating activity, and the spatial extension is much wider than that of normal human events. In contrast to the burned soil site, goethite is still present in the upper layers together with a high content of organic matter. Thus, although the present belief is that the deposits formed by heating, site evidence is to the contrary.


We analyse how a succession of single bubbles extracts dissolved gas from a liquid solution while they grow and detach in a confinement induced by the presence of lateral walls. Like bubbles growing on a liquid-immersed unconfined surface, these bubbles absorb the dissolved gas in the liquid around them and hence deplete their surroundings. The supersaturation level, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ , stands out as the main parameter which determines the diffusive bubble dynamics, both in the confined and unconfined scenarios. For slightly supersaturated solutions, the bubble evolution is rather similar for the two cases. We observe nonetheless mildly higher concentration gradients within confinement due to the lack of gas renewal. This causes a slightly enhancement of density-driven convection as compared to the unconfined case, which results in a higher mass transfer rate towards the bubble and a somewhat faster long-term gas depletion. For larger supersaturations, the onset of natural convection is inhibited by the presence of the confinement. Confinement promotes the gas mixing within the cavity as well. These two effects combined result in a slower depletion in the confined case as compared to the unconfined one. The two opposite behaviours for small and large supersaturation suggest that there must be a transition in between the two scenarios. The cross-over has been estimated to occur at $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}\approx 0.17$ . We propose a modified depletion model which accounts for the confined configuration and its effect on the effective area through which gas diffuses into the bubble. The model can accurately describe the experimental results and sheds more light on the origin of the depletion effect due to the successive bubble growth.


To quantitatively evaluate how different methods for creating 5 km mesh Radar/Raingauge-Analyzed Precipitation (R/A) affected annual precipitation, we compared three kinds of 5 km mesh R/A during 1991–2009 by devoting attention to the modification of its spatial resolution. It was, respectively, 5 km until March 2001, 2.5 km from April 2001 to December 2005, and 1 km from January 2006. For creating 5 km mesh R/A, three methods were adopted, i.e., (I) spatial average of 2.5 km or 1 km mesh was calculated. (II) Maximum value of 2.5 km or 1 km mesh was selected. (III) For creating 2.5 km mesh from 1 km mesh, spatial average of 3 × 3 1 km mesh was calculated considering the representative area of each mesh. For creating 5 km mesh from 2.5 km mesh, maximum value of four 2.5 km mesh was selected. The method III is suggested by JMA. We found abrupt changes of annual precipitation were seen in 2000/2001 (method I) and 2005/2006 (method II), both of which were artificial temporally and spatially compared with AMeDAS data. The 5 km mesh R/A created by the method III was statistically homogeneous, so we recommend that we should adopt the method III.


We developed an ultra-purified in situ forming gel as an injectable delivery vehicle of bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs). Our objective was to assess reparative tissues treated with autologous BMSCs implanted using the injectable implantation system into osteochondral defects in a canine model. Forty-eight osteochondral defects in the patella groove of the knee joint were created in 12 adult beagle dogs (two defects in each knee). The defects were divided into a defect group (n = 16), an acellular novel material implantation (material) group (n = 16), and a BMSCs implantation using the current vehicle system (material with BMSCs) group (n = 16). The reparative tissues at 16 weeks postoperatively were assessed through gross, histological, and mechanical analyses. The reparative tissues of the material with BMSCs group were substituted with firm and smooth hyaline-like cartilage tissue that was perfectly integrated into the host tissues. This treatment group obviously enhanced the subchondral bone reconstruction. The compressive modulus of the reparative tissues was significantly higher in the material with BMSCs group than the other groups. This study demonstrated that the implantation of BMSCs using our novel in situ forming material induced a mature hyaline-like cartilage repair of osteochondral defects in a canine model.


In this paper we presented the methodology of color determination of the acrylic paint basing on the known values of amount pigments used to color creation. In the work we present possibility of pigment amount determination for paints in whose one type of dye is used from the knowledge of color parameters expressed in units of L*a*b system. Also we show the system L*a*b is particularly useful to evaluate the differences of color maps derived from photographs and prints.


In this article the authors ask what it would mean to think sociologically about the window as a specific material and symbolic object. Drawing on qualitative analysis of a series of comparative interviews with residents in three different streets in a diverse local area of Glasgow, they explore what the use and experience of windows tells us about their respondents' very different relationships to the places where they live. On the one hand, the window, as a material feature of the home, helps us grasp the lived reality of class inequality and how such inequality shapes people's day-to-day experience. On the other hand, windows are symbolically charged objects, existing at the border of the domestic and public world. For this reason, they feature in important ways in local debates over the appearance, ownership and conservation of the built environment. The article explores these struggles, and shows what they reveal about the construction of belonging in the neighbourhood, a process which is both classed and racialised at one and the same time.


The Karstryggen area of eastern Greenland represents the western edge of sedimentation in the Jameson Land Basin, an arm of the northern Zechstein seaway. Upper Permian strata of this area were deposited as two major sequences. The first marine incursion transgressed largely peneplaned Lower Permian strata and deposited thin, paralic conglomerates, sandstones and shales (the Huledal Formation) followed by a thick package of carbonates and evaporites (the Karstryggen Formation). Although the Karstryggen Formation represents the transgressive maximum of this sequence, it contains only marginal or restricted marine strata, including micritic, stromatolitic and peloidal carbonates and thick, but localized, bedded gypsum deposits. These lithofacies indicate that relatively arid climates prevailed in this basin, as in most of the Zechstein region.

A major regression, associated with a change to a more humid climate, terminated Karstryggen sedimentation. Pre-existing evaporites and carbonates underwent diagenetic alteration, including widespread calcitization and dissolution of gypsum. More importantly, topographic relief in excess of 120 m was generated by fluvial drainage systems and karstic sinkholes.

A second marine incursion, accompanied by a return to a semi-arid climate, drowned this high relief topography, producing a complex sequence of strata (the Wegener Halvo Formation) in which sedimentation was greatly influenced by the rugged underlying terrain. Marine cemented algal-molluscan grainstones draped pre-existing palaeotopography during the initial stages of flooding. Continued drowning led to differential sedimentation on 'highs' and in 'lows'. Oolitic and bryozoan-brachiopod grainstones formed as shoals on the crests of most prominences, whereas shales, conglomeratic debris flows, evaporites, or oolitic turbidites were deposited in the lows. More restricted sedimentation took place in the westernmost areas which lay closest to the mainland shoreline and were situated to the west of a palaeotopographic ridge. There, oolitic, stromatolitic and evaporitic strata were deposited under hypersaline conditions indicative of a return to more arid climatic conditions.

Three subcycles mark smaller scale relative changes of sea level that occurred during deposition of the Wegener Halvo Formation; they are delimited by regional surfaces with moderate relief (5–20 m) developed during subaerial exposure. Widespread diagenetic changes, including leaching of aragonitic grains, dissolution/collapse brecciation of evaporites and meteoric calcite cementation, occurred in association with these smaller scale sequence boundaries, again reflecting climatic oscillations.

Relative sea level fluctuations, coupled with regional climate changes, played a dominant role in determining both depositional and diagenetic relations in these strata. These features undoubtedly extend into subsurface parts of this basin as well as into yet unexplored areas of the northern Zechstein Basin and Barents Shelf, and may have economic significance for the localization of hydrocarbons.


1,5-Dimethyl-4-((2-methylbenzylidene)amino)-2-phenyl-1H-pyrazol-3(2H)- one (DMPO) was synthesized to be evaluated as a corrosion inhibitor. The corrosion inhibitory effects ofDMPO onZinc-Aluminumalloy in 1.0MHCl were investigated using open circuit potential (OCP). The results showed that DMPO inhibited Zinc-Aluminium alloy corrosion in acid solution and indicated that the inhibition efficiency increased with increasing inhibitor concentration. Changes in the impedance parameters suggested an adsorption of DMPO onto the Zinc-AluminumAlloy surface, leading to the formation of protective films. The novel synthesized corrosion inhibitor was characterized using UV-Vis spectral analyses.


As commerce continues to shift to the digital domain, organizations respond by improving and evolving their approach to creating value for customers. When the time comes to convert digital anything into cash they can bank, the same organizations, however, seem stuck in time. The purpose of the article is to highlight this inconsistency and, importantly, propose a solution. First, we leverage the literature on freemium and participative pricing mechanisms to lay the foundations for a revenue architecture fit for the digital economy. We argue in favor of three building blocks: empowerment, dialog, and reputation. Second, we describe FairPay as a promising configuration of these factors.


The spontaneous formation and subsequent growth, dissolution, merger, and competition of social groups bears similarities to physical phase transitions in metastable finite systems. We examine three different scenarios, percolation, spinodal decomposition, and nucleation, to describe the formation of social groups of varying size and density. In our agent-based model, we use a feedback between the opinions of agents and their ability to establish links. Groups can restrict further link formation, but agents can also leave if costs exceed the group benefits. We identify the critical parameters for costs and benefits and social influence to obtain either one large group or the stable coexistence of several groups with different opinions. Analytic investigations allow us to derive different critical densities that control the formation and coexistence of groups. Our approach sheds light on the early stage of network growth and the emergence of large connected components.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to describe the recognition and management of delirium in hospitalized patients with and without dementia.

DESIGN
A descriptive, exploratory design was used with a convenience sample of 20 hospitalized older patients who were observed indepth using qualitative interviews and observations of 13 family members and 11 staff members.

SETTING
This research was conducted on the medical-surgical units of a 550-bed, nonprofit, state-supported teaching hospital in the southeastern United States. The facility provides primary and tertiary care with five intensive care units and eight medical-surgical units.

PARTICIPANTS
This study did not exclude individuals with dementia or pre-existing delirium. Subjects were not excluded on the basis of race or gender. Twenty patients in the sample underwent observation and mental and functional status testing. Thirteen family members and 11 staff members were interviewed and observed.

MEASUREMENTS
In Phase 1 of the study, patients had daily mental status testing performed by the investigator. In Phase 2, family members and staff members were interviewed about the confusion event. For each patient, demographics and information regarding their health status and current diagnosis and treatment were obtained. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Confusion Assessment Method were completed on each subject within 36 hours of being admitted to the hospital. The Cornell Depression Scale and Katz Activities of Daily Living scale were completed within 48 hours of admission.

RESULTS
The prevalence of delirium in this study was 60%. The incidence, or new onset of delirium, was 30%. The presence of delirium was associated with new onset incontinence, lower baseline MMSE scores, depression, weight loss, and comorbidity. Of the eight individuals with delirium superimposed on dementia, 63% (n = 5) were re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days, compared to none of the individuals with delirium in the absence of dementia. Delirium superimposed on dementia also was less likely to be recognized by nurses and physicians.

CONCLUSIONS
Delirium in individuals with dementia should be assessed and treated routinely because the failure to recognize delirium superimposed on dementia promptly has significant negative personal, social and financial consequences.


Credit rating agencies assert that they rely on financial information provided by issuers and that they value rating stability as well as accuracy. In an environment where rating agencies depend on issuer-reported information and are reluctant to adjust ratings promptly, managers of issuing firms can utilize the discretion afforded by GAAP to obtain the most favorable credit ratings. Consistent with our expectations, we find that current accruals are unusually positive and high around initial credit ratings. The increase in abnormally high accruals leading up to the initial credit rating year is followed by a reversal in the subsequent years. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that accounting accruals, abnormal current accruals in particular, are significantly positively related to initial credit ratings after controlling for several issue- and issuer-related characteristics indicative of default risk. Our results are robust to additional tests that account for endogeneity between credit ratings and earnings management, adjust for performance, and account for firms issuing debt and equity simultaneously.


Two novel ent-labdane diterpenes have been isolated from the aerial parts of Premna oligotricha(Verbenaceae). Primarily through NMR studies one was identified as ent-12-oxolabda-8,3(16)dien-15-oic acid. Similar analysis of the second diterpene was unable to distinguish between two possible structures, ent-8β,12α-epidioxy-12β-hydroxylabda-9(11),13-dien-15-oic acid γ-lactone and ent-8β,12α-epoxy-12β-hydroperoxylabda-9(11),13-dien-15-oic acid δ-lactone. The structure of the second diterpene was established as the γ-lactone by an X-ray diffraction study


With the rising population, the demand for food, fuel, fiber, and timber is increasing and to meet out these ever-increasing demands farming systems all around the globe has become more intensive to be in pace with these demands. Soils around the world are being subjected to more chemical inputs in form of chemical fertilizers and amendments which are reducing their productivity and plants are being treated for diseases and insect-pests through a variety of chemicals which are entering into the food chain and contaminating water resources. Forests are being leveled to bring more area into agriculture, grazing area is shrinking and habitats of various species are destroying which is causing loss of biodiversity. Moreover, climate change is causing threatening impacts on current agriculture practices which include decreasing yields, the occurrence of new diseases and natural disasters. Considering the present scenario, it has now become utmost necessary to shift from industrialized agriculture to organic farming where sustainability must be the prime objective; where soils are allowed to rejuvenate to their natural potential. However, millions of people around the world still suffering hunger especially when industrialized agriculture is considered as most productive; at this situation, a major shift from conventional to organic farming has raised the question "can organic farming alone achieve sustainability"? Considering the above facts present review inculcated various published research of national and international repute that claims the capability of organic farming to achieve sustainability and the loopholes where it lacks adaptability over conventional farming.


Abstract This paper derives a robust online equity trading algorithm that achieves the greatest possible percentage of the final wealth of the best pairs rebalancing rule in hindsight. A pairs rebalancing rule chooses some pair of stocks in the market and then perpetually executes rebalancing trades so as to maintain a target fraction of wealth in each of the two. After each discrete market fluctuation, a pairs rebalancing rule will sell a precise amount of the outperforming stock and put the proceeds into the underperforming stock. Under typical conditions, in hindsight one can find pairs rebalancing rules that would have spectacularly beaten the market. Our trading strategy, which extends Ordentlich and Cover's "max-min universal portfolio," guarantees to achieve an acceptable percentage of the hindsight-optimized wealth, a percentage which tends to zero at a slow (polynomial) rate. This means that on a long enough investment horizon, the trader can enforce a compound-annual growth rate that is arbitrarily close to that of the best pairs rebalancing rule in hindsight. The strategy will "beat the market asymptotically" if there turns out to exist a pairs rebalancing rule that grows capital at a higher asymptotic rate than the market index. The advantages of our algorithm over the Ordentlich and Cover strategy are twofold. First, their strategy is impossible to compute in practice. Second, in considering the more modest benchmark (instead of the best all-stock rebalancing rule in hindsight), we reduce the "cost of universality" and achieve a higher learning rate.


One criticism of the methodology used by the U.S. Census Bureau to estimate the official Gini coefficient is that the underlying income data are not adjusted to account for regional differences in the cost of living. In this study such adjustments are made to the 1970-1987 income data. These adjusted income figures are then incorporated into the Fei-Ranis-Kuo model. The new estimates of the Gini coefficient are not significantly different from those published by the Census Bureau. Thus, the Census Bureau's failure to take regional costs of living differences into account does not distort the national Gini coefficient.


This study has characterized the dominant non-starter Lactobacillus species isolated from different sites in a Stilton cheese to establish its diversity, stress-tolerance, anti-microbial activity and potential contribution to quality of cheese. Fifty-nine Lactobacillus isolates were cultured from the outer crust, blue veins and white core of the cheese and were speciated phenotypically and by 16S rDNA sequence analysis. Lactobacillus plantarum was the dominant species detected with only two isolates identified as Lactobacillus brevis. Strains were typed by pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) using the enzyme NotI to examine their genomic diversity. Cluster analysis of PFGE patterns produced five major clusters which associated isolates with their sites of isolation within the cheese. One L. plantarum isolate from each cheese site was selected and evaluated for salt, acid, relative humidity, and heat tolerance to determine whether stress conditions within the isolation site selected their phenotype. D72°C values were 6, 13, and 17 s for strains from the crust, veins and core, respectively, suggesting strains on the crust may not have been able to survive pasteurization and therefore had been added post-pasteurization. All strains recovered from heat injury within 24–48 h at 4°C. pH values of 3, 3.5, and 4 suppressed growth but strains showed a varying ability to grow at pH 4.5 and 5; isolates from the core (which has the lowest pH) were the most acid-tolerant. All strains grew at 3.5 and 5% salt but were suppressed at 10%; those from the crust (which has a lower water activity) were the most halo-tolerant, growing at 8% salt whereas strains from the core were sensitive to this salt concentration. All 57 L. plantarum isolates were examined for antimicrobial activity and variable activity against Lactobacillus pentosus and other genera was demonstrated; plantaricin EF genes were present in 65% of strains. It was concluded that there are varied phenotypes and genotypes of Lactobacillus in a Stilton cheese according to site of isolation. Occurrence of different L. plantarum genotypes could contribute to variation in the cheese quality from batch to batch and provides criteria for selecting isolates as potential adjunct cultures.


Improving the outcome of nerve repair will require close cooperation between surgeon and scientist. Skyrocketing clinical demands on the surgeon and the rapidly increasing sophistication of neuroscience have interacted to form two distinct cultures. Nerve Repair bridges these cultures by providing a translational review of the clinical and basic science relevant to nerve repair. It provides the clinician with an understanding of pertinent research, and the basic scientist with an overview of the clinical manifestations of nerve injury and regeneration. It is also grounded in the history of peripheral nerve surgery and biology so that modern concepts can be understood in the context of their origins.


Direct arterial pressure was recorded continuously over 24 hours in 18 totally unrestricted people (six normotensives, four untreated hypertensives, and eight treated hypertensives). There was an almost equal fall of about 20% in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure during sleep in the three groups when compared with their waking pressures. This fall in pressure was greater than that observed previously in patients sleeping in a laboratory or hospital. Furthermore, it suggests that hypertensive subjects do not have a higher centrally-induced vasoactive component and that hypotensive drugs do not alter the pattern of blood pressure behaviour induced by sleep.


The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) was created to identify and respond to emerging threats to the stability of the U.S. financial system. The research arm of the FSOC, the Office of Financial Research, has begun to explore agent-based models (ABMs) for measuring the emergent threat of systemic risk. We propose an ABM-based regulatory structure that incentivizes the honest participation and data contribution of regulated firms while providing clarity into the actions of the firms as endogenous to the market and driving emergent behavior. We build this scheme onto an existing ABM of a single-asset market to examine whether the structure of this scheme could provide its own benefits to market stabilization. We find that without regulatory intervention, markets acting within this proposed structure experience fewer bankruptcies and lower leverage buildup while returning larger profits for the same amount of risk.


The purpose of the present study is to investigate the ability of oral Candida albicans strains to adhere to Caco-2 and Hep-2 epithelial cells, to produce slime using Congo red and Safranin methods and to form a biofilm on polymethylmethacrylate. A total of 20 C. albicans strains were tested in the present work. The biofilm formed by C. albicans isolates on acrylic denture was measured in vitro using the colorimetric method based on the reduction of the tetrazolium salt (XTT) and dry weight measurement. Our results showed that oral C. albicans strains were able to adhere to epithelial cell lines and biomaterials with different degree. In fact, more than 61% of the tested strains were adhesive to Hep-2 and 83% to Caco-2 cells. Strong slime production after safranin stain was found in 40% of strains. Slime producer C. albicans strains (16 strains) tested by safranin staining method were highly adhesive to Hep-2 (62.5%) and Caco-2 (87.5%) monolayers and biofilm formed on polystyrene and poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) surfaces (100%, respectively). Key words : Candida albicans , biofilm, polymethylmethacrylate, Hep-2, Caco-2 cells, slime production.


We report a novel polymer material formulation and stamp-molding technique that enable rapid single-step manufacturing of hydrophilic-in-hydrophobic microwell arrays. We developed a modified thiol-ene-epoxy polymer (mOSTE+) formulation that mimics the surface energy of its mold during polymerization. The polymer inherits the surface energy from the mold through molecular self-assembly, in which functional monomers self-assemble at the interface between the liquid prepolymer and the mold surface. Combining this novel mOSTE+ material with a stamp-molding process leads to simultaneous surface energy mimicking and micro-structuring. This method was used to manufacture microwells with hydrophilic bottom and hydrophobic sidewall, depressed in a surrounding hydrophobic surface. The microwell arrays were successfully tested for the self-assembly of 62'000 femtoliter-droplets. Such femtoliter droplet arrays are useful for, e.g., digital ELISA and single cell/molecule analysis applications.


A fast, successful decoding detection mechanism is proposed for dual-diagonal block-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. The algorithm eliminates unnecessary parity check computation by exploiting the structure of dual-diagonal LDPC codes. The average number of decoding iterations can be reduced for both two-phase decoders and layered decoders with no performance degradation on the AWGN channel. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism reduces average iterations by 10-15- at 10 -5 bit error rate compared with standard parity-check equations.


Disinformation is endemic in the digital age, seriously harming the public interest in democracy, health care, and national security. Increasingly, disinformation is created and disseminated by social media algorithms. Algorithmic disinformation, a new phenomenon, thus looms large in contemporary society. Recommendation algorithms are driving the spread of disinformation on social media networks, and generative algorithms are creating deepfakes, both at unprecedented levels. The regulation of algorithmic disinformation is therefore one of today's thorniest legal problems.
Against this backdrop, this Article proposes a novel approach to regulating algorithmic disinformation effectively. It first explores why transparency, intelligibility, and accountability should be adopted as the three major principles of the legal regulation of algorithmic disinformation. Because of its market-based technology development and regulation policy, the United States has yet to adopt any laws regulating algorithmic disinformation, let alone these three principles. The Article then examines legislative reforms in France and China, where the three principles have been translated into legal rules requiring social media companies to disclose their disinformation-related algorithms, render them intelligible to users, and assume legal responsibility for curbing the spread of disinformation on their platforms.
Based on a critical discussion of the major problems with these legal rules, the Article puts forward a multi-stakeholder approach to better implement the three principles. It argues that the United States should take the lead in creating and piloting an algorithmic disinformation review system. This new system would empower the administrative oversight of algorithmic disinformation and promote the dynamic engagement of social media users and experts in policing algorithms that generate and disseminate disinformation. The ADRS would thus promote the transparency and intelligibility of algorithms and hold social media platforms accountable for curbing disinformation.


Mean Average Precision (mAP) is the primary evaluation measure for object detection. Although object detection has a broad range of applications, mAP evaluates detectors in terms of the performance of ranked instance retrieval. Such the assumption for the evaluation task does not suit some downstream tasks. To alleviate the gap between downstream tasks and the evaluation scenario, we propose Optimal Correction Cost (OC-cost), which assesses detection accuracy at image level. OC-cost computes the cost of correcting detections to ground truths as a measure of accuracy. The cost is obtained by solving an optimal transportation problem between the detections and the ground truths. Unlike mAp, OC-cost is designed to penalize false positive and false negative detections properly, and every image in a dataset is treated equally. Our experimental result validates that OCscost has better agreement with human preference than a ranking-based measure, i.e., mAP for a single image. We also show that detectors' rankings by OC-cost are more consistent on different data splits than mAP. Our goal is not to replace mAP with OC-cost but provide an additional tool to evaluate detectors from another aspect. To help future researchers and developers choose a target measure, we provide a series of experiments to clarify how mAP and OC-cost differ.


The high-temperature oxidation in air and steam at 923 K was examined with pure iron, Fe-10Cr and Fe-10Cr-0.08C (0~0.03)S steels. The amount of hydrogen dissolved into samples during exposure to steam was measured with thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS). It was found that the amount of dissolved hydrogen was related closely to the steam oxidation resistance of the steels. In case of pure iron, the thickness of the oxide scale formed in steam at 923 K for 360 ks was comparable to that of the scale formed in air. On the other hand, in case of the Fe-Cr binary alloy and the ternary ferritic steel, the oxide scale was much thicker in steam than in air. It was found that the amount of the dissolved hydrogen was much larger in both the binary alloy and the ternary ferritic steel than in pure iron, and then it leads to the more accelerated oxidation rate in the ternary steels in steam.


This study seeks to assess the quality of co-composted shredded Municipal Solid Wastes (MSW) with fishery wastes, banana mulch wastes and aerobically composted slaughterhouse wastes. They are most common in Southern Lebanon and are likely candidates to investigate the carbon and nitrogen amendments to the MSW. The overriding goal of this study is to make the co-composting method as practical as possible for ordinary people to reproduce it in natural field settings by using a low cost technology and a good quality fertilizer. At a low maintenance cost, three initial trials were executed in this study to optimize the composting process of these waste ingredients.  The objective of the first two trials was to evaluate composting processes in two different bioreactors and using the two different mix ratios of co-composted waste material. However the third trial`s objective was to develop and validate the composting process of 4 different waste mix combinations  by using commercially available plastic barrels as self-heating bioreactors. The evaluations are focused on process indices during composting and chemical indices of carbon/nitrogen (C/N) ratio of the final compost. A mathematical optimization model is presented. Components of the composting are estimated in order to satisfy C/N ratio in the range between 20 and 30. The chosen ideal weight of the composting is 25 kg. Output data of optimization model, C/N ratio as a main parameter as well as secondary parameters components of composting are tabulated. A multiple regression analysis is performed to relate the main parameter to the secondary parameters. Finally, this study suggests that specific weights for fish and banana mulch wastes can be considered suitable for efficient composting with organic fraction of MSW. If implemented successfully at individual household or larger municipality level, it will contribute to the minimization of wastes. Keywords: C/N ratio, municipal solid wastes (MSW), Fishery wastes, Agricultural solid wastes, Compost, Saida Solid Waste Management plant (SWM).


PURPOSE
Patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) have a poor prognosis. We tested the safety and efficacy in these patients of a diphtheria fusion protein DAB(389)IL2 (denileukin diftitox) directed against the interleukin 2 receptor that is expressed by CLL cells.

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
DAB(389)IL2 was administered by 60 min i.v. infusions for 5 days every 21 days at 9 or 18 micro g/kg/day for up to eight cycles.

RESULTS
Eighteen patients were treated. The mean age of the patients was 61.8 years. There were 14 males and 4 females. Two had Rai stage I, 6 had Rai stage II, and 10 had Rai stage IV. The mean number of prior treatments was 4.5 (range, 1-11). Responses were evaluated by peripheral CLL counts, computed tomography scans of all nodes and bone marrow biopsies. Twelve patients received greater than or equal to three cycles of DAB(389)IL2 and were evaluable for response. Eleven of 12 patients showed reductions of peripheral CLL cells, with 6 of 11 showing >/==" BORDER="0">95% reductions. Seven of 12 patients showed reductions of node diameters on exam and computed tomography scans, and 2 of 12 showed 60 and 80% shrinkage, respectively. Pre and postbone marrow biopsies showed a reduction in CLL marrow index in 11 patients. Seven of 11 patients had >50% reduction, including >/==" BORDER="0">98% reduction in 3 patients. DAB(389)IL2 produced 2 of 12 (17%) partial remission and 7 of 12 (58%) minimal responses. Progression-free intervals in the responders were 1, 1, 3+, 4, 9, 10, 10+, 14 and 19+ months. Toxicities were mild to moderate and included asymptomatic, transient transaminasemia, fever, asthenia, hypoalbuminemia, nausea, vomiting, myalgias, rash, anorexia, vascular leak syndrome, and elevated creatinine kinase. Antidiphtheria toxin antibody levels were variable and ranged from 0 to 9 micro g/ml (n = 5).

CONCLUSIONS
DAB(389)IL2 produced a rapid decrease of leukemic cells in the bone marrow and peripheral blood of most chemotherapy refractory CLL patients. Most patients also tolerated DAB(389)IL2 well, without significant myelosuppression and/or immunosuppression. The prolonged progression-free interval and subjectively observed quality-of-life in responders is intriguing. The results suggest DAB(389)IL2 has biological activity in patients with B-cell CLL. Follow-up studies of combinations or altered schedules or doses to improve the response rate are warranted.


Physical and thermal properties of a byproduct of rice (Oryza sativa) were carried out. This product is raw rice bran noted for its economic and medical and other industrial importance. The physical properties include: moisture content that ranged from 11.5 to 27.5 %(wb). Others are the bulk density, specific gravity and particle size. Some of these properties were combined for study on their effect on thermal conductivity which was one of the thermal properties studied. Mean values of the thermal conductivity determined ranged from 0.2456 to 0.5764 W/m oC depending on the moisture content of the raw rice bran and the variety. The two major varieties of Sippy-rice bran and Thai-rice bran were found not to be having differences in their mean values of the thermal properties especially when determined under same conditions. Statistically, the combined effect of particle size and moisture content were found also not be to be significant, apparently because the particle size distribution values were not distinct from each other. Keywords : Moisture content, Rice bran, thermal properties, Particle size, Thermal conductivity Global Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences Vol. 14 (3) 2008: pp. 319-324


Given $m$ points and $n$ hyperplanes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ ($d\geqslant 3)$, if there are many incidences, we expect to find a big cluster $K_{r,s}$ in their incidence graph. Apfelbaum and Sharir found lower and upper bounds for the largest size of $rs$, which match (up to a constant) only in three dimensions. In this paper we close the gap in four and five dimensions, up to some polylogarithmic factors.


The last 3 decades have witnessed the rise of reforms aimed at conjoining Canadian universities to the economic system. Critics have pointed out how reforms have emphasized economic utility in universities to the detriment of their sociocultural mission, producing negative effects. One curricular innovation that has spread in tandem with reforms is co-operative education (co-op), which is seen to improve economic utility but has not attracted critical scrutiny. This article offers a socially critical perspective on co-op that draws on conceptual work and a sub-set of empirical data from a multi-case study conducted in one university. A tentative portrait emerged of a previously unexplored avenue of commercialization that is mediated through co-op. The process began with students enrolling to deal with personal financial burdens and to feel more secure about their economic futures. Once in co-op, students were exposed to competitive market processes that immersed them in the commercial activity of packaging, exchanging, and accumulating their human capital, using "skills" as discursive currency. Students internalized the discipline of the market, taking an entrepreneurial stance towards their self-definition and presentation. Programmatic features did not to enable students to reflect on or remediate negative experiences (e.g., tacit or explicit sexism) or distorting effects (e.g., devaluation of sociocultural skills). Their experiences highlighted areas for further critical investigation: the devaluation of the liberal arts; power dynamics and asymmetries between employers, administrators, and students; and patterns of social relations (e.g., the exercise of gendered power) in labour markets, workplaces, and universities. The article concludes that a rebalancing of economic and sociocultural purposes is needed in co-op, and the scope of critical inquiries into economistic reforms should be extended to include micro-level effects produced through the market-driven processes at the heart of co-op.


We present a comparison between experiment and simulation of a 40-Gb/s periodically stationary dispersion-managed soliton (DMS) system in a recirculating loop. We find that we can propagate an error-free signal over 6400 km at 40 Gb/s and over 12 000 km if we lower the data rate to 10 Gb/s, keeping all other parameters constant. A careful analysis of the limiting factors shows the strong influence of nonlinear optical pulse-to-pulse interactions, causing a large increase in timing jitter. At a transmission distance of 6400 km, a large fraction of the jitter is due to pulse-to-pulse interactions. Moreover, we find that the system performance is very sensitive to parameter variations. We conclude that periodically stationary DMS systems suffer from numerous problems when increasing the data rate, suggesting that it may be impractical for wavelength-division multiplex transmission at 40 Gb/s.


Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are a group of immature myeloid cells with potent immune suppressive activity. Accumulation of pathologically activated MDSCs within the tumor microenvironment has emerged as an important mechanism of primary and acquired resistance to immunotherapy. MDSCs have high surface expression levels of V-domain immunoglobulin (Ig)-containing suppressor of T-cell activation (VISTA), a co-inhibitory negative checkpoint regulator (NCR). Immune suppression by VISTA+ MDSCs has been implicated in the failure of, and resistance to, anti-PD1/PDL1 therapy and represents a unique axis for NCR targeting in the non-responder population. Elucidating the dynamics of VISTA+ MDSCs within tumors is imperative for predicting response and patient stratification. HMBD-002 is a novel anti-VISTA neutralizing monoclonal antibody, developed using Hummingbird Bioscience9s proprietary Rational Antibody Discovery platform, against a specific functional epitope on VISTA predicted to be involved in ligand binding. HMBD002 binds human, cyno and murine VISTA protein with high affinity (kD To investigate predictive immune signatures for HMBD002 antibody efficacy, as a monotherapy and in combination with anti- PD-L1 therapy, we established multiple mouse models of tumor immune subtypes using syngeneic cell lines. Tumor biopsies were analyzed before and during treatment, to determine the evolution of immune response and its effect on tumor burden within responders and non-responders. The combination of HMBD-002 and anti-PD-L1 was more effective than either antibody alone, especially in tumors that showed abundant MDSC infiltration. Immune phenotyping revealed that this was associated with a significant increase in activated CD8+ T effector cells and concomitant increase in IFN-gamma. Profiling syngeneic models for deeper insights into the interplay between the tumor, immune system and therapy, will facilitate the clinical development of immune checkpoint and combination therapies. Hummingbird Bioscience anticipates commencing First-in-Human trials of HMBD002 in 2019. Citation Format: Jerome D. Boyd-Kirkup, Dipti Thakkar, Konrad Paszkiewicz, Piers J. Ingram. Integrative immune profiling of syngeneic tumor models provides predictive immune signatures for treatment response with HMBD002, a novel anti-VISTA neutralizing antibody [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1729.


The MINIMOS simulation program has been extended to three dimensions to investigate the parasitic effects at the channel edge on MOSFET device characteristics. The box integration method after Forsythe has been applied for discretization. This method is suitable for nonplanar interfaces. The most important nonplanar interface occurs at the transition of the gate oxide to the field oxide called the bird's beak. Approximating this interface as a rectangular shape leads to unrealistic results. The oxide-body is defined by analytical functions, so it is easy to investigate a wide range of applications. An automatic grid-refinement algorithm is used to generate the specific grid. The simulation shows that the influence of the channel edge is not negligible for channel widths less than 2 mu m. The total drain current for narrow channel MOSFETs is either increased or decreased by parasitic three-dimensional effects compared to wide channel (two-dimensional) MOSFETs depending on the bias conditions. >


We study the response of nonlinear wave systems in bounded domains at or near resonance. There are typically two qualitatively distinct types of response which may be observed relating to whether or not higher harmonics are themselves resonant. We introduce a variety of nonlinear model problems at or near resonance and study the subsequent response. We explain how the features of this problem such as the form of nonlinearity, boundary conditions, and the nature of spectrum play a fundamental role in the qualitative nature of the response. Numerical simulations are carried out to provide further explanation and comparison with analytic approximations. The results of this study provide a better understanding of the impact and interplay between nonlinear and boundary effects and thus in turn will contribute to providing new insights into various physically motivated problems in acoustics and other settings.


Older adults continue to be underrepresented in clinical research despite their burgeoning population in the United States and worldwide. Physicians often propose treatment plans for older adults based on data from studies involving primarily younger, more‐functional, healthier participants. Major barriers to recruitment of older adults in aging research relate to their substantial health problems, social and cultural barriers, and potentially impaired capacity to provide informed consent. Institutionalized older adults offer another layer of complexity that requires cooperation from the institutions to participate in research activities. This paper provides study recruitment and retention techniques and strategies to address concerns and overcome barriers to older adult participation in clinical research. Key approaches include early in‐depth planning; minimizing exclusion criteria; securing cooperation from all interested parties; using advisory boards, timely screening, identification, and approach of eligible patients; carefully reviewing the benefit:risk ratio to be sure it is appropriate; and employing strategies to ensure successful retention across the continuum of care. Targeting specific strategies to the condition, site, and population of interest and anticipating potential problems and promptly employing predeveloped contingency plans are keys to effective recruitment and retention.