Abstract Immunotherapy has become the mainstay for lung cancer treatment, providing sustained therapeutic responses and improved prognosis compared with those obtained with surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and targeted therapy. It has the potential for anti-tumor treatment and killing tumor cells by activating human immunity and has moved the targets of anti-cancer therapy from malignant tumor cells to immune cell subsets. Two kinds of immune checkpoints, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death-1 (PD-1)/programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1), are the main targets of current immunotherapy in lung cancer. Despite the successful outcomes achieved by immune checkpoint inhibitors, a small portion of lung cancer patients remain unresponsive to checkpoint immunotherapy or may ultimately become resistant to these agents as a result of the complex immune modulatory network in the tumor microenvironment. Therefore, it is imperative to exploit novel immunotherapy targets to further expand the proportion of patients benefiting from immunotherapy. This review summarizes the molecular features, biological function, and clinical significance of several novel checkpoints that have important roles in lung cancer immune responses beyond the CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 axes, including the markers of co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory T lymphocyte pathways and inhibitory markers of macrophages and natural killer cells.


The characteristics of a 1200 V and 800 A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) power module has been measured, simulated and verified for the first time in the PSPICE platform. The simulation model is based on a silicon carbide (SiC) Gummel-Poon model for high power applications. The implemented model has been extended with temperature dependent equations in order to extend the BJT operating temperature range. PSPICE simulations are performed to extract technology dependent modeling parameters coupled with static and dynamic characteristics of BJTs at different temperatures and validated against the measured data. The performance of the SiC BJT model is fairly accurate and correlates well with the measured results over a wide temperature range.


A diverse assemblage of adult reef fishes and invertebrates occurs at offshore oil production platforms in the Southern California Bight (SCB). Coincident with the initiation of the decommissioning of six platforms in the SCB, the goal of this study was to examine how a platform's geographical
 location plays a role in its potential contribution of larval recruits to natural areas. Using a three-dimensional biophysical model, we quantified the potential connectivity of larvae, particularly relevant to reef fishes, from three offshore platforms to four coastal shelf regions where
 the majority of rocky settlement habitat occurs in the SCB. The regions cover the shelves of the mainland coast and islands and offshore banks in the southern SCB. The main findings indicate that (1) the potential for larval subsidies from platforms in the southern SCB to populations in the
 northern SCB are greater than the potential for larval subsidies from platforms in the northern SCB to the southern SCB; (2) there is greater seasonal variability of potential connectivity from platforms to the mainland shelf region of the northern SCB than to the mainland shelf region of
 the southern SCB or shelves around islands and banks; and (3) there is consistency across years in the relative magnitude of potential connectivity from the platforms to the four shelf regions. We conclude that a platform's function as a larval source should be considered an ecological criterion
 when evaluating whether a platform is to be converted to an artificial reef and implementing marine spatial planning.


Abstract This article focuses on the policy and legislative challenges posed by land claims made by different pastoral and agro-pastoral groups in North Kordofan. It takes as its point of departure the fact that many past and contemporary pastoral conflicts have their roots in struggles over land and that failure to implement the necessary legislative and administrative mechanisms to guard pastoral land rights can keep conflicts simmering, either openly or under the surface, with high social and economic costs. These issues are here considered in the context of the opportunities for both legal and administrative reform provided by the Naivasha Peace Agreement and the progress in its implementation thus far. Keywords: Land tenure, pastoralism, peace-building, resource conflict, Sudan Introduction In the 1986 volume of the journal Worm Development, British historian Antony Hopkins published an article entitled 'The World Bank in Africa: Historical Reflections on the African Present'. The article essentially questions the knowledge base that informed a 1981 World Bank report, better known as the Berg Report, entitled 'Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action'. A telling and inspiring phrase in that article, 'A little knowledge promotes easy generalisations; too much paralyses the mind' (Hopkins 1986: 1473), is nowhere as valid as in the case of the literature on land tenure in Africa. Indeed, most of the literature on African land tenure is either based on very little knowledge and is hence flawed with too many empirically unfounded and history-distorting generalizations or is replete with contradictory accounts. This is evident in the symptomatic confusion of the de jure (the legal provisions in law) with the de facto (the practice in the real world) aspects of land tenure as well as a total lack of sensitivity to the historical and contextual specificity. However, critics of African land tenure literature maintain that discussions on land policies are often characterized by preconceived notions and ideological viewpoints rather than by careful analysis of the reality on the ground (Bates 1984, Booth 1985, Leach and Mearns 1996). These problems raise grave doubts about the potential role for social science research in providing a solid knowledge base for influencing land policy and legal reform in a manner that would ensure the well being of rural people and sustainable peace. As a result, research findings have remained largely academic and have not always been disseminated in a form that is comprehensible to policymakers and other key stakeholders. One such flawed generalization is that colonial governments invariably aspired to abolish communal land tenure and to introduce instead the individual absolute ownership of the land, as occurred in England. In Sudan, for example, this statement was certainly correct insomuch as it relates to the relatively limited and permanently cultivated lands along the Nile and its tributaries, where colonial authorities immediately discovered that the institution of individual private ownership of land was already in place. However, it is debateable whether such a generalization may be applied to the vast areas of rainlands that colonial authorities aspired to maintain, if not impose, communal land tenure in one form or another. This was especially the case in areas where their potential as suppliers of cheap export crops or as seasonal labour reserves was highly valued. Thus, contrary to sweeping statements regarding the evolution of African land tenure, the striking contradiction is that it was the colonial authorities--the primary agents of capitalism--that advocated 'communal' land tenure, whereas members of the agrarian societies sought 'individual' private ownership of the land. This' U-turn' in colonial land policy was dictated by political and economic considerations. Thus, in a predominantly agrarian country such as Sudan, the colonial government was shrewd enough early on to recognize that security of tenure was the best guarantee for peace. …


In 2013 the Mediterranean Diet was recognized by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of Spain, Greece, Italy and Morocco. Conviviality – the pleasure of eating together – was recognized as the cornerstone of food culture in the region. Although the concept of commensality has been explored widely in the literature, studies on conviviality and convivial dining are almost non-existent. This review explores the concept of conviviality and its significance in relation to the Mediterranean Diet. It draws on sociological and anthropological literature to define conviviality and to address the perceived benefits of eating together as well as the social constraints on pleasurable meals. The paper draws upon the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his ideas of Habitus, Field and Cultural Capital, examining how these concepts relate to pleasurable eating and conviviality. It offers an interdisciplinary perspective on who and what makes conviviality happen and the potential obstacles to the experience and promotion of convivial dining.


