Shot peening is widely used to improve the fatigue life of engine blades and rotors by inducing compressive residual stress. However, the residual stresses can relax due to exposure at high service temperature and mechanical loading. A physics-motivated analytical solution was developed to predict the residual stress relaxation at high temperature and under mechanical loading. In this thermo-mechanical relaxation model, the plastic strains in shot peening layer and substrate are obtained analytically by using linear kinematic hardening materials law, and then the plastic strain evolution at high temperature is modeled by using a recovery strain term. The final stress as a function of time, temperature and mechanical loading is obtained analytically by combining this recovery strain with equilibrium and compatibility conditions. The whole method can be implemented into Microsoft (MS) Excel, and is easy to use and validate. As a special case, an analytical closed-form solution to predict pure thermal relaxation of shot peening residual stress is developed. The model predictions agree satisfactorily with published experimental data.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


The main objective of this research was to study the potential of waste polypropylene and waste newsprint fiber for making wood-plastic nanocomposites. We used 30 wt.% waste newsprint fiber and 10 wt.% compatilizer in this study. Nanoclay was used at two levels: 2.5 and 5% by wt. Materials were mixed with either recycled or virgin polypropylene. The effects of nanoclay (NC) on the mechanical and thermal properties were also studied. The improvements in tensile properties of the blended composites with the addition of NC were further supported by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) micrographs and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) data. Thermal degradation behavior of the composites showed that the degradation temperatures shifted to higher values after addition of nanoclay. The XRD data showed that the relative intercalation of composites with 2.5% nanoclay was higher than 5% nanoclay. The experimental results demonstrated that the waste materials could be used as appropriate alternative raw materials for making low cost wood-plastic composites (WPCs).


Circadian rhythm dysfunction has recently been suggested to have a causal role in major depressive disorders. Against this background, experiments on circadian rhythms are outlined that yield a state of sustained sleepless activity. Such states can be brought about it seems by manipulation of the external zeitgebers to which rhythms are synchronized rather than by any alteration of the circadian clock. This can be expected to yield a disorganized rhythmic state rather than any discrete phase shifting or desynchronization of rhythms. This state it is suggested should lead to a mild dysphoria, psychomotor activation and a subtle disordering of thought form. It is proposed that these changes lead to the typical clinical picture of mania when distorted cognitively by mechanisms similar to those found in depression. There are a number of implications of this hypothesis. Firstly, mania should commonly be precipitated by similar psychosocial factors to those which precipitate depression. Secondly, similar neuroendocrine findings should be found in both depression and mania. Thirdly, similar agents should be effective in the treatment of mania and depression. Fourthly, cognitive therapy may play a significant part in the management of acute episodes of mania and reduce liability to chronicity.


Presented is a mobile-health m-health system architecture utilizing Bluetooth and web technologies for remote health data acquisition and monitoring. The proposed system aims at improving chronic disease management and diabetes in particular using a combination of existing patients' medical sensors, PDAs and PDAs-related Bluetooth technology. This offers a relatively low-cost solution compared to equivalent customized health data acquisition systems. At the patient end, the health data is acquired serially from the medical sensors and sent to the mobile devices using Bluetooth connectivity. The acquired data are then transmitted to a remote health hub using core IP network. Design and implementation of the Wireless Data Acquisition Module WDAM, wireless connectivity protocols, and architecture of the remote health hub applications are presented in this paper. The distributed nature of the proposed system allows for continuous acquisition and monitoring of patients' data anytime, anywhere and by anyone with modest technological background. Likewise, the patient's health providers can continuously monitor the acquired data of their patients for better disease management. Performance of the developed data acquisition system is assessed experimentally and seamless data acquisition and monitoring have been demonstrated.


This paper analyzes generalization of the classic Rescorla-Wagner (R- W) learning algorithm and studies their relationship to Maximum Like- lihood estimation of causal parameters. We prove that the parameters of two popular causal models, ?P and P C , can be learnt by the same generalized linear Rescorla-Wagner (GLRW) algorithm provided gener- icity conditions apply. We characterize the fixed points of these GLRW algorithms and calculate the fluctuations about them, assuming that the input is a set of i.i.d. samples from a fixed (unknown) distribution. We describe how to determine convergence conditions and calculate conver- gence rates for the GLRW algorithms under these conditions.


Tetraphenyldibenzoperiflanthene (DBP) attracts interest as an organic electron donor for photovoltaic applications. In order to assist in the analysis of vibrational and optical spectra measured during the formation of thin films of DBP, we have studied the vibrational modes and the electronic states of this molecule. Information on the vibrational modes of the electronic ground state has been obtained by IR absorption spectroscopy of DBP grains embedded in polyethylene and CsI pellets and by calculations using density functional theory (DFT). Electronic transitions have been measured by UV/vis absorption spectroscopy applied to DBP molecules isolated in rare-gas matrices. These measurements are compared with the results of ab initio and semi-empirical calculations. Particularly, the vibrational pattern observed in the S1 ← S0 transition is interpreted using a theoretical vibronic spectrum computed with an ab initio model. The results of the previous experiments and calculations are employed to analyze the data obtained by high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS) applied to DBP molecules deposited on a Au(111) surface. They are also used to examine the measurements performed by differential reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) on DBP molecules deposited on a muscovite mica(0001) surface. It is concluded that the DBP molecules in the first monolayer do not show any obvious degree of chemisorption on mica(0001). Regarding the first monolayer of DBP on Au(111), the HREELS data are consistent with a face-on anchoring and the absence of strong electronic coupling.


Cortical neurons in vivo had been regarded as Poisson spike generators that convey no information other than the rate of random firing. Recently, using a metric for analyzing local variation of interspike intervals, researchers have found that individual neurons express specific patterns in generating spikes, which may symbolically be termed regular, random, or bursty, rather invariantly in time. In order to study the dynamics of firing patterns in greater detail, we propose here a Bayesian method for estimating firing irregularity and the firing rate simultaneously for a given spike sequence, and we implement an algorithm that may render the empirical Bayesian estimation practicable for data comprising a large number of spikes. Application of this method to electrophysiological data revealed a subtle correlation between the degree of firing irregularity and the firing rate for individual neurons. Irregularity of firing did not deviate greatly around the low degree of dependence on the firing rate and remained practically unchanged for individual neurons in the cortical areas V1 and MT, whereas it fluctuated greatly in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus. This indicates the presence and absence of autocontrolling mechanisms for maintaining patterns of firing in the cortex and thalamus, respectively.


We consider the task of generating exact samples from a target distribution, known up to normalization, over a finite alphabet. The classical algorithm for this task is rejection sampling, and although it has been used in practice for decades, there is surprisingly little study of its fundamental limitations. In this work, we study the query complexity of rejection sampling in a minimax framework for various classes of discrete distributions. Our results provide new algorithms for sampling whose complexity scales sublinearly with the alphabet size. When applied to adversarial bandits, we show that a slight modification of the Exp3 algorithm reduces the per-iteration complexity from $\mathcal O(K)$ to $\mathcal O(\log^2 K)$, where $K$ is the number of arms.


Poverty and biodiversity loss are two of the world's dire challenges. Claims of conservation's contribution to poverty alleviation, however, remain controversial. Here, we assess the flows of ecosystem services provided to people by priority habitats for terrestrial conservation, considering the global distributions of biodiversity, physical factors, and socioeconomic context. We estimate the value of these habitats to the poor, both through direct benefits and through payments for ecosystem services to those stewarding natural habitats. The global potential for biodiversity conservation to support poor communities is high: The top 25% of conservation priority areas could provide 56%–57% of benefits. The aggregate benefits are valued at three times the estimated opportunity costs and exceed $1 per person per day for 331 million of the world's poorest people. Although trade-offs remain, these results show win—win synergies between conservation and poverty alleviation, indicate that effective financial mechanisms can enhance these synergies, and suggest biodiversity conservation as a fundamental component of sustainable economic development.


Background: The addition of sorafenib to standard induction and consolidation therapy in newly diagnosed patients (pts) ≤60 years (yrs) with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) led to significant prolongation of event-free survival (EFS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) in the randomized placebo-controlled SORAML trial (NCT00893373). After a median follow-up of 3 yrs, a benefit for sorafenib treated pts was observed also in overall survival (OS), but this difference was not significant. Here, we present updated survival data and information on relapse treatment and outcome. Methods: In the SORAML trial, 267 newly diagnosed untreated fit AML pts up to 60 yrs of age and irrespective of FLT3 mutation status received two cycles of induction chemotherapy with DA (daunorubicin 60 mg/m2 days 3-5 plus cytarabine 100 mg/m2 cont. inf. days 1-7), followed by three cycles of high-dose cytarabine consolidation (3 g/m2 b.i.d. days 1, 3, 5). Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) was scheduled for all intermediate-risk pts in first complete remission (CR) with a sibling donor and for all high-risk pts with a matched related or unrelated donor. At study inclusion, pts were randomized to receive either sorafenib (2x400 mg/day) or placebo as add-on to standard treatment in a double blinded fashion. Study medication was given on days 10-19 of DA I+II, from day 8 of each consolidation until 3 days before the start of the next consolidation and as maintenance for 12 months (mos) after the end of consolidation. The primary endpoint of the trial was EFS. The results after follow-up of 3 yrs were presented at ASH 2014 (Rollig et al., Blood 2014; 124: 6) and fully published (Rollig et al., Lancet Oncol 2015; 16: 1691-9). Here, we present the results after prolonged follow-up. For this analysis, information on remission and survival status, mode and outcome of relapse treatment including SCT were collected for all randomized pts and analyzed by standard statistical methods. Results: Of 267 treated pts, 134 were randomized in the sorafenib arm and 133 in the placebo arm with a resulting CR rate of 60% and 59%, respectively. After a median observation time of 78 mos, the primary study endpoint EFS in the placebo vs sorafenib arm was 9 mos vs 26 mos (HR 0.68, p=0.01) in univariate Kaplan Meier analysis. The beneficial effect of sorafenib on EFS was confirmed in multivariate Cox regression analysis with a HR of 0.61 (p=0.005). Median RFS in the placebo vs sorafenib arms was 22 vs 63 mos, corresponding to a HR of 0.64 (p=0.033). Exploratory analyses were performed in the 70 relapsing pts (40 after placebo vs 30 after sorafenib treatment). Among relapsing pts, 82% vs 73% achieved a second CR. In these two groups, 88% and 87% of pts received a SCT as part of salvage treatment. A lower proportion of pts in the placebo arm received a second SCT as salvage treatment (5% vs 13%). In the context of salvage SCT, the proportion of haploident donors in the placebo and sorafenib group was 3% vs 15% and the incidence of Grade 3/4 GVDH was 17% vs 0%. SCT-related non-relapse mortality (NRM) was similar in both groups, but the cumulative incidence of second relapse (CIR) was higher in the sorafenib group (35% vs 54% after 48 mos). Therefore, median OS from relapse in the placebo vs sorafenib groups were 27 mos vs 10 mos, corresponding to a HR of 1.68 (p=0.098). The projected median OS from randomization is 83 mos in the placebo arm and was not reached for the sorafenib arm, corresponding to a 5-year OS of 52% vs 61% (HR 0.81, p=0.263). Conclusion: Mature follow-up data confirms the antileukemic efficacy of sorafenib in younger AML pts with and without FLT3 mutation. The addition of sorafenib to standard chemotherapy resulted in a significantly longer EFS and clinically relevant 36% risk reduction for relapse or death. Five pts need to be treated (NNT) to prevent one relapse or death at 3 years and six pts at 5 yrs. Exploratory analyses in relapsing pts show that survival after relapse is shorter after sorafenib which might be due to i) a higher rate of second SCTs and a higher incidence of haploidentical SCT despite the lower frequency of severe GVHD, most likely by chance and not explainable by systematic reasons and ii) a lower response to salvage treatment after sorafenib therapy. Despite these observations, primary sorafenib treatment led to an OS benefit with a 19% risk reduction for death which was not statistically significant since this phase II trial was not adequately powered to detect OS differences. Disclosures Rollig: Bayer: Research Funding; Janssen: Research Funding. Huttmann: Gilead, Amgen: Other: Travel cost; Bristol-Myers Squibb, Takeda, Celgene, Roche: Honoraria. Giagounidis: Acceleron: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy. Mackensen: AMGEN: Research Funding. Hanel: Roche: Honoraria; Novartis: Honoraria. Thiede: Roche: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Bayer: Consultancy, Speakers Bureau; Agendix: Employment. Schetelig: Sanofi Aventis: Consultancy, Research Funding; Roche: Honoraria; Abbvie: Honoraria; Janssen: Consultancy, Honoraria.


How could genomes have arisen? Two models based on Ganti's Chemoton are presented which demonstrate that under increasingly realistic assumptions, template replication is facilitated without the need of enzymes. It can do this because the template state is stoichiometrically coupled to the cell cycle. The first model demonstrates that under certain kinetic and environmental conditions there is an optimal template length, i.e. one which facilitates fastest replication of the Chemoton. This is in contradiction to previous findings by Csendes who claimed that longer templates allowed more rapid replication. In the second model, hydrogen bonding, phosphodiester bonding and template structure is modeled, so allowing dimer and oligomer formation, hydrolysis and elongation of templates. Here, monomer concentration oscillates throughout the cell cycle so that double strands form at low monomer concentrations and separate at high monomer concentrations. Therefore, this simulation provides evidence that a protocell with Chemoton organization is a plausible mechanism for the formation of long templates, a notorious problem for studies of the origin of life.


The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of limited cone beam computed tomography (LCBCT), an image plate system and F-speed film in assessing the depth of proximal carious lesions. Radiographs of a dry mandible with sound and carious teeth were obtained with all three methods. In 41 molar and premolar proximal surfaces, 2 observers independently measured lesion depth on the images from the three modalities. The correlation of measurements was assessed with Pearson's correlation analysis. Results from imaging modalities and histological sectioning (gold standard) were compared using Bland-Altman plots. Overall comparison of the depth measurements from the imaging modalities and the gold standard was done using repeated-measures ANOVA. Pairwise comparisons of systems were done by the Bonferroni t test. The correlation between the measurements of the two observers was 0.977 for film, 0.997 for image plate system and 0.998 for LCBCT. Bland-Altman plots revealed that LCBCT agreed very closely with the gold standard while the agreement between the latter and the image plate – or film – images was moderate. The mean difference and 95% limits of agreement between LCBCT and the gold standard were smaller than those between either image plate or F-speed film and the gold standard. The LCBCT method appears as a promising tool for detection and monitoring of proximal carious lesions.


Human parsing is an important task for human-centric understanding. Generally, two mainstreams are used to deal with this challenging and fundamental problem. The first one is employing extra human pose information to generate hierarchical parse graph to deal with human parsing task. Another one is training an end-to-end network with the semantic information in image level. In this paper, we develop an end-to-end progressive cognitive network to segment human parts. In order to establish a hierarchical relationship, a novel component-aware region convolution structure is proposed. With this structure, latter layers inherit prior component information from former layers and pay its attention to a finer component. In this way, we deal with human parsing as a progressive recognition task, that is, we first locate the whole human and then segment the hierarchical components gradually. The experiments indicate that our method has a better location capacity for the small objects and a better classification capacity for the large objects. Moreover, our framework can be embedded into any fully convolutional network to enhance the performance significantly.


The resonance fluorescence spectrum of a number of two-level atoms is driven by a gradient coherent laser field. In the weak dipole-dipole interaction region (separation less than λ/50), a very strong laser field may be applied such that the Rabi frequency is much larger than the dipole-dipole interaction energy. From the spectrum, the positions of each atom may be determined by just a few measurements. This sub-wavelength microscopy scheme is entirely based on far-field technique and it does not require point-by-point scanning, which makes the method more time-efficient. When two atoms are very close to each other (less than λ/50), the position information for each atom may still be obtained with very high accuracy provided that they are not too close to other atoms. The method may be extended to an arbitrarily large region without requiring more peak laser power and only a few measurements are required.


Cryptococcus neoformans is unique among fungal pathogens that cause disease in a mammalian host, as it secretes a polysaccharide capsule that hinders recognition by the host to facilitate its survival and proliferation. Even though it causes serious infections in immunocompromised hosts, reports of infection in hosts that are immunocompetent are on the rise. The cell wall of a fungal pathogen, its synthesis, composition, and pathways of remodelling are attractive therapeutic targets for the development of fungicides. Chitosan, a polysaccharide in the cell wall of C. neoformans is one such target, as it is critical for pathogenesis and absent in the host. The results we present shed light on the importance of one of the chitin deacetylases that synthesize chitosan during infection and further implicates chitosan as being a critical factor for the pathogenesis of C. neoformans. ABSTRACT Chitin is an essential component of the cell wall of Cryptococcus neoformans conferring structural rigidity and integrity under diverse environmental conditions. Chitin deacetylase genes encode the enyzmes (chitin deacetylases [Cdas]) that deacetylate chitin, converting it to chitosan. The functional role of chitosan in the fungal cell wall is not well defined, but it is an important virulence determinant of C. neoformans. Mutant strains deficient in chitosan are completely avirulent in a mouse pulmonary infection model. C. neoformans carries genes that encode three Cdas (Cda1, Cda2, and Cda3) that appear to be functionally redundant in cells grown under vegetative conditions. Here we report that C. neoformans Cda1 is the principal Cda responsible for fungal pathogenesis. Point mutations were introduced in the active site of Cda1 to generate strains in which the enzyme activity of Cda1 was abolished without perturbing either its stability or localization. When used to infect CBA/J mice, Cda1 mutant strains produced less chitosan and were attenuated for virulence. We further demonstrate that C. neoformans Cda genes are transcribed differently during a murine infection from what has been measured in vitro. IMPORTANCE Cryptococcus neoformans is unique among fungal pathogens that cause disease in a mammalian host, as it secretes a polysaccharide capsule that hinders recognition by the host to facilitate its survival and proliferation. Even though it causes serious infections in immunocompromised hosts, reports of infection in hosts that are immunocompetent are on the rise. The cell wall of a fungal pathogen, its synthesis, composition, and pathways of remodelling are attractive therapeutic targets for the development of fungicides. Chitosan, a polysaccharide in the cell wall of C. neoformans is one such target, as it is critical for pathogenesis and absent in the host. The results we present shed light on the importance of one of the chitin deacetylases that synthesize chitosan during infection and further implicates chitosan as being a critical factor for the pathogenesis of C. neoformans.


We analyze the ability of spin-flip time dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) to uniformly describe excited states of single, double, and mixed excitation character in closed-shell molecular systems, using the polyene oligomers as a primary test case. The results of comparison between conventional and spin-flip TD-DFT and with correlated ab initio methods indicate that spin-flip TD-DFT provides a more consistent description of the ordering and relative positions of the excited states than conventional TD-DFT provided a suitable exchange-correlation functional is used in the calculations. It is found that spin-flip TD-DFT provides a physically appealing picture of excitation processes which involve one or two electrons, as it captures their most important features and facilitates a more uniform description of excited states with different character. This makes spin-flip TD-DFT a promising approach for general modeling of excited states and spectra of medium and large size molecules, which exhibit low-lying excited states with strong double excitation character.


Several obscure facts of gerontology are briefly reviewed. A attempt is made to shape new notions of the phenomenon based on the astrocyte hypothesis of ageing in mammals. This hypothesis interprets mammal ageing as a genetic disease with fatal outcome. The disease is caused by single character acquired by the theromorph lineage of the vertebrates in the course of evolution: the transformation of radial glia cells (RGC) into star-shaped astrocytes during the postnatal development, i.e. the disappearance of the fetal radial ways of nerve cell migration from proliferative zones to the sites of their ultimate localization in the brain of adult individuals. This process is the cause for the mammal brain being postmitotic. The disappearance of RGC induces a cascade of system processes termed age-dependent mechanism of self-destruction of mammals (AMSM). The disappearance of RGC inhibits the replacement of the nerve cells that have exhausted their living resources. Nerve cells are rigidly specialized and have restricted lifetime and ability of reparation. After some period, the level of homeostasis in nerve cells starts changing steadily for the worse due to irreversible pathological changes in the cells (especially in the neurosecretory cells). This brings damage to life-sypport systems of the mammal organism thus causing its death. The species-specific maximum life span is thus determined by the rate of metabolism in the organism. AMSM probably displays a general evolutionary principle: outer factors causing death (in non-ageing organisms) are replaced by inner factors.


Fine-needle aspiration biopsy of the breast was performed in 198 patients; 158 benign and 8 malignant lesions were found, 24 samples were considered unsatisfactory and 8 suspicious. The cytological diagnosis was correlated with clinical follow-up and histological findings. The Author discusses the value of aspiration biopsy cytology in the clinical assessment of breast disease and describes the cytological appearances and diagnostic criteria in the major benign and malignant breast diseases.


ABSTRACT A beaded polymer with a poly (glycidyl methacrylate) surface shell was prepared in two steps, starting from (3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate-methyl methacrylate (MMA)-ethylene glycole dimethacrylate (EGDMA)) terpolymer beads by using suspension polymerization method and grafting using a concentrated aqueous glycidyl methacrylate solution with a CuBr–Bipyridine complex (1:3). The resulting polymer resin with 300 wt% grafted (glycidyl methacrylate) was reacted with excess of diallylamine, yielding corresponding polymers with diallylamino functions. Cis-dihydroxylation of the allyl groups was performed. The resulting polymeric sorbent has been demonstrated to be an efficient boron-specific sorbent, able to remove boron from solutions at ppm levels.


We develop and present the novel minimum estimation error variance waveform design method, that optimizes the spectral shape of a unimodular radar waveform such that the performance of a joint radar-communications system that shares spectrum is maximized. We also perform a numerical study to compare the performance of the new technique with the previously derived spectral mask shaping method. The global estimation rate and the data rate capture the radar and the communications performance respectively.


Disorders of sex development, sometimes
referred to as disorders of sex differentiation or differences of sex
development, are medical conditions involving the reproductive system. More
specifically, these terms refer to "congenital conditions in which
development of chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomical sex is atypical."The
term has been controversial, and research has shown that affected people
experience a negative impact, with the terminology impacting choice and
utilization of health care providers. The World Health Organization and many
medical journals still reference DSDs as intersex traits or conditions.


Australian scientist Shirley Jeffrey was a pioneer in oceanographic research, identifying the then theoretical chlorophyll c, and was a worldwide leader in the application of pigment methods in quantifying phytoplankton as the foundation of the oceanic food supply. Her research paved the way for the successful application of microalgae in aquaculture around the world. Jeffrey earned bachelor's and master's degrees at University of Sydney, majoring in microbiology and biochemistry, followed by a PhD from the King's College London Hospital Medical School. Returning to Sydney, she was hired by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to research chlorophyll c. Following this successful effort, she became a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1962 to 1964. She then became affiliated with the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research. After a 1973 sabbatical at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, she returned to CSIRO, where she spent the rest of her career.


Expect queues across Kensington today and Saturday when Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra come to the Proms. The orchestra has been hugely lauded for bringing together young Israeli and Arab musicians in shared endeavour; their musical success is phenomenal, and Barenboim has always stressed that the organisation's raison d'etre is artistic rather than political, not an orchestra "for peace" but "against ignorance". Not political? Just look at the programmes. Tonight's Prom – Liszt's Les Preludes, the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique – refers to the orchestra's founding in Weimar 10 years ago: Liszt, based in Weimar, championed both Wagner and Berlioz. Yet the first two pieces are laden with problematic associations. Wagner is still unofficially banned in Israel, a situation Barenboim has vigorously opposed; a bitter furore erupted when he presented the Prelude and Liebestod there as an encore. But the Liszt is even worse. This barnstorming symphonic poem was a Nazi favourite, used on German radio in the Second World War to present victory messages. Music, this programme seems to shout, should not be condemned for the connotations others have given it. The orchestra's late-night Prom offers music by two Jewish composers, Mendelssohn and Berg. And Saturday night is Beethoven's Fidelio, in which a wife rescues her husband, the political prisoner of a corrupt dictator – the work is an operatic cry against oppression. If this isn't programming with an idealistic political subtext, I don't know what is.


Clinical and electroneuromyographic studies of 1771 patients with diseases of the nervous and neuromuscular systems revealed disruption of the trophic supply to the skeletal muscles in cases of damage to both the segmento-peripheral neuromotor apparatus and vegetative and somatic segmental and suprasegmental formations. Electroneuromyographic indicators of the amyotrophic process include a decrease in the amplitude of the maximal M-response and a reduced number of functional motor units. In hyperkinetic syndromes, a paradoxical elevation of these indices is observed, which seems to be associated with "an alleviating trophotropic effect" exerted by striatal system impairment.


A summary of some of the major historic achievements in the development of the computer is detailed from the ancient efforts represented by Stonehenge through the development of the transistor.


A standard clinical trial including pharmaco-EEG investigation of the new selective anxiolytic afobazole was performed on a group of 30 patients with anxiety and anxious-asthenic disorders and premorbid individual asthenic profile traits. Afobazole exhibits the anxiolytic action with an activating component in the absence of sedative and myorelaxant effects. The clinical trial results confirmed good prospects of using the experimentally validated pharmacogenetic concept of anxioselectivity as a methodological approach to the design of new drugs possessing selective anxiolytic properties.


Nuclear power company plant maintenance has been conservative since it was born. Before we adopted DREAMS system, most of PM documents were handled with paperwork and we spent much time to perform plant maintenance. Last year KHNP constructed and implemented the computerized PM system, which was part of SAP system named DREAMS, and it made KHNP cut down expenses, save time, decrease trouble and optimize work intervals. To make PM system much better, we are trying to import equipment reliability process and we have a plan to initiate it within a year. Therefore the purpose of this paper is not only introducing an advanced methodology of plant maintenance, but showing the optimized PM system (equipment reliability process), considering safety and cost-effectiveness simultaneously.


Even before deep learning architectures became the de facto models for complex computer vision tasks, the softmax function was, given its elegant properties, already used to analyze the predictions of feedforward neural networks. Nowadays, the output of the softmax function is also commonly used to assess the strength of adversarial examples: malicious data points designed to fail machine learning models during the testing phase. However, in this paper, we show that it is possible to generate adversarial examples that take advantage of some properties of the softmax function, leading to undesired outcomes when interpreting the strength of the adversarial examples at hand. Specifically, we argue that the output of the softmax function is a poor indicator when the strength of an adversarial example is analyzed and that this indicator can be easily tricked by already existing methods for adversarial example generation.


The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP) model has been established both as a very accurate descriptive tool as well as a good basis for the design and control of running robots. In particular, approximate analytic solutions to the otherwise nonintegrable dynamics of this model provide principled ways in which gait controllers can be built, yielding invaluable insight into their stability properties. However, most existing work on the SLIP model completely disregards the effects of damping, which often cannot be neglected for physical robot platforms. In this paper, we introduce a new approximate analytical solution to the dynamics of this system that also takes into account viscous damping in the leg. We compare both the predictive performance of our approximation as well as the tracking performance of an associated deadbeat gait controller to similar existing methods in the literature and show that it significantly outperforms them in the presence of damping in the leg.


Abstract The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), ACT test scores, and the National Council Licensure Examination–Registered Nurse (NCLEX-RN) through a mediated logistic regression model. ACT is often considered one of the strongest predictors of success on the NCLEX-RN. Data from nursing students (N = 1,176) at a large, Midwestern university were analyzed. The goal was to determine if the predictive power of ACT on the NCLEX-RN stems from the influence of SES on ACT. A significant indirect effect through the causal chain of Pell Grant eligibility (i.e., SES)→ACT→NCLEX-RN was found.


This paper examines the application of Tornado codes, a class of low density parity check (LDPC) erasure codes, to archival storage systems based on massive arrays of idle disks (MAID). We present a log- structured extent-based archival file system based on Tornado Coded stripe storage. The file system is combined with a MAID simulator to emulate the behavior of a large-scale storage system with the goal of employing Tornado Codes to provide fault tolerance and performance in a power-constrained environment. The effect of power conservation constraints on system throughput is examined, and a policy of placing multiple data nodes on a single device is shown to increase read throughput at the cost of a measurable, but negligible, decrease in fault tolerance. Finally, a system prototype is implemented on a 100 TB Lustre storage cluster, providing GridFTP accessible storage with higher reliability and availability than the underlying storage architecture.


TStreams is a new language for describing parallel computations. It distinguishes the expression of the potential parallelism of the program from both • the lower-level serial details of the algorithm, and • the actual parallelism for a given target. TStreams describes what to compute and when it can be computed. It represents all styles of parallelism (e.g., task parallelism, data parallelism, loop parallelism, pipeline parallelism) in a uniform way. On the other hand it is not concerned with details of the actual computations or the data types. So TStreams is not a general-purpose language. You cannot add 2 and 2 in TStreams. TStreams has a single data structure, a single control structure and a single operation. TStreams makes no assumptions about the target architecture (shared memory/distributed memory/grid/web service/streaming). On the other hand, TStreams maximizes the effectiveness of optimizing the program for a specific target by eliminating all inessential constraints.


ABSTRACT OF THE THESISConsolidated Bio-Processing of Cellulosic Biomass for Efficient Biofuel Production Using Yeast ConsortiumbyGarima GoyalMaster of ScienceChemical and Environmental Engineering Graduate ProgramUniversity of California, Riverside, March 2011Dr. Wilfred Chen, ChairpersonFossil fuels have been the major source for liquid transportation fuels for ages. However, decline in oil reserves and environmental concerns have raised a lot of interest in alternative and renewable energy sources. One promising alternative is the conversion of plant biomass into ethanol. The primary biomass feed stocks currently being used for the ethanol industry have been food based biomass(corn and sugar cane). However, interest has recently shifted to replace these traditional feed-stocks with more abundant, non-food based cellulosic biomass such as agriculture wastes (corn stover) or crops (switch grass). The use of cellulosic biomass as feed stock for the production of ethanol via bio-chemical routes presents many technical challenges not faced with the use of corn or sugar-cane as feed-stock. Recently, a new process called consolidated Bio-processing (CBP)has been proposed.This processcombines simultaneous saccharification of lignocellulose with fermentation of the resulting sugars into a single process step mediated by a single microorganism or microbial consortium. Although there is no natural microorganism that possesses all properties of lignocellulose utilization and ethanol production desired for CBP, some bacteria and fungi exhibit some of the essential traits. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most attractive host organism for the usage of this strategy due to its high ethanol productivity at close to theoretical yields (0.51g ethanol/g glucose consumed), high osmo- and ethanol- tolerance, natural robustness in industrial processes, and ease of genetic manipulation.Introductionof the cellulosome, found naturally in microorganisms, has shown new directions to deal with recalcitrant biomass. In this case enzymes work in synergy in order to hydrolyze biomass more effectively than in case of free enzymes. A microbial consortium has been successfully developed, which ensures the functional assembly of minicellulosome on the yeast surface composed of four yeast populations. These yeast populations include: one displaying scaffoldin on its surface and three populations secreting three different cellulases in the medium to hydrolyze the cellulose. The modular nature of the consortium system allows for the fine-tuning of each population by changing their initial inoculum ratio, thereby optimizing the cellulose hydrolysis and hence ethanol production. When comparing the optimized consortium with equal ratio consortium, the optimized one produced almost double the amount of ethanol (1.87 g/l) with a yield of 0.475 g ethanol/g cellulose. To further evaluate the feasibility of using consortium for CBP, it was grown at very low optical density (OD) under anaerobic conditions. Under stressful conditions like low OD and no oxygen, the consortium system was proficient in assembling the cellulosome on its surface and growing on the PAS-avicel as sole carbon source and concomitantly producing ethanol with a yield of 87% of the theoretical value. For the dynamic study of yeast consortium system, quantitative real time PCR was used to enumerate the individual yeast population in the mixed culture. At the end of the cultivation, ratios of each population in this consortium maintained similar number as the initial inoculums ratios, which further confirms the consortium system is suitable for the application of CBP.


Abstract. The particle mixing state plays a significant yet poorly quantified role in
aerosol radiative forcing, especially for the mixing of dust (mineral
absorbing) and anthropogenic pollution (black carbon absorbing) over East
Asia. We have investigated the absorption enhancement of mixed-type aerosols
over East Asia by using the Aerosol Robotic Network observations and
radiative transfer model calculations. The mixed-type aerosols exhibit
significantly enhanced absorbing ability than the corresponding unmixed dust
and anthropogenic aerosols, as revealed in the spectral behavior of absorbing
aerosol optical depth, single scattering albedo, and imaginary refractive
index. The aerosol radiative efficiencies for the dust, mixed-type, and
anthropogenic aerosols are −101.0, −112.9, and −98.3 Wm-2τ-1
at the bottom of the atmosphere (BOA); −42.3, −22.5, and
−39.8 Wm-2τ-1 at the top of the atmosphere (TOA); and 58.7,
90.3, and 58.5 Wm-2τ-1 in the atmosphere (ATM), respectively. The
BOA cooling and ATM heating efficiencies of the mixed-type aerosols are
significantly higher than those of the unmixed aerosol types over the East
Asia region, resulting in atmospheric stabilization. In addition, the
mixed-type aerosols correspond to a lower TOA cooling efficiency, indicating
that the cooling effect by the corresponding individual aerosol components is
partially counteracted. We conclude that the interaction between dust and
anthropogenic pollution not only represents a viable aerosol formation
pathway but also results in unfavorable dispersion conditions, both
exacerbating the regional air pollution in East Asia. Our results highlight
the necessity to accurately account for the mixing state of aerosols in
atmospheric models over East Asia in order to better understand the
formation mechanism for regional air pollution and to assess its impacts on
human health, weather, and climate.


The aim of this study was to ascertain the effect of excessive ingestion of F on the metabolism of type I collagen in skeletal muscles of rats. Eight-week-old female rats (n = 36) were divided into two equal groups. Rats of group I served as control and received only tap water while those of group II received 200 mg NaF/L in their drinking water ad libitum for a period of 90 days. At the end of the experiment, the group II rats showed significantly higher concentrations of F in plasma, bone, urine, and faeces. On the other hand, the level of hydroxyproline in skeletal muscles of these F-exposed rats (452.10±22.54 μg/gm) was significantly lower than in the group I control rats (817.51±32.06 μg/gm). Acidand pepsin-soluble collagen concentrations of skeletal muscles, however, were increased significantly (p < 0.05) in the group II rats (10.42±0.57 and 70.33±2.37 μg/mg) compared to the group I control rats (6.48±0.38 and 41.99±1.25 μg/mg), respectively). The expression level of type I collagen (COL1a1) gene in the F-exposed rats decreased by 54% as compared to the control rats. In conclusion, the study found that excessive F ingestion in rats leads to increased degradation and solubility of the collagen protein along with downregulation of the expression of the COL1A1 gene in the skeletal muscles.


In the age of mass production, advertising agencies with the creative image are winning more and more clients. This creative edge in the competitive environment is result of certain creative personality traits found among the persons working with the agencies. The general myths of personality traits are- persons are different hence there traits are also different. Considering the problem the researcher tried to identify certain common creative personality traits found among the creative persons. It was revealed that certain common creative personality traits do exists, which are essential to make a person creative. And there are certain others, which are essentially found among creative persons. Keywords: Creative, Personality traits, Common


Dylan Riley reconceptualizes the nature and origins of interwar fascism in this remarkable investigation of the connection between civil society and authoritarianism. From the late nineteenth century to World War I, voluntary associations exploded across Europe, especially among rural non-elites. But the development of this "civil society" did not produce liberal democracy in Italy, Spain, and Romania. Instead, Riley finds that it undermined the nascent liberal regimes in these countries and was a central cause of the rise of fascism. Developing an original synthesis of Gramsci and Tocqueville, Riley explains this surprising outcome by arguing that the development of political organizations in the three nations failed to keep pace with the proliferation of voluntary associations, leading to a crisis of political representation to which fascism developed as a response. His argument shows how different forms of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Romania arose in response to the divergent paths taken by civil society development in each nation. Presenting the seemingly paradoxical argument that the rapid development of civil society facilitated the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Romania, Riley credibly challenges the notion that a strong civil society necessarily leads to the development of liberal democracy. Scholars and students interested in debates about the rise of fascism and authoritarianism, democratization, civil society, and comparative and historical methods will find his arguments compelling and his conclusions challenging.


originally built under Augustus, reconstructed and enlarged in the reign of Severus, is among the best preserved of the buildings of Ostia, and well repays the careful study which by a combination of evidence drawn from the remains in situ, as well as from the fallen fragments of the upper storeys, has resulted in a convincing reconstruction of the entire building. The various parts of the structure are briefly but sufficiently described, and the whole forms an admirable account in a small compass of the arrangements of a typical Roman theatre. As such it would serve to elucidate not only the remains at Ostia, but similar structures in other parts of the empire. The plan and illustrations, though small, are adequate. It may be hoped that these will be followed by other examples of both kinds, and especially by more descriptions of individual monuments, not excluding those of Rome itself.


Irisin is a newly discovered 112 amino acid residues' glycosylated protein hormone that was firstly found up-regulated by exercise-induced peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1 alpha (PGC-1α) and then play an important role in circulation so as to target other organs. It conducts many downstream events including osteoblast differentiation, nerve cell and β-cell regeneration and so on. In clinical research, non-inflammation and inflammation related diseases correlated with basal level of irisin and they benefited from exercise-induced irisin endocrinology.


Sufficient experience has been gained to establish resection of the esophagus with transthoracic esophagogastrostomy as the operation of choice for the treatment of patients with carcinoma of the lower thoracic esophagus. Results, both short- and long-term, have been good enough to establish this procedure as the standard method of treatment for cancers of this segment of the esophagus. Unfortunately, however, the results obtained by surgical extirpation of carcinoma of the upper thoracic esophagus have left much to be desired. Indeed, after resection of this segment of the esophagus with high esophagogastrostomy in the posterior mediastinum, the immediate mortality has been so high and the late results so poor that there seems to be a current tendency toward abandonment of any surgical approach to these lesions and toward preference for other methods of therapy, particularly irradiation. At the same time, there has recently appeared in the literature some enthusiasm for replacement


Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) need more autonomy. In light of inherent size, weight and power (SWaP) constraints, avionics with artificial intelligence implemented using neuromorphic technology offers a potential solution. We demonstrate intelligent drone control using spiking neural networks (SNNs), which can run on neuromorphic hardware. We present "BatSLAM", a modular SNN for autonomous localization, navigation, and control of UAVs. The bio-inspired algorithms are implemented using the neural modeling and simulation software Nengo, and are able to control the drone to autonomously perform a complex "house search" task in an AirSim simulated environment using only local sensor feedback. In this task, the drone is randomly placed and given a target object. The BatSLAM network localizes the drone, retrieves the target object location from memory, and then guides the drone along the most efficient path through the house to the target, avoiding obstacles and maneuvering through doors and stairways. We present benchmark results showing the BatSLAM network achieves 97.2% success rate in navigating to target objects in the house. To the best of our knowledge, the BatSLAM network presented here is the first in the world to carry out localization, navigation, and control in a fully spiking implementation.


The annual electricity consumption of cryptocurrency transactions has grown substantially in recent years, partially driven by the increasing difficulty in mining, but also driven by the large number of new market participants that have been attracted by the elevated prices of this developing financial asset. Total carbon production from mining now likely exceeds that generated by individual developed nations. This is now a prevailing and accepted feature in cryptocurrency markets, however unsustainable it may be. This paper investigates as to how Bitcoin's price volatility and the underlying dynamics of cryptocurrency mining characteristics affect underlying energy markets and utilities companies. Further analysis of potential side-effects within the market for Exchange Traded Funds are considered. The results show a sustained and significant influence of cryptocurrency energy-usage on the performance of some companies in the energy sector as separated by jurisdiction, emphasising the importance of further assessment of environmental impacts of cryptocurrency growth. Robustness testing presents evidence that dynamic correlations peaked during the sharp Bitcoin price appreciation of late-2017 as investors re-evaluated how this increased energy usage would influence the profitability of utility companies.


Background and aim: Thrombocytosis is a marker of inflammatory reaction with varied clinical conditions. The significance of thrombocytosis in relation to severity of the disease in under-five children with lower respiratory tract infection was evaluated. Method: It was a prospective observational study conducted during 12 months on 230 children within ages, 2 to 59 months, hospitalized for lower respiratory tract infection. Admitted patients were classified as children with and without thrombocytosis. Based on clinical severity patients were grouped; complications from thrombocytosis were analyzed and compared with those without thrombocytosis. Results: Of 230 children, 70 (30.4%) patients were with pneumonia, 64 (27.82%) were with severe pneumonia and 96 (41.7%) were with very severe pneumonia. Severity of pneumonia was more in infancy and 53.04% of total patients with pneumonia had thrombocytosis. The association between total leucocytes count and severity of pneumonia was significant. Thrombocytosis was seen in 82% case of pneumonia with pleural effusion. There was significant association of thrombocytosis with prolonged hospital stay. The mortality was 2.2% which had no significant association with thrombocytosis. Conclusion: Thrombocytosis is a frequent finding among children with lower respiratory tract infection. Children with thrombocytosis have more severe pneumonia with longer duration of hospitalization than those with normal platelet count. Platelet count may be used as a marker of disease severity and complication in children with lower respiratory tract infection.


Diabetes is on the rise in New Zealand with over 250,000 New Zealanders enrolled in primary health organisations for diabetes (predominantly Type 2) and an estimated 100,000 more remain undiagnosed. Records indicate that 68.5% of Pacific women are prone to gestational diabetes (GDM) and Type 2 diabetes compared with Maori with 47.3% while the diabetes rate of Indian women is only 5.5%.
Clinical trials, regardless of the therapeutic area, collect a huge amount of data which can be structured or unstructured in nature. Therefore, it becomes difficult to analyse such huge amount of data. As a result this research evaluates different data mining methods capable of analysing big clinical data. Using primary and secondary research, this study proposes one of the best techniques that can be used in data mining of such huge data. To accomplish this, the study briefly discusses different data mining methods. The approach aims to extract information from clinical trial data mining methods to improve on them analytically, and above all to make a recommendation for the best possible data mining and analytical technique.


BACKGROUND
The value of the preparation of the colon prior colorectal surgery remains debatable. Since installed as traditional the use of this routine, few studies have been conducted to support the safety of surgeries done without mechanical bowel preparation.

AIM
To determine if there is a correlation between postoperative complications and no use of mechanical bowel preparation in operated patients.

METHODS
Was conducted a prospective study in patients undergoing coloproctology abdominal surgery without prior bowel preparation.

RESULTS
The sample consisted of 126 patients, 57 men and 69 women. The average age was 54 years (19 to 89). Among patients who had comorbidities (43 patients - 34,12%), 30 (23,80%) had arterial hypertension. Antibiotic prophylaxis was used in 89,70%. Among the patients, 14,28% had complications: eight (6,34%) wound infection, six (4,76%) anastomotic dehiscence and four (3,17%) fistula.

CONCLUSION
The pre-operative mechanical bowel preparation is not essential in the routine of colorectal surgeries.


Earlier this laboratory recognized lipoxygenase catalyzed reactions as a novel pathway for xenobiotic metabolism. To further explore the spectrum of reactions catalyzed by lipoxygenase, sulfoxidation of thiobenzamide was studied. Purified soybean lipoxygenase was found to oxidize thiobenzamide to thiobenzamide sulfoxide in the presence of linoleic acid at a rate of 241 nmoles/min/nmole enzyme. The reaction was dependent upon enzyme, pH, thiobenzamide and linoleic acid concentration. Other polyunsaturated fatty acids namely arachidonic acid, cis, 11, 14-eicosadienoic acid and linolenic acid also supported the sulfoxidation reaction. Nordihydroguaiaretic acid and phenidone, the classical inhibitors of lipoxygenase, significantly blocked the sulfoxidation of thiobenzamide.


Reducing the thermal conductivity of thermoelectric materials has been a field of intense research to improve the efficiency of thermoelectric devices. One approach is to create a nanostructured thermoelectric material that has a low thermal conductivity due to its high number of grain boundaries or voids, which scatter phonons. Here, we present a new method based on spark ablation nanoparticle generation to create nanostructured thermoelectric materials, demonstrated using Bi2Te3. The lowest achieved thermal conductivity was <0.1 W m−1 K−1 at room temperature with a mean nanoparticle size of 8±2 nm and a porosity of 44%. This is comparable to the best published nanostructured Bi2Te3 films. Oxidation is also shown to be a major issue for nanoporous materials such as the one here, illustrating the importance of immediate, air-tight packaging of such materials after synthesis and deposition.


Regenerative medicine involves methods to control and modify normal tissue repair processes. Polymer and cell constructs are under research to create tissue that replaces the affected area in cardiac tissue after myocardial infarction (MI). The aim of the present study is to evaluate the behavior of differentiated and undifferentiated mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in vitro and in silico and to compare the results that both offer when it comes to the design process of biodevices for the treatment of infarcted myocardium in biomodels. To assess in vitro behavior, MSCs are isolated from rat bone marrow and seeded undifferentiated and differentiated in multiple scaffolds of a gelled biomaterial. Subsequently, cell behavior is evaluated by trypan blue and fluorescence microscopy, which showed that the cells presented high viability and low cell migration in the biomaterial. An agent-based model intended to reproduce as closely as possible the behavior of individual MSCs by simulating cellular-level processes was developed, where the in vitro results are used to identify parameters in the agent-based model that is developed, and which simulates cellular-level processes: Apoptosis, differentiation, proliferation, and migration. Thanks to the results obtained, suggestions for good results in the design and fabrication of the proposed scaffolds and how an agent-based model can be helpful for testing hypothesis are presented in the discussion. It is concluded that assessment of cell behavior through the observation of viability, proliferation, migration, inflammation reduction, and spatial composition in vitro and in silico, represents an appropriate strategy for scaffold engineering.


Introduction: Life stories have taken on a more prominent role in the field of psychology. Our life story is formed by our self defining memories, which are part of the autobiographical memory. Various research has found that self defining memories are related to psychological variables, like personality characteristics and depression. Depression is a major issue amongst the elderly, therefore this research will focus on the mediating role of self defining memories in the relationship between personality traits and depression in the elderly. Method: Participants are members of the LISS-panel of CentERdata. The Self-Defining Memory Task (SDMT), International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were administered. 180 participants in the range of 55-75 of age filled out the questionnaires and 520 self-defining memories were collected. Based on the method of Baron & Kenny a correlation- and mediation analysis was performed. Results: 38% of the memories had a positive valence, 15% was specific, 31% contained a positive evaluation and 13% of the memories were given a positive meaning. The average depression score was 3.06. with SD = 3.04. Neuroticism was positively correlated to depression. Extraversion, altruism, conscientiousness and openness to experiences were negatively correlated to depression. Certain personality characteristics were related to the content, valence and meaning of self-defining memories. Openness to experiences was positively related to memories about leisure and altruism was related to memories containing a positive meaning. Self-defining memories referring to health and material/ historical circumstances and memories with a negative valence were positively related to depression. No mediating effects were found of self-defining memories in the relationship between personality characteristics and depression. Discussion: Self-defining memories do not facilitate the correlation between personality traits and depression, but a negative valence of self-defining memories have a contribution to depression. The personality characteristics neuroticism and extraversion are highly related to depression. Differences in the outcomes can partially be explained by differences in the studied group, the research design and the intercorrelations among the personality characteristics in the current study. A personal approach is recommended to treat depression more efficient and effective, where as the treatment will focus on the personality structure of the client and the reduction of negative self-defining memories and the stimulation of positive self-defining memories. More research is needed in personality characteristics in relation to depression, the development of depression and the added value of self-defining memories to research the practical implications of narrative treatment methods.


Biometric systems can be attacked in several ways and the most common being spoofing the input sensor. Therefore, anti-spoofing is one of the most essential prerequisite against attacks on biometric systems. For face recognition it is even more vulnerable as the image capture is non-contact based. Several anti-spoofing methods have been proposed in the literature for both contact and non-contact based biometric modalities often using video to study the temporal characteristics of a real vs. spoofed biometric signal. This paper presents a novel multi-feature evidence aggregation method for face spoofing detection. The proposed method fuses evidence from features encoding of both texture and motion (liveness) properties in the face and also the surrounding scene regions. The feature extraction algorithms are based on a configuration of local binary pattern and motion estimation using histogram of oriented optical flow. Furthermore, the multi-feature windowed videolet aggregation of these orthogonal features coupled with support vector machine-based classification provides robustness to different attacks. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach by evaluating on three standard public databases: CASIA-FASD, 3DMAD and MSU-MFSD with equal error rate of 3.14%, 0%, and 0%, respectively.


Fairness to current Internet traffic, particularly TCP, is an important requirement for new protocols in order to be safely deployed in the Internet. This specifically applies to multicast protocols that should be deployed with great care. In this paper we provide a set of experiments that can be used as a benchmark to evaluate the fairness of multicast congestion control mechanisms when running with competing TCP flows. We carefully select the experiments in such a way to target specific congestion control mechanisms and to reveal the differences between TCP and the proposed multicasting protocol. This enables us to have a better understanding oft he proposed protocol behavior and to evaluate its fairness and when violations can happen. To clarify our experiments we carry them on a single-rate case study protocol, pgmcc, using NS-2 simulations. Our analysis shows the strengths and potential problems of the protocol and point to possible improvements. Several congestion control mechanisms are targeted by the experiments such as timeouts, response to ACKs and losses, independent and congestion losses effect. In addition, we evaluate multicast mechanisms such as the effect of multiple receivers, group representative selection, and feedback suppression when there is network support.


This study assessed differences in agility performance between athletes of team and individual sports by assessing change-of-direction speed (CODS) as pre-planned agility and reactive agility (RA) as non-planed in different spatial configurations. The study involved 36 individual (sprint, hurdles, jumping, tennis, and judo) and 34 team (soccer, basketball, and handball) athletes. CODS and RA were measured with a light-based reactive training system in a frontal (FR), universal (UN), semicircular (SC), and lateral (LA) design. Lower limb power and sprint performance were also measured in a 10 m single leg jump test and 15 m sprint. Individual athletes showed significantly better performance in three of the eight agility tests: LA-RA, UN-RA, and SC-CODS (p < 0.008, p < 0.036, and p < 0.027, respectively) and were found to present stronger correlations (p < 0.01) between jump test performance and the CODS condition. Team athletes showed stronger associations between sprint performance and the CODS condition. In the RA condition both jump and sprint performance showed stronger correlations in the group of individual athletes. Agility performance as measured by CODS and RA should improve with enhanced of motor proficiency. Finally, the tests applied in this experiment seem to be multidimensional, but require spatio-temporal adjustment for their implementation, so that they meet the requirements of the particular sport.


In this work, we report a highly sensitive fluorescent sensor (TPE-QN) with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics for the detection of iodide (I−) and mercury (Hg2+) ions. TPE-QN is based on tetraphenylethene (TPE)-functionalized quinolinium salts with hexafluorophosphate (PF6−) as the counterion, and exhibits intense red emission in aqueous media when nanoaggregates are formed. In the presence of I−, the emission of TPE-QN can be effectively quenched due to synergistic electrostatic interactions and drastic collisions between aggregates of TPE-QN and I−, enabling TPE-QN to work as a fluorescent "turn-off" sensor for I− with a detection limit of 22.6 nM. Moreover, the complex of TPE-QN and I− (TPE-QN–I) can secondarily recognize Hg2+ by showing a fluorescence "turn-on" signal because of the high affinity between Hg2+ and I−, and the detection limit for Hg2+ is as low as 71.8 nM. Furthermore, the high selectivity and sensitivity of TPE-QN makes it quite qualified for detecting the low concentration of I− and Hg2+ in real samples such as running water and urine.


We conducted an interlaboratory comparison between our radiocarbon-related research group at Lund University and the established ETH-Zurich facility to test the quality of the results obtained in Lund and to identify sources of potential background differences and scatter. We did find differences between the 2 laboratories in the contributions of chemical preparation, graphitization, and measurements to the overall background. The resulting overall background is, however, almost similar. Multiple measurements on 2 wood samples of known calendar age yield consistent and accurate 14C ages in both laboratories. However, one of our known samples indicates that IntCal09 is ≃38 ± 16 14C BP too young at 7020 calendar yr BP, which is consistent with one of the raw data sets contributing to IntCal09. Overall, our results show that a systematic approach to compare the different steps involved in 14C age determination is a useful exercise to pinpoint targets for improvement of lab routines and assess interlaboratory differences. These effects do not necessarily become apparent when comparing 14C measurements that integrate over the whole process of preparation and measurement of different laboratories.


Call centre development has been extensive and ongoing across the industrial world. These developments have resulted from an ongoing process of consolidation and restructuring of service work that has been facilitated by the continuing application of information and communication technology (ICT) to production in the service sector. Thus far, the academic discussion of call centres has been dominated by labour processes, particularly in the private sector. Meanwhile, there has been an extensive and growing use of call centres to deliver public services. Hence, this article draws on secondary data, policy documents and registered workplace agreements to examine employment related issues in Australian public sector call centres while comparing these issues with those found in private sector call centres.


A pattern recognition methodology is presented which utilizes spectral monitoring of electromechanical oscillations to assess the transient stability of interconnected power systems. The proposed frequency-domain approach permits definitive recognition of unstable dynamic modes. This is used to design an adaptive linear classifier which, in the developmental implementation, virtually eliminates both false dismissals and false alarms. The result is an accurate and reliable decision-making system which performs transient stability monitoring and assessment in real time. >


Thermistor cables have been deployed at two sites beneath Ronne Ice Shelf, Antarctica. One site is to the east of a submarine ridge that delineates the eastern boundary of the Ronne Depression, and the other is 100 km to the north, above the eastern slope of the depression. Long records from the cables (up to 22 months) indicate a large difference in the temperature variability at the two sites, being an order of magnitude greater in the Ronne Depression (site 2). Although the records appear otherwise similar, there is no significant correlation between them. The high variability in the site 2 record has allowed the construction of a simple descriptive model of the local oceanographic regime. Winter freezing in the open water north of the ice front generates Western Shelf Water (WSW), a type of High Salinity Shelf Water, which travels southwest beneath the ice shelf, appearing at site 2 as a slope-trapped current at the bottom of the water column. Baroclinic instability in the flow manifests itself in the site 2 temperature record as oscillations on time scales of 5 to 15 days. The disturbances cause a periodic east-west advection of water masses across the Ronne Depression. Site 2 is on the eastern slope of the depression, where the wave-induced eastward motion forces Ice Shelf Water to rise, resulting in periodic ice-platelet formation in the water column, as surmised from conductivity-temperature-depth measurements at the site. The depth of the WSW layer decreases by 40 to 60 m during a 100-day period, starting some 4 months after the beginning of the summer. Assuming an absence of significant WSW production during the summer, the 4-month delay implies a minimum average speed of WSW flow of about 0.02 m s−1. The WSW flux into the Ronne Depression is estimated at 3 × 105 m3s−1.


This paper presents and solves a model for the multiple supplier inventory grouping problem, which involves the minimization of logistics costs for a firm that has multiple suppliers with capacity limitations. The costs included in the model are purchasing, transportation, ordering, and inventory holding, while the firm's objective is to determine the optimal flows and groups of commodities from each supplier. We present an algorithm, which combines subgradient optimization and a primal heuristic, to quickly solve the multiple supplier inventory grouping problem. Our algorithm is tested extensively on problems of various sizes and structures, and its performance is compared to that of OSL, a state-of-the-art integer programming code. The computational results indicate that our approach is extremely efficient for solving the multiple supplier inventory grouping problem.


This paper examines the combined effect of three socioeconomic deprivations: education, wealth, and health on the utilisation of maternal health care services (MHCSs) among Bangladeshi women using the data of Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2014. Both bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses were employed in this study. Multivariable logistic regression analysis is used to examine the effect of the multidimensional socioeconomic deprivations on the use of MHCSs. Of the women who had given at least one live birth in the three years preceding the survey, 43% were non-deprived by any dimension; 31% were deprived in one, 20% in two and 6% in all three dimensions. The prevalence of receiving four or more antenatal care (ANC) services was 31%; 38% used facility-based delivery (FBD) and 42% sought skilled birth assistance (SBA). When education and wealth deprivations were combined, women were significantly (P<0.01) least likely to seek assistance from SBA (OR=0.18, 95% CI: 0.14-0.24) and FBD (OR=0.17, 95% CI: 0.12-0.22); and when all three deprivations were combined women were less likely to receive ANC at least once (OR=0.16, 95% CI: 0.12-0.22) than those who were not deprived. Programmes should be undertaken to expand maternal health voucher schemes in more sub-districts and quality of care should be ensured for equal accessibility and availability of MHCSs targeting deprived and disadvantaged areas and women to ensure safe motherhood practices in Bangladesh. Our findings show that the situation of maternal health care in Bangladesh is not satisfactory.Antenatal care


Author(s): Smith, Desiree | Advisor(s): Jung, Heejung | Abstract: The Environmental Protection Agency and European Commission are requiring in-situ on-board diagnostic systems to increase accuracy in monitoring nitrous oxides and particulate matter vehicle emissions. Particulate Matter (PM) sensors are a derivative of this regulation and have been implemented to assess diesel particulate filter failure, as well as solid particle number. The design of PM sensors is varied by company (e.g., Honeywell, Bosch, Emisense, and Delphi) in addition to the applied method. The method of investigation in this study is electrical charging and the capacity for corona discharge generation. Boltzmann's Law for charged particles is generally used to predict electrical charging (i.e., particle charging). However, the PM sensor design and method in this study generates a signal that is amplified higher than can be theoretically explained by this law. Signal amplification can only be attributed to ionization due to the presence of corona discharge, besides particle charging in an electric field. A fundamental study probing into the effects of corona discharge on PM sensor signal amplification is necessary to understand the underlying operational principles of the sensor. This study will provide qualitative insights into the electrical properties of PM and the conditions in which electrical properties are influenced by varying physical conditions. The investigation is performed by correlating sensor response to varying physical conditions of PM. The results show that the sensor response is linearly dependent on particle concentration and that signal strength is limited on the sample flow rate. Understanding the operational principles of this design could lead to the development of a relatively inexpensive PM sensor with unprecedented high signal sensitivity.


Increasing rate of unemployment among the graduates of Iranian higher agricultural education system has been developed into one of the major socio-economic problems of the nation. Entrepreneurship is one of the most important factors contributing to economic and social development, that is, it is a main driver for employment creation. As such, many policy initiatives in Iran attempt to pull agricultural students toward an entrepreneurial career choice. In this regard, considering the importance of entrepreneurship, and applying Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior, the present study was conducted to investigate the factors affecting entrepreneurial behavior of agricultural students in Razi University. The population of this study consisted of all senior agricultural students of Razi University in Iran (N=300), 169 of whom were selected as the sample using the proportional stratified sampling method. Data were analyzed by SPSS and AMOS version23 software in two phases of descriptive and inferential statistics. Results of structural equation modeling revealed that personal attitude toward entrepreneurship, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm were the main predictors of entrepreneurial intention (R2=0.46) and behavior (R2=0.45) among agricultural students. The findings of this study can have practical implications concerning the promotion of entrepreneurial intention and behavior among agricultural students for higher agricultural education managers, planners, and educators.


This paper analyzes the Polish model of ensuring the legal and correct performance of imprisonment and other forms of detention as aresponse to crime. Key issues include indications of: supervision criteria, the range of supervisory powers and the role of the judge in the implementation of imprisonment. The analyzed solutions are very original in their character. They reflect many years of experience of the Polish penitentiary system and constitute amodern part of penitentiary law.


In an 8-year old boy with bilateral cryptorchism the heterochromatin region deletion of Y-chromosome and the satellites in its long arm were found (karyotype 46, XYq-S). The same Y-chromosome was found in proband's father. Moreover, the proband had large brilliant satellites in the chromosome 22 and a very large segment of centromeric heterochromatin in the chromosome 1; both were inherited from his mother. The abnormal Y-chromosome is, probably, due to an exchange with heterochromatin regions between an acrocentric chromosome and Y-chromosome. The combination of above peculiarities of proband's chromosome set is supposed to promote the sex differentiation disorders in embryogenesis which led to an incomplete masculinization.


A study of liver biopsy specimens was done for 28 patients with sarcoidosis. Epithelioid cell granulomas were found in 22 cases. Among the patients with granulomas, 13 had had fever and/or arthralgia; no such symptoms were observed among the patients who did not have granulomas. We believe that these symptoms constitute a good indication for performing a liver biopsy. Measurement of the concentration of the granulomas in the liver tissue suggests that the probability of false-negative results is very remote, making repetition of the biopsy unnecessary. The nonspecific lesions found in the liver progress to epithelioid cell granulomas in a similar way to that found within pulmonary alveoli.


Deaf Heritage, Jack R. Gannon, 483 pp., $26.95 hardback, $19.95 paperback, National Association of the Deaf, 814 Thayer Ave., Silver Spring, Md., 1981. Deaf Heritage, recently selected to be honored by the American Library Association as an outstanding literary contribution on or about disabled people, is the first comprehensive narrative history of the deaf and the culture of the deaf in the United States. The publication was made possible through efforts of Jack Gannon, National Association of the Deaf, and Gallaudet College. The edition is a compilation of events ranging from early attempts to educate the deaf to latest accomplishments of the deaf in the United States. The text is prepared in chronological order and categorical order as well, which makes the book an excellent reference.


American chestnuts have been genetically engineered to express an oxalate oxidase gene isolated from wheat, which allows the plants to degrade oxalic acid, the virulence factor produced by Cryphonectria parasitica, the pathogenic fungus that causes the chestnut blight. In this study, we investigated the effect of oxalate oxidase gene expression on rate of mycorrhizal colonization of American chestnut root tips. Sixmonth-old transgenic and wildtype plantlets were placed in a soil inoculant and cultured in a greenhouse for 7 months, then root tips were visually assessed to estimate how many were colonized (expressed as a percentage). Three genotypes were used: ELLIS 1 trees were a cloned wildtype, and Darling 54 and Darling 58 were ELLIS 1 genotypes transformed with the oxalate oxidase gene, differing only in where the gene construct was inserted into the genome. Of surviving trees, 100% of both ELLIS 1 and Darling 58 trees were >95% colonized. Ninety percent of Darling 54 were >95% colonized, and 10% were 90-95% colonized. A Fisher's exact test of independence was used to reach the conclusion that expression of the oxalate oxidase gene has no effect on mycorrhizal colonization, a result consistent with similar studies.


There is no doubt that solid waste management is a very complex issue, particularly when recycling is part of the programme where one needs to retrieve the maximum from a very poor quality input. Like most complex issues, it has to be tackled from many different points of view, with all the actors playing their roles towards attaining a common objective. No magic wands exist, nor universal solutions applicable to every geographical and social context. We have to deal with situations where the most important challenge is to reliably collect the waste and store it somewhere, up to more advanced waste management processes, where not one single kilogram of waste is 'wasted', neither in terms of material, nor of energy. Here I focus on the latter situation, touching some points that have fuelled debate and that deserve continued attention. Finally, I will also give some insights on what is going on in Italy, a nation where waste management has become 'a matter of State', which periodically floods the media because of various emergency situations stemming from lapses in planning and execution.


This paper stems from previous work of certain of the authors, where the issue of inducing distributions on lower dimensional spaces arose as a natural outgrowth of the main goal: the estimation of conditional probabilities, given other partially specified conditional probabilities as a premise set in a probability logic framework. This paper is concerned with the following problem. Let 1 m < n be fixed positive integers, ; ¤ D R some open domain, and h W D ! R a function yielding a full partitioning of D into a family, denoted M.h/, of lower-dimensional surfaces/manifolds via inverse mapping h 1 as D D S M.h/, where M.h/ D 1h .t/ W t in range.h/o, noting each h .t/ can also be considered the solution set of all X inD of the simultaneous equations h.X/ D t . Let X be a random vector (rv) over D having a probability density function (pdf) f . Then, if we add sufficient smoothness conditions concerning the behavior of h (continuous differentiability, full rank Jacobian matrix dh.X/=dX over D, etc.), can an explicit elementary approach be found for inducing from the full absolutely continuous distribution of X over D a necessarily singular distribution for X restricted to be over M.h/ that satisfies a list of natural desirable properties? More generally, for fixed positive integer r , we can pose a similar question concerning rv .X/, when W D ! R is some bounded a.e. continuous function, not necessarily admitting a pdf.


Understanding Health systems have now become the priority focus of researchers and policy makers, who have progressively moved away from a project-centred perspectives. The new tendency is to facilitate a convergence between health system developers and disease-specific programme managers in terms of both thinking and action, and to reconcile both approaches: one focusing on integrated health systems and improving the health status of the population and the other aiming at improving access to health care. Eye care interventions particularly in developing countries have generally been vertically implemented (e.g. trachoma, cataract surgeries) often with parallel organizational structures or specialised disease specific services. With the emergence of health system strengthening in health strategies and in the service delivery of interventions there is a need to clarify and examine inputs in terms governance, financing and management. This present paper aims to clarify key concepts in health system strengthening and describe the various components of the framework as applied in eye care interventions.


For many years, the United States has blocked trade with Cuba, but the situation has recently changed. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 loosened U.S. sanctions on agricultural exports to Cuba, allowing Cuba to buy from the United States using cash but not credit. The objectives of this study are to analyze Cuban agricultural production and trade and to estimate potential agricultural trade flows that could occur between the United States and Cuba if the embargo was completely lifted. The effects of various increases in Cuban GDP on Cuban import demand are also analyzed. Cuba could be a significant market for U.S. exports of wheat, wheat flour, rice, corn, pulses, poultry, and dairy products, while the United States would likely import sugar, citrus, and tobacco products from Cuba.


REST has become a popular architectural style among service providers. It is considered as an easy way to design and consume Web services. REST can be realized as using HTTP PUT, POST, and GET operations. However, the focus on the implementation technique often leads to ignoring the original REST constraints and definitions proposed by R. Fielding. Thus, this way of thinking might result in misuse of REST. In addition, less emphasis is put on designing good REST APIs, which indeed is not a trivial task. In this paper, we propose a questionnaire-based method, motivated by speech-act theory, to harvest the essential API concepts and their relationships from the functional service requirements. We present our pattern-based implementation of the method. We define a reusable REST API pattern, which can be applied in different contexts to produce an API model according to the REST design principles. The main benefit of the questionaire-based method is on shifting the focus from an operation-based to a resource-oriented mindset. The paper includes an empirical evaluation.


Large terminal fragments of human chromosomes 2p, 6p, 8q, 12q, and 18q were cloned using yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs). RecA-assisted restriction endonuclease (RARE) cleavage analysis of genomic DNA samples from II unrelated individuals using YAC-derived probes confirmed the telomeric localizations of the half-YACs studied. The cloned fragments provide telomeric closure of maps for the respective chromosome arms and will supply the reagents needed for analyzing and sequencing these distal subtelomeric regions.


Biological activity of water can be apparently judged by the colonization of bacteria (microbes). In order to find out the extent of pollution and the relationship between inorganic matters and microbiota, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of bacteria in various types of sewage waters, namely sewage water by the residential colonies (group I), industrial waste water (group II), sewage treatment hub (group III), unorganized collected waste water (group IV) and old residential waste collection center (group V), of Bikaner city (Rajasthan, India) was carried out from February, 2010 to May, 2010. Water samples were taken from surface only owing to low depth and investigated for various abiotic factors (viz. transparency, pH, carbonate, bicarbonate, total alkalinity, total hardness, salinity, chloride, calcium, magnesium, sulphate, nitrate, silica, and inorganic phosphorous) and biotic factors (viz. number and diversity of bacteria). The domestic sewage water causes major water borne diseases basing upon Total Bacterial Count (TBC) and coliform Count (CC). The coliform count in the present study ranged from 2.5 to 5.12 MPN/mL. Comparision of microbial population in sewage water from all different Groups was done and the higher values of TBC and CC were recorded only in Sewage treatement hub (Group III).


Insofar as John Stuart Mill can be accurately described as a socialist, his is a socialism that a classical liberal ought to be able to live with, if not to love. Mill's view is that capitalist economies should at some point undergo a `spontaneous' and incremental process of socialization, involving the formation of worker-controlled `socialistic' enterprises through either the transformation of `capitalistic' enterprises or creation de novo. This process would entail few violations of core libertarian principles. It would proceed by way of a series of voluntary transactions. Capitalists' property rights would be respected throughout. The process would take place within a national system of laws that permits private ownership of productive property and competition, and would not result in that system's overthrow. And, if we accept some basic tenets of Mill's social philosophy, the outcome at which we should expect the process to arrive is a `patchwork' economy in which capitalistic and socialistic enterprises exist side by side.


This book looks at the struggle between the processes of globalization and geopolitical forces over the last 150 years. The twentieth century witnessed a struggle between geopolitical states who wanted to close off and control earth space, resources and population and globalizing ones who wished to open up the world to the free flow of ideas, goods and services. Brian W. Blouet analyzes the tug-of-war between these tendencies, the playing out of which determined the shape and behavior of today's world. Beginning his survey in the late nineteenth century, Blouet shows how the Second World War served to focus international awareness on the ramifications of global controls, and how we may be facing the end of geopolitics today.


A recombinant clone expressing an amylase was identified from an Escherichia coli generated genomic library of the thermophilic, moderately halophilic, anaerobic bacterium Halothermothrix orenii by activity screening, and the gene encoding the enzyme was designated AmyA. The amyA gene was 1545 bp long, and encoded a 515 residue protein composed of a 25 amino acid putative signal peptide and a 490 amino acid mature protein. It possessed the five consensus regions characteristic of the alpha-amylase family and showed the greatest homology to the Bacillus megaterium group of alpha-amylases. The amyA gene was expressed in E. coli as a hexahistidine-tagged enzyme and purified. The purified recombinant enzyme was optimally active at 65 degrees C in 5% (w/v) NaCl at pH 7.5, with significant activity retained in the presence of up to 25% (w/v) NaCl. It had a specific activity of 22.32 U mg(-1) and required NaCl and CaCl(2) for optimum activity and thermostability. The relatively high proportion of acidic amino acids typically observed for many enzymes from halophiles was absent in H. orenii AmyA.


SUMMARY This paper presents a novel approach for the description of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) tasks that involve two-arm coordination, and where tasks are described by the relative pose between the human hand and the robot hand. We develop a unified kinematic model that takes into account the human-robot system from a holistic point of view, and we also propose a kinematic control strategy for pHRI that comprises different levels of shared autonomy. Since the kinematic model takes into account the complete human-robot interaction system and the kinematic control law is closed loop at the interaction level, the kinematic constraints of the task are enforced during its execution. Experiments are performed in order to validate the proposed approach, including a particular case where the robot controls the human arm by means of functional electrical stimulation (FES), which may potentially provide useful solutions for the interaction between assistant robots and impaired individuals (e.g., quadriplegics and hemiplegics).


Ubiquitin is involved in cell-cycle control and DNA replication through a specific proteolytic pathway. Our previous studies demonstrated selected higher expression of a gene encoding ubiquitin-ribosomal protein S27a in poorly differentiated colon carcinoma cell lines. In this study, we evaluated this ubiquitin hybrid protein gene expression in surgical specimens of colon cancers. Northern blot analysis showed that ubiquitin hybrid protein messenger RNA was overexpressed in primary colon cancers compared with adjacent normal colon mucosae in 17 of 20 patients. Dot blot analysis of RNA of 27 tumor samples revealed significantly greater expression in higher Dukes' stage primary colon tumors and liver metastases. These data imply that protein translation machinery is highly activated during progression and metastasis of colon tumors, and that ubiquitin hybrid protein may be useful as a marker of biological aggressiveness.


Background: There is limited research evaluating addictions programs for Aboriginal people in urban contexts. Objective: The current project aimed to fill this gap by conducting an evaluation of the Aboriginal Alcohol and Drug Worker Program (AADWP), offered at Friendship Centres in Ontario. Methods: A realist approach was used to evaluate the AADWP. Client-targeted focus groups and staff questionnaires were conducted to develop preliminary theories regarding how, for whom and under what circumstances the program helps or does not help clients. Individual interviews were then conducted with clients and caseworkers to test these theories.

Results: Mechanisms through which clients achieved their goals were related to client needs, trust, cultural beliefs, willingness, self-awareness, and self-efficacy. Clients' goals related to sobriety status, renewing relationships, cultural connection and mental health. Client. Staff and setting characteristics were found to moderate development of mechanisms and outcomes. Results were congruent with existing literature.


Based on the active variable stiffness, a new semi-active control method, whose principal content is using frequency control (FC), is presented. As a new semi-active algorithm, short time maximum entropy analysis is firstly proposed and the exact time and frequency signal at every control short time sequence also is given. The calculation results of a case of a 40-story building showed that the FC method is more effective than the results calculated by the method in the current structural design of tall buildings. The robustness of the algorithm is obtained and the displacement of the structure is reduced effectively.


In two previous communications the author reported the results of pharmacological studies on the nonpregnant human uterus. The present paper deals with the results of comparative studies on the automatism and pharmacological reactions between pregnant and nonpregnant uterus, such as have never been tried by any investigator. The follo wing conclusions have been reached. I. The strip of a pregnant human uterus produces more vigorous automatism, by means of Magnus' method, than that of nonpregnant uterus. II. Automatism in the human uterus, and its sensibility to autonomic poisons, uterine stimulants and other drups, are the same regardless of the state of pregnancy, whether early or late, or normal or ectopic. III. A pregnant uterus reacts to the drugs more vigorously than a nonpregnant one. The difference in the effect of the drugs on a pregnant and a nonpregnant uterus is quantitative with certain kinds of drugs, while a qualitative difference is shown with some other drugs. Adrenalin, pilocarpin, acetylcholin, pituitrin and nicotin belong to the former group, while bombelon, secacornin and caffein are included in the latter. Atropin shows no difference in its action on the uterus whether it is pregnant or nonpregnant. 1. Adrenalin and pituitrin show a stronger stimulative effect on a pregnant uterus than on a nonpregnant one. The effect of caffein on a pregnant uterus is stimulative, while it acts as the depressant on a nonpregnant uterus. Therefore it may be said that the excitability of the motor-sympathetic is increased during pregnancy. 2. The stimulative actions of pilocarpin and acetylcholin are more evident in a pregnant uterus than in a nonpregnant one. So the excitability of the parasympathetic nerve is also accelerated during pregnancy. 3. Nicotin exerts a more actively depressive effect on a pregnant uterus than on a nonpregnant uterus. From this fact it may be learned that the excitability of the sympathetic nerve is increased, not only in the motor fibres but also in the depressor. 4. Bombelon and secacornin produce a stimulative effect on a pregnant uterus owing to the stimulation of the muscle. Such action from these drugs is not seen in a nonpregnant uterus. This fact shows us that the excitability of the uterine muscle is heightened during pregnancy and that this increased excitability is greater in the uterin muscle than that shown in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves.


The subject guide to Human Resource Management provides information on resources available from the Alvin Sherman Library, both in the library and online, related to Human Resource Management. The guide covers books, articles, web sites, and citations.