The growing popularity of location-enabled devices has driven the demand for more efficient and reliable geographical routing algorithms for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) and wireless sensor networks. The characteristic of this network is that nodes exchange geographical location with neighbors, and no global topology or central management is required. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for routing in MANET and wireless sensor networks without location service. Our approach combines both geographical routing and On-Demand Distance Vector Routing where location information is requested on demand. The request is used to create a backup shortest-path route to avoid dead-ends. The proposed algorithm can adopt automatically if a minimum connected dominating set (MCDS) exists, which is to limit the flooding of location and route requests. The performances metrics in this study include: packet loss, protocol overhead, end-to-end latency, and path length. Our simulation shows that our hybrid algorithm is more efficient, scalable and adaptable to rapid topology changes as compared to other popular routing algorithms, such as ad hoc on-demand vector (AODV) routing protocol and greedy perimeter stateless routing (GPSR) protocol. The hybrid algorithm combines two efficient routing algorithms where each one is a backup for the other and hence it reduces the need for flooding and overcomes the problems associated with planarization, face routing and location service. Our hybrid approach has the potential to support 3D topologies as well.


SUMMARY Objective: to evaluate the performance of APRI test as an indirect marker of liver fibrosis in patients of FSCMPA with chronic viral hepatitis. Methods: laboratorial and histopathological (METAVIR) data of 102 patients were collected with the aim of comparing biopsy reports to test results, considering: F0-F1 as absent/ insignificant fibrosis and F2-F4 as presence of expressive fibrosis; F0-F3 and F4 as absence and presence of cirrhosis, respectively. The evaluation was based on the use of simultaneous cut-off points suggested by Wai et al. (2003) and also the development of single cut-off points, through ROC curves, for this sample. Results: the specificities found through the original cut-off points were 96% and 87% for significant fibrosis and cirrhosis, respectively. A superior performance was detected for the diagnosis of expressive fibrosis (PPV 90%) and for the exclusion of liver cirrhosis (NPV 95%). The only advantages accomplished with the use of the single cutoff points defined for this study were the classification of all patients and an increase in sensibility, which do not justify their applicability. Conclusion: APRI test is able to confirm the existence of significant fibrosis and exclude cirrhosis, what makes it available, as an alternative, in clinical practice.


A mixed starter culture containing exopolysaccharide (EPS)-producing strains of Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus was combined with Lactobacillus helveticus LH301 and used in the manufacture of low-fat and reduced-fat Kasar cheeses. For comparison, low-fat (C10) and reduced-fat (C20) cheeses were made using EPS-producing (EPS+) starter strain and EPS-non-producing (EPS−) starter strain. The physicochemical properties of the cheeses were assessed in terms of chemical composition, texture, microstructure and microbial content over 90 days. Cheeses made with EPS-producing culture (EPS10 and EPS20) had lower protein contents than control cheeses with 10% and 20% fat in dry basis (C10 and C20). Scanning electron microscopy images showed that using EPS-producing culture resulted in a less compact protein matrix and sponge-like structure in the cheese samples. In general, cheeses made using EPS-producing culture had lower total viable counts. This could be related to the reduced survivability of EPS-producing cells in the cheese matrix during ripening due to autolysis ability.


Because of the high precision in roundness, straightness and roughness, it is very difficult to machining the inner surface of injection nozzle. Honing machine is the main equipment for machining the injection nozzle. The key honing control techniques and honing test for injection nozzle on the developed high precision vertical honing machine are analyzed. The quantitative expansion,which is one of the most important feeding styles in honing process, is discussed in detail. Some machining tests on the developed honing machine are made and the work pieces of injection nozzles with inner surface Φ11mm are honed successfully with roundness tolerance less than 0.4μm, straightness tolerance less than 1μm and roughness tolerance less than 0.04μm.


A new method of fracture toughness K1C prediction of non power law hardening material by using cleavage fracture local approach is proposed in this paper. The fracture toughness of A508-Ⅲ 16MnR at different cleavage fracture probability are predicted by using the method. To most of pressure vessel carbon-manganese steels, cleavage fracture is likely to occur at the load corresponding to 62% cleavage fracture probability. Hence, the fracture toughness corresponding to the load is the most possible fracture toughness of the steels. The values of fracture toughness corresponding to 62% cleavage fracture probability is close to that of testing fracture toughness. The work of this paper expends the application of Beremin cleavage fracture model in predicting fracture toughness.


Constructive empiricism (CE), a widely debated anti-realist philosophy of science by Bas van Fraassen, offers a philosophical interpretation of scientific practice. The agent of the scientific practice, according to CE, is what Bas van Fraassen himself calls the "epistemic community". However, William Seager argued that by appealing to the epistemic community constructive empiricists warrant scientists' belief in unobservables. Moreover, Simone Bahrenberg et al. maintained that if what is observable is defined in terms of whom a particular epistemic community consists of, then observability cannot be an objective property, while CE needs observability to be objective. In this paper, based on four thought experiments, I consider a special hypothetical case of the epistemic community consisting of only one person and notice that in this hypothetical case the objections by Seager and Bahrenberg et al. dissolve: Seager's requirement to treat the reports of other members of epistemic community as an evidence for the epistemic belief collapses; and, contra Bahrenberg et al., observability for a single person is unproblematically objective in CE. Based on this observation I argue that constructive empiricists would be better off reformulating their main thesis in terms of a single cognitive agent (person, scientist), because (i) this would not only allow CE to render all the objections appealing to the concept of epistemic community ineffectual once and for all, but also (ii) using the proposed modification constructive empiricists could straightforwardly account for some cases of possible scientific practice, for which their original thesis cannot account in an obvious manner. The above change in the policy of CE (iii) would still allow to retain the key features of the empiricist position—the observable/ unobservable distinction, the distinction between acceptance and belief, the principles of epistemic modesty and the principle of scientific rationality—at least on an equal footing to the original thesis by van


Perturbations of calcium homeostasis have been associated with several neurodegenerative disorders. A common polymorphism (rs2986017) in the CALHM1 gene, coding for a regulator of calcium homeostasis, is a genetic risk factor for the development of Alzheimer disease (AD). Although some authors failed to confirm these results, a meta-analysis has shown that this polymorphism modulates the age at disease onset. Furthermore, a recent association study has explored the genetic variability of CALHM1 gene and two adjacent paralog genes (CALHM3 and CALHM2) in an Asian population. Since several lines of evidence suggest that AD and prion diseases share pathophysiologic mechanisms, we investigated for the first time the genetic variability of the gene cluster formed by CALHM1 and its paralogs in a series of 235 sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD) patients, and compared the genotypic and allelic frequencies with those presented in 329 controls from the same ancestry. As such, this work also represents the first association analysis of CALHM genes in sCJD. Sequencing analysis of the complete coding regions of the genes demonstrated the presence of 10 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) within the CALHM genes. We observed that rs4918016-rs2986017-rs2986018 and rs41287502-rs41287500 polymorphic sites at CALHM1 were in linkage disequilibrium. We found marginal associations for sCJD risk at CALHM1 polymorphic sites rs41287502 and rs41287500 [coding for two linked missense mutations (p.(Met323Ile); (Gly282Cys)], and rs2986017 [p.(Leu86Pro)]. Interestingly, a TGG haplotype defined by the rs4918016-rs2986017-rs2986018 block was associated with sCJD. These findings underscore the need of future multinational collaborative initiatives in order to corroborate these seminal data.


Despite advancements in therapies, such as surgery, irradiation (IR) and chemotherapy, outcome for patients suffering from glioblastoma (GBM) remains fatal; the median survival time is only about 15 months. Even with novel therapeutic targets, networks and signaling pathways being discovered, monotherapy with such agents targeting such pathways has been disappointing in clinical trials. Poor prognosis for GBM can be attributed to several factors, including failure of drugs to cross the blood-brain-barrier (BBB), tumor heterogeneity, invasiveness, and angiogenesis. Development of tumor resistance, particularly to temozolomide (TMZ) and IR, creates a substantial clinical challenge. The primary focus of the work described herein was to develop a modeling and simulation approach that could be applied to rationally develop novel combination therapies and dose regimens that mitigate resistance development. Specifically, TMZ was combined with small molecule inhibitors that are either currently in clinical trials or are approved drugs for other cancer types, and which target the disease at various resistance signaling pathways that are induced in response to TMZ monotherapy. To accomplish this objective, an integrated PKPD modeling approach was used. A PK model for each drug was first defined. PK models were subsequently linked to a PD model description of tumor growth dynamics in the presence of a single drug or combinations of drugs. A key outcome of these combined PKPD models was tumor static concentration (TSC) curves of TMZ in combination with small molecule inhibitors that identify combination drug exposures predicted to arrest tumor growth. This approach was applied to TMZ in combination with abemaciclib (a dual CDK4/6 small molecule inhibitor) based on data from a published study evaluating abemaciclib (ACB) efficacy in combination with TMZ in a U87 GBM xenograft model. TSC was also constructed for TMZ in combination with RG7388 (MDM2 inhibitor) based on the data from an in-vivo study that evaluated effects on tumor growth suppression of these small molecule inhibitors in combination with TMZ in GBM 10 patient derived xenografts.In GBM 43 mouse xenografts, emergence of resistance to TMZ treatment was identified. Thus, a resistance integrated PKPD model was developed to predict tumor growth kinetics after treatment with TMZ in GBM 43 tumors. Population PK models in immune deficient NOD.Cg-Prkdcscid Il2rgtm1Wjl/SzJ (NSG) mice for TMZ and small molecule inhibitors (GDC0068/RG7112) were developed based on a combination of data obtained from an in-vivo study and published sources. Subsequently, PK models were linked to tumor volume data obtained from GBM 43 subcutaneous xenografts. Model parameters quantifying tumor volume dynamics were precisely estimated (coefficient of variation < 40%) compared to a base tumor growth inhibition model in GBM 43 that did not incorporate resistance development. Graphical diagnostics of the resistance incorporated PKPD tumor growth inhibition model demonstrated a superior fit compared to the base model, and accurately captured the emergence of resistance to the TMZ monotherapy treatment observed in the GBM 43 patient derived xenograft model.


"Litigate or settle" is the choice generally available to disputants in American courts, including bankruptcy courts. In authorizing examiners, however, the Bankruptcy Code provides one very specific procedural device peculiarly suited to introduce inquisitorial process into a chapter 11 case. Until recently, examiners were seldom employed, and even when employed were not a true inquisitorial alternative to "litigate or settle." Rather, examiners would determine the legal sufficiency of a disputed claim but not opine on the merits or undertake to resolve factual disputes. The Tribune chapter 11 case, however, took a different approach to the examiner's role. While not quite fully embracing an inquisitorial alternative to traditional bankruptcy dispute resolution, Tribune and a series of post-Tribune investigations have shown that inquisitorial methods make sense in certain large bankruptcy cases involving complex legal disputes. It may well be that chapter 11 examiners are the perfect persons to launch the inquisitorial experiment in the United States. Part I introduces the thesis. Parts II and III set out the historical and comparative law inquisitorial alternatives to adversary litigation looking at English Chancery, European civil law systems and pre-Tribune examiner practices in US bankruptcy law. Parts IV and V contain the qualitative empirical analysis starting with a detailed look at Tribune and then discussing the small universe of post-Tribune cases in which examiners have been appointed. Part VI is the policy analysis of when and how Tribune-style inquisitorial examinations should be conducted.


Abstract. Our ability to quantify the likelihood of present-day extreme sea level (ESL) events is limited by the length of tide gauge records around the UK, and this results in substantial uncertainties in return level curves at many sites. In this work, we explore the potential for a state-of-the-art climate model, HadGEM3-GC3, to help refine our understanding of present-day coastal flood risk associated with extreme storm surges, which are the dominant driver of ESL events for the UK and wider European shelf seas. We use a 483-year present-day control simulation from HadGEM3-GC3-MM (1/4 degree ocean, approx 60 km atmosphere in mid-latitudes) to drive a northwest European shelf seas model and generate a new dataset of simulated UK storm surges. The variable analysed is the skew surge (the difference between the high water level and the predicted astronomical high tide), which is widely used in analysis of storm surge events.  The modelling system can simulate skew surge events comparable to the catastrophic 1953 North Sea storm surge, which resulted in widespread flooding, evacuation of 32 thousand people and hundreds of fatalities across the UK alone, along with many hundreds more in mainland Europe. Our model simulations show good agreement with an independent re-analysis of the 1953 surge event and suggest that a skew surge event of this magnitude has an expected frequency of about 1 in 500 years at the mouth of the river Thames.  For that site, we also revisit the assumption of skew surge/tide independence. Our model results suggest that at that site for the most extreme surges, tide/surge interaction significantly attenuates extreme skew surges on a spring tide compared to a neap tide. Around the UK coastline, the extreme tail shape parameters diagnosed from our simulation correlate very well (Pearson's r greater than 0.85), in terms of spatial variability, with those used in the UK government's current guidance (which are diagnosed from tide-gauge observations), but ours can be diagnosed without the use of a subjective prior. Despite the strong correlation, our diagnosed shape parameters are biased low relative to the current guidance. This bias is also seen when we replace HadGEM3-GC3-MM with a reanalysis, so we conclude that the bias is likely associated with limitations in the shelf sea model used here. Overall, the work suggests that climate model simulations may prove useful as an additional line of evidence to inform assessments of present-day coastal flood risk.


Accurate optical flow estimation is a crucial task for many computer vision applications. However, because of its computational power and processing speed requirements, it is rarely used for real-time obstacle detection, especially for small unmanned vehicle and embedded applications. Two hardware-friendly vision algorithms are proposed in this paper to address this challenge. A ridge regression-based optical flow algorithm is developed to cope with the existing collinear problem in traditional least-squares approaches for calculating optical flow. Additionally, taking advantage of hardware parallelism, spatial and temporal smoothing operations are applied to image sequence derivatives to improve accuracy. An efficient motion field analysis algorithm using the optical flow values and based on a simplified motion model is also developed and implemented in hardware. The resulting obstacle detection algorithm is specifically designed for ground vehicles moving on planar surfaces. Results from the software simulations and hardware execution of the two proposed algorithms prove that with adequate hardware, a low power, compact obstacle detection sensor can be realized for small unmanned vehicles and embedded applications.


The high frequencies range, inductively coupled Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are widely used for product identification. The effectiveness of RFID systems diminishes near metals. The objective of this work was to investigate how the magnetic field values were affected by the metallilc disc, and how the physical parameters of the metal impact the electromagnetic values. The RFID system simulation models consisting of a deader coil, a circular metallic disc and a tag coil were developed using COMSOL software. The flux at different positions over the disc was compared to the flux at the same positions when the disc was not present, for discs of different radius and thickness. For models developed, the ratio of electric field when metal is present to electric field when metal is not present increased away from the metal. The radius and position where values are recorded impact the value of the magnetic field notably.


A total of 104 samples of
Swiftlet faeces were collected from various
districts in Kelantan (n:55) and Terengganu
(n:49). The samples were analysed for
dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP),
ether extract (EE), Ash, Calcium (Ca)
and Phosphorus (P). The overall mean
concentrations of organic matter (OM), CP,
Ash, Ca and P from those samples were
72.25 %, 68.23 %, 8.84%, 1.01% and 1.19%
respectively while the mean nitrate (NO3)
content was estimated 48.33%. There
were no significant differences (P<0.05)
between districts in the OM, Ca and P
content. However, significant differences
(P<0.05) were observed in the CP, NO3
and ash content between districts. The
potential of swiftlet faeces as the source of
superior quality fertilizer and other usage
are highlighted


User-to-product trust has two notable aspects: (1) the user's propensity to trust, and (2) the product's trustworthiness as assessed by the user. Autonomous products, which perform many functions on their own with limited user input, require the user to exhibit trust at an appropriate level before use. Research in product trust thus far has focused on the product trustworthiness: manipulating the product's design, for example, anthropomorphizing an autonomous vehicle and measuring changes in trust. This study flips the usual approach, manipulating a person's propensity to trust and measuring response to an existing autonomous product, the Amazon Echo. We build on our past successes with priming exercises to reveal insights into the user-related factors of product trust. In this study, we used visual stimuli that evoked either positive, neutral or negative emotions as affective primes to influence users' trust propensity before the interaction. The participants interacted with a mock-up of the Amazon Echo via ten pre-determined question-and-answer (Q&A) sets. During the interaction, the participants evaluated the Echo's competence and if it met participants' expectations. They also reported trust towards the Echo after the Q&A sets. Holistically, the affective primes show no significant effect on the trust propensity. For the subgroup of participants whose expectations of the product's performance were met, both the perceived product competence and the affective primes have significant effects on trust propensity. These results demonstrate the complex nature of trust as a multidimensional construct and the critical role of product performance in trust formation. They also suggest that it will be difficult for a product to build trust with users who expect the product to perform in a different way than its intent — if one wants to design a product that builds trust, they should understand user expectations and design to meet them. This learning can facilitate the intentional design of the affective process in trust formation that helps build a healthy level of trust with autonomous products.


The n and p genes from subgroup A human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV), were amplified by RT-PCR. The n product was cloned into pGEM-T easy vector and that of p into pcDNAII vector and the two genes were subcloned into the eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.1(+). The resulting recombinant plasmids pcDNA3.1(+)/N and pcDNA3.1(+)/P were checked by restriction enzymes and DNA sequencing and were tranfected into COS-7 cells with the aid of Lipofectamine 2000. Expression of N and P were detected by western blots at 72 hours post transfections. Expressed N and P in COS-7 cells was confirmed by western blot. The constructed expression vectors will be used for the further reverse genetics experimentations on HRSV.


God created debt relationships as a way to obey his commands of stewardship, justice, and love. God also created risk and wants us to take risks when we see good potential for the return of stewardship, justice, or love. God's common grace is necessary for all this to work according to his plans. By God's common grace the impact of sin on debt markets is mitigated, debt markets can be stewardly, just, and loving, and we can imaginatively create new ways to take risks in debt markets according to God's design. Leonard D. Van Drunen, "Debt, Risk, and Grace," Journal of Markets & Morality 18, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 61-79


Lithium ion batteries and similar energy storage devices have an increasing importance for the modern society as they are present in many portable electronic devices and have perspectives in the fields of electric vehicles and renewable energy accumulation. Herein, we present results from charge and discharge cycles on batteries under controlled conditions. The cyclability of commercial lithium-polymer pouch batteries under different charge/discharge rates and temperatures was studied. Based on the results, the relationship between the state of charge and the cell voltage was obtained, as well as degradation of the cells, i.e., the decrease of the energy capacity after a number of cycles. The experimental results were compared with simulations based on Newman's model for Lithium Ion Batteries, carried out using the COMSOL Multiphysics® software. The batteries and fuel cell and the heat transfer modules were use to couple between the temperature and the electrochemical interactions. The results show the correlation between temperature, C-rate and degradation in lithium ion batteries. It is specially remarkable the decrease of the apparent capacity of batteries at low temperatures, and the increase of the degradation at higher temperatures. These results are essential for the design of mechanisms that could prevent battery failure. Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the financial support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778045, and the "Plan Propio de Investigación y Transferencia de la Universidad de Málaga", code: PPIT.UMA.B5.2018/17.


We compared face-to-face focus groups and an online forum in qualitative research with people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and family members. Although the merits and challenges of online qualitative research have been considered by others, there is limited literature directly comparing these two data collection methods for people with disability or chronic illness. Twenty-seven people participated in one of four focus groups and 33 people took part in an online forum. Demographic and MS-related characteristics were similar between the two groups, with a slight nonsignificant trend toward nonmetropolitan residence in online forum participants. There was a high level of overlap in the themes generated between groups. Participant responses in the online forum were more succinct and on-topic, yet in the focus groups interaction was greater. Online qualitative research methods can facilitate research participation for people with chronic illness or disability, yielding generally comparable information to that gathered via face-to-face methods.


Abstract Although it has been generally assumed that the risk of decompression sickness is virtually zero during a single breath-hold dive in humans, repeated dives may result in a cumulative increase in the tissue and blood nitrogen tension. Many species of marine mammals perform extensive foraging bouts with deep and long dives interspersed by a short surface interval, and some human divers regularly perform repeated dives to 30–40 m or a single dive to more than 200 m, all of which may result in nitrogen concentrations that elicit symptoms of decompression sickness. Neurological problems have been reported in humans after single or repeated dives and recent necropsy reports in stranded marine mammals were suggestive of decompression sickness-like symptoms. Modelling attempts have suggested that marine mammals may live permanently with elevated nitrogen concentrations and may be at risk when altering their dive behaviour. In humans, non-pathogenic bubbles have been recorded and symptoms of decompression sickness have been reported after repeated dives to modest depths. The mechanisms implicated in these accidents indicate that repeated breath-hold dives with short surface intervals are factors that predispose to decompression sickness. During deep diving, the effect of pulmonary shunts and/or lung collapse may play a major role in reducing the incidence of decompression sickness in humans and marine mammals.


At present, great changes are taken place in the internal production management and resource allocation model of manufacturers. Under the premise of rational resource allocation, the completion period of products largely depends on the timeliness of resource allocation. The related studies mostly tackle the allocation of a single type of production resources in a single workshop, without considering much about the mutual influence between workshops. Through in-depth research on workshop manufacturing practices, this paper chooses to explore the planning, allocation, and demand prediction of manufacturing resources, which has long been a difficulty in workshop production. The research has great scientific research significance and practical value. The authors designed an algorithm based on the difference of the mean stagnation time of different production processes in the execution process, and used the algorithm to predict the number of production resources required in each period, before formulating the optimal configuration plan. This method is highly reasonable and applicable. After presenting a prediction method for the allocation demand of workshop manufacturing resources, the authors discussed whether the manufacturing resource allocation between different workshops is balanced in a fixed period. Then, a new idea was proposed for collaborative production between machines of different workshops in a specific environment, and an optimization algorithm was put forward to optimize the manufacturing resource allocation to machines facing the operation execution process. Through experiments, the authors compared the utilization rate of material, technological or human production resources in each period, and thereby verified the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


This book offers historical, philosophical and theological studies on the meaning of conflicts in life and thinking of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) and deals with his attempts to develop a model for peace and tolerance.


Novel liquid-like nanoparticle organic hybrid materials (NOHMs) made of polyetheramine chains tethered onto functionalized silica nanoparticles were synthesized and characterized before and after exposure to CO2 using NMR, Raman, and ATR FT-IR spectroscopies in order to investigate the effect of the grafting densities on the NOHM canopy structure. Considering the promising tunable properties for CO2 capture of NOHMs, this study was conducted to provide important structural information to better design NOHMs for CO2 capture. In order to minimize the CO2 absorption via enthalpic effect and provide a more accurate assessment of the structural effects, the NOHMs were synthesized without task-specific groups. A greater chain ordering and decreased intermolecular interactions were observed in NOHMs compared to the unbound polymer. This was attributed to the specific structural arrangement of the frustrated canopy. The distinct configuration of grafted polymer chains caused different CO2 packing and CO2-induced ...


This was a 10-week time-series investigation of a class of 12 students with the same teacher carrying out the teaching for both the experimental and control condition and the same students exposed to both treatment conditions. The question of central interest in this study was whether Suggestopedia affects more sophisticated language skills than recall, and both quantitative and qualitative measures were included to address the criticism that Suggestopedia affects memory skills alone. Year 10 students' recall, comprehension, word production, fluency, accuracy, writing quality, transfer skills of grammatical items, and understanding of grammar rules were tested once a week. Long-term retention rates for recall were also checked at the end of each four-week period. The findings suggested that Suggestopedia does in fact have the potential to positively affect sophisticated language skills such as transfer of structures and creative writing. Compared with performance during the control Phase, results showed that during the experimental Phase students performed equally as well on tests of comprehension, accuracy and understanding of rules, and significantly better on tests of recall, word production, fluency, writing quality and transfer of grammatical items.


BACKGROUND
The majority of children who present with their first episode of nephrotic syndrome achieve remission with corticosteroid therapy. Children who fail to respond to corticosteroids in the first episode of nephrotic syndrome (initial resistance) or develop resistance after one or more responses to corticosteroids (delayed resistance) may be treated with immunosuppressive agents including calcineurin inhibitors (CNI) (cyclosporin or tacrolimus) and with non-immunosuppressive agents such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB). However, response to these agents is limited so newer agents are being assessed for efficacy. This is an update of a review first published in 2004 and updated in 2006, 2010 and 2016.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the benefits and harms of different interventions used in children with idiopathic nephrotic syndrome, who do not achieve remission following four weeks or more of daily corticosteroid therapy.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Kidney and Transplant Register of Studies to 17 September 2019 through contact with the Information Specialist using search terms relevant to this review. Studies in the Register are identified through searches of CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE, conference proceedings, the International Clinical Trials Register (ICTRP) Search Portal and ClinicalTrials.gov.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs were included if they compared different immunosuppressive agents or non-immunosuppressive agents with placebo, prednisone or other agent given orally or parenterally in children aged three months to 18 years with steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome (SRNS). Studies, which enrolled children and adults but in which paediatric data could not be separated from adult data, were also included.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two authors independently searched the literature, determined study eligibility, assessed risk of bias and extracted data. For dichotomous outcomes, results were expressed as risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). For continuous outcomes, results were expressed as mean difference (MD) and 95% CI. Data were pooled using the random effects model. The certainty of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach.

MAIN RESULTS
Twenty-five studies (1063 participants) were included. Fourteen studies were at low risk of bias for sequence generation and allocation concealment. Five and 19 studies were at low risk of performance and detection bias. Fourteen, 14 and 13 studies were at low risk of attrition bias, reporting bias and other bias respectively. Cyclosporin compared with placebo or no treatment may increase the number of participants who achieve complete remission (4 studies, 74 participants: RR 3.50, 95% CI 1.09 to 11.20) or complete or partial remission (4 studies, 74 children: RR 3.15, 95% CI 1.04 to 9.57) by 6 months (low certainty evidence). It is uncertain whether cyclosporin increases the likelihood of worsening hypertension or reduces the likelihood of end-stage kidney disease (very low certainty evidence). CNI compared with IV cyclophosphamide (CPA) may increase the number of participants with complete or partial remission at 3 to 6 months (2 studies, 156 children: RR 1.98, 95% CI 1.25 to 3.13) (low certainty evidence) and probably reduces the number with treatment failure (non response, serious infection, persistently elevated creatinine (1 study, 124 participants: RR 0.32, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.58) (moderate certainty evidence) with little or no increase in serious infections (1 study, 131 participants: RR 0.49, 95% CI 0.16 to 1.56) (moderate certainty evidence). Tacrolimus compared with cyclosporin may make little or no difference to the number who achieve complete or partial remission (2 studies, 58 participants: RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.25) (low certainty evidence) or in the number with worsening hypertension (2 studies, 58 participants: RR 0.41, 95% CI 0.08 to 2.15) (low certainty evidence). Cyclosporin compared with mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) and dexamethasone probably makes little or no difference to the number who achieve complete or partial remission (1 study, 138 participants: RR 2.14, 95% CI 0.87 to 5.24) (moderate certainty evidence) and makes little or no difference to the number dying (1 study, 138 participants: RR 2.14, 95% CI 0.87 to 5.24) or with 50% reduction in glomerular filtration rate (GFR) (1 study, 138 participants: RR 2.29, 95% CI 0.46 to 11.41) (low certainty evidence). Among children, who have achieved complete remission, tacrolimus compared with MMF may increase the number of children who maintain complete or partial response for 12 months (1 study, 60 children: RR 2.01, 95% CI 1.32 to 3.07) (low certainty evidence). Oral CPA with prednisone compared with prednisone alone may make little or no difference to the number who achieve complete remission (2 studies, 84 children: RR 1.06, 95% CI 0.61 to 1.87) (low certainty evidence). IV CPA compared with oral CPA (2 studies, 61 children: RR 1.58, 95% CI 0.65 to 3.85) and IV compared with oral CPA plus IV dexamethasone (1 study, 49 children: RR 1.13, 95% CI 0.65 to 1.96) may make little or no difference to the number who achieve complete remission (low certainty evidence). It is uncertain whether rituximab and cyclosporin compared with cyclosporin increases the likelihood of remission because the certainty of the evidence is very low. It is uncertain whether adalimumab or galactose compared with conservative therapy increases the likelihood of remission because the certainty of the evidence is very low. Two studies reported that ACEi may reduce proteinuria in children with SRNS. One study reported that the dual angiotensin II and endothelin Type A receptor antagonist, sparsentan, may reduce proteinuria more effectively than the angiotensin receptor blocker, irbesartan.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
To date RCTs have demonstrated that CNIs may increase the likelihood of complete or partial remission compared with placebo/no treatment or CPA. For other regimens assessed, it remains uncertain whether the interventions alter outcomes because the certainty of the evidence is low. Further adequately powered, well designed RCTs are needed to evaluate other regimens for children with idiopathic SRNS. Since SRNS represents a spectrum of diseases, future studies should enrol children from better defined groups of patients with SRNS.


A reform program me known as the structural adjustment program me (SAP) was introduced in the 1980s in over 30 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with poor growth performance and severe macroeconomic disequilibria. At the center of this program me is the exchange rate adjustment aimed at moving economic growth and stabilization by enhancing the incentives to produce traceable, particularly agricultural traceable. An examination of data from a sample of 30 SSA countries reveals that the outcome of currency depreciation has not been encouraging. Its impact on output and export was at best insignificant. It has also triggered a high rate of inflation. Current account balance was positively influenced by devaluation but this was largely due to import compression, rather than export expansion. A positive response may have been constrained by structural bottlenecks such as limited technological and administrative capacity, inadequate infrastructure, rising cost of inputs and imperfect markets.


Collaboration between stakeholders in the agro-food sector is nowadays a common phenomenon. Despite the huge diversity observed, this paper argues that collective action always results in the establishment of a collective organization (whether formally organized or not), which is characterized by the presence of a coordination centre. This organism represents all partners united in the collective and performs tasks by order of the individual members and the group. From a theoretical point of view, all collective organizations qualify as hybrid organizations, which can be studied through the lens of Transaction Costs Economics. Hybrids governance structures are a large set of arrangements that are situated between markets and hierarchies. When organizing transactions, hybrids do not purely rely on the price mechanism or authority, but rather on an interplay of four coordination mechanisms. These coordination mechanisms are the central element of this paper and we hypothesize that their degree of formalization is positively correlated with the complexity of the tasks faced by the coordination centre. To test this hypothesis, a survey was designed and information was gathered on some general and organizational characteristics of 65 collective initiatives in the Flemish agro-food sector. Information on the coordination mechanism could thereby be directly gathered, but the complexity of the tasks was approximated by the collective organization's objectives, the characteristics of the specifications in force and the entry rules for members. The analysis proves that there is indeed a positive relationship between the degree of formalization of the coordination mechanisms on the hand and the complexity of coordination centre's tasks. Information devices occurs in combination with informal cooperation in small groups, contracts are adopted by groups of 5 to 14 members to realize medium complex objectives and formal coordination (extern regulation and new governance bodies) is finally linked to quality differentiation, which requires considerable efforts in the definition and enforcement of product and/or process specifications.


Soloists ignited the modern dance movement and have been a source of its constant renewal. Pioneering dancers such as Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Maud Allan embodied the abstraction and individuality of the larger modernist movement while making astounding contributions to their art. Nevertheless, solo dancers have received far less attention in the literature than have performers and choreographers associated with large companies. In "On Stage Alone," editors Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy take an international approach to the solo dance performance. The essays in this standout volume broaden the dance canon by bringing to light modern dance soloists from Europe, Asia, and the Americas who have shaped significant, sustained careers by performing full programs of their own choreography. Featuring in-depth examinations of the work of artists such as Michio Ito, Daniel Nagrin, Ann Carlson, and many others, "On Stage Alone" reveals the many contributions made by daring solo dancers from the dawn of the twentieth century through today. In doing so, it explores many important statements these soloists made regarding topics such as freedom, personal space, individuality, and gender in the modern era."


Pig pancreatic IB phospholipase A 2 (PLA2) forms three distinguishable premicellar E i (#) ( i = 1, 2, and 3) complexes at successively higher decylsulfate concentrations. The Hill coefficient for E 1 (#) is n 1 = 1.6, and n 2 and n 3 for E 2 (#) and E 3 (#) are about 8 each. Saturation-transfer difference nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and other complementary results with PLA2 show that decylsulfate molecules in E 2 (#) and E 3 (#) are contiguously and cooperatively clustered on the interface-binding surface or i-face that makes contact with the substrate interface. In these complexes, the saturation-transfer difference NMR signatures of (1)H in decylsulfate are different. The decylsulfate epitope for the successive E i (#) complexes increasingly resembles the micellar complex formed by the binding of PLA2 to preformed micelles. Contiguous cooperative amphiphile binding is predominantly driven by the hydrophobic effect with a modest electrostatic shielding of the sulfate head group in contact with PLA2. The formation of the complexes is also associated with structural change in the enzyme. Calcium affinity of E 2 (#) appears to be modestly lower than that of the free enzyme and E 1 (#). Binding of decylsulfate to the i-face does not require the catalytic calcium required for the substrate binding to the active site and for the chemical step. These results show that E i (#) complexes are useful to structurally characterize the cooperative sequential and contiguous binding of amphiphiles on the i-face. We suggest that the allosteric changes associated with the formation of discrete E i (#) complexes are surrogates for the catalytic and allosteric states of the interface activated PLA2.


During the last decades a large effort has been made to continuously improve turbomachine efficiency. Besides the optimization of the primary flow path, also the secondary flow losses have been reduced considerably, due to the use of more efficient seals. Brush seals, as a compliant contacting filament seal, have become an attractive alternative to conventional labyrinth seals in the field of aircraft engines as well as in stationary gas and steam turbines. The aim of today's research related to brush seals is to understand the characteristics and their connections, in order to be able to make performance predictions, and to ensure the reliability over a defined operating period. It is known that inevitable frictional contacts lead to an abrasive wear on the rotor side as well as on the bristle side. The wear situation is essentially influenced by the resulting contact force at the seal-to-rotor interface during the operating time. This contact force depends on the seal's blow down capability, which is mainly determined by the geometrical design of the bristle pack, e.g. the axial inclination of the investigated seal design, in combination with the design and material of the surrounding parts, as well as the thermal boundary conditions. For realistic investigations with representative circumferential velocities the TU Braunschweig operates a specially developed steam test rig which enables live steam investigations under varying operating conditions up to 50 bar and 450 °C. Wear measurements and the determination of seal performance characteristics, such as blow down and bristle stiffness, were enabled by an additional test facility using pressurized cold air up to 8 bar as working fluid.This paper presents the chronological wear development on both rotor and seal side, in a steam test lasting 25 days respectively 11 days. Interruptions after stationary and transient intervals were made in order to investigate the wear situation. Two different seal arrangements, a single tandem seal and a two-stage single seal arrangement, using different seal elements were considered. The results clearly show a continuous wear development and that the abrasive wear of the brush seal and rotor is mainly due to the transient test operation, particularly by enforced contacts during shaft excursions. Despite the increasing wear to the brushes, all seals have shown a functioning radial-adaptive behavior over the whole test duration with a sustained seal performance. Thereby, it could be shown that the two-stage arrangement displays a load shift during transients, leading to a balanced loading and unloading status for the two single brush seals. From load sharing and in comparison with the wear data of the tandem seal arrangement, it can be derived that the two-stage seal is less prone to wear. However, the tandem seal arrangement, bearing the higher pressure difference within one configuration, shows a superior sealing performance under constant load, i.e. under stationary conditions.Copyright © 2015 by Siemens Energy, Inc.


Vitamin C levels of commercially frozen okra, potatoes, green beans, broccoli, spinach and peas, including the impact of processing and storage, were studied. Depending on the vegetable type, prefreezing operations caused a 19.1-51.5% decrease in the initial vitamin C levels. The freezing process alone did not influence the vitamin levels except in the cases of green beans and spinach. Total losses (%) were between 27.6 and 57.9 for the vegetables at the end of commercial frozen storage (6 months). All the data obtained from this study confirmed that, depending on the vegetable type, prefreezing operations have a major impact on the vitamin C contents and this influence persists in the frozen storage.


This study examined differences between depressed and non- depressed adolescents (12 to 20 years), in decoding emotion intensity and perceived rejection and acceptance in both non- basic facial expressions and postures. The effect of the gender of the poser as well as the gender and the age of the participant were also of interest. Confirming earlier studies, girls decoded more anger than boys in non-basic facial expressions, but this gender difference was only found in the nondepressed group. Depressed boys decoded anger with the same high intensity as girls, and within girls no effect of depression was found. Contrary to expectations, female and male facial expressions were not decoded with different emotional intensity in general. Nevertheless, in decoding signs of rejection in the same facial expressions, the non-depressed group tended to decode more rejection in female faces, whereas the depressed group did not distinguish between male and female faces. An unexpected finding was that depressed adolescents also decoded more happiness in non-basic facial expressions than non- depressed adolescents. Also, and particularly in depressed boys, they decoded more acceptance in positive postural displays. In conclusion, depressed adolescents decode both more negative and more positive emotional and interpersonal meaning in subtle nonverbal cues, and these effects appear stronger for depressed boys than depressed girls. Implications of these findings will be discussed.


A simple circuit based on a fast operational amplifier, a comparator and a few additional components is used as the basic building block for a high speed analog-to-digital converter of the cascade-encoder type. The properties of this circuit and the performance of an implementation using standard components are discussed. Its potential for LSI is considered.


The problem of optimal carrier recovery and detection of digitally phase modulated signals on fading channels by using a nonstructured approach is presented, i.e. no constraint is placed on the receiver structure. First, the optimal receiver is derived for digitally phase-modulated signals when transmitted over a frequency-nonselective fading channel with memory. The memory results from the fact that usually the coherence time of the channel is larger than the symbol period. Symbols adjacent in time cannot be detected independently and therefore the well-known quadratic receiver is not optimal in this case. A maximum a posteriori (MAP) detector is derived and explicitly utilizes the channel memory for carrier recovery. The derivation shows that the optimal carrier recovery is, under certain conditions, a Kalman filter. Some attractive properties of this carrier recovery unit (including the absence of hang up) are discussed. Then the error rate of several digital modulation schemes is calculated taking the performance of the filter into account. The differences in susceptibility of the modulation schemes to carrier phase jitter are specified. >


Recently, RGBD-based category-level 6D object pose estimation has achieved promising improvement in performance, however, the requirement of depth information prohibits broader applications. In order to relieve this problem, this paper proposes a novel approach named Object Level Depth reconstruction Network (OLD-Net) taking only RGB images as input for category-level 6D object pose estimation. We propose to directly predict object-level depth from a monocular RGB image by deforming the category-level shape prior into object-level depth and the canonical NOCS representation. Two novel modules named Normalized Global Position Hints (NGPH) and Shape-aware Decoupled Depth Reconstruction (SDDR) module are introduced to learn high fidelity object-level depth and delicate shape representations. At last, the 6D object pose is solved by aligning the predicted canonical representation with the back-projected object-level depth. Extensive experiments on the challenging CAMERA25 and REAL275 datasets indicate that our model, though simple, achieves state-of-the-art performance.


This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the pilot programme that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has completed to test a proposed Food Standards Delivery Model ( FSDM) as part of the Achieving Business Compliance (ABC) programme. The proposed model aims to support local authorities (LAs) in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales in targeting resources more effectively, and provide better assurance and more flexibility to LAs. The pilot programme was carried out with seven LAs in England and Northern Ireland (footnote). The pilot started in January 2021 and finished in March 2022.


This manual systematizes the basics of a set of methodologies, analytical variables and indicators for a better understanding of international trade dynamics. For the systematic development of that document, the first part includes basic knowledge like definitions of proportions, percentages, annual growth rates, and structural analysis. Based upon that, the second part introduces more comprehensive concepts for a profound analysis of trade. Furthermore, concepts of tariff and nontariff protection, the link between production and trade as well as the main classifications of international trade and their different analytical uses are discussed in detail. The manual focuses on providing the largest number of possible indicators for a better understanding of a country's trade pattern and its trade dynamics, taking into account the different types of firms and sectors involved in international trade.


The effect of vagal stimulation on ventricular repolarization of normokalemic and hyperkalemic canine hearts was investigated. During the normokalemic state stimulation of the vagus decreased the amplitude of the T wave when the polarity of the wave prior to vagal activity was upright. When the control T waves were biphasic or inverted the effect of vagal stimulation was an increase in negativity. In all cases the T waves became upright and increased in amplitude during potassium (K+) infusion regardless of the initial T configuration prior to the infusion of the cation. As the plasma K+ levels were increasing the amplitude of these heightened T waves was further enhanced by vagal stimulation. It is concluded that vagal activity does effect ventricular repolarization and this effect is exaggerated as the plasma K+ level is progressively elevated.


Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) spectroscopy measures the difference in luminescence intensity between left- and right-circularly polarized light, and is often used to analyze the structure of chiral molecules in their excited state. Recently, it has found an increasing range of applications in the analysis of molecules that emit circularly polarized light and can be employed in 3D displays. Thus, the number of articles focusing on CPL spectroscopy has increased dramatically. However, since the luminescence dissymmetry factor (glum) for organic compounds is generally <|0.01|, CPL spectrometers must offer high sensitivity and produce spectra that are artifact-free for chiral molecules. Until now, the principal targets of CPL measurements have been solution samples. However, for practical device applications, it is also necessary to be able to measure the CPL spectra of solid-state samples. In addition, since electronic devices often operate at high temperatures, it is important to evaluate the thermal dependence of the CPL characteristics. Moreover, in the measurement of solid-state samples, the degree of anisotropy of the samples must be evaluated, because a large degree of anisotropy can cause artifacts. Therefore, we describe methods to evaluate the degree of anisotropy of solid-state samples and their high-temperature applications.


We quantitatively evaluate how sampling and spatio/temporal granularity in traffic monitoring affect the detectability of anomalous traffic. Those parameters also affect the monitoring burden, so network operators face a trade-off between the monitoring burden and detectability and need to know which are the optimal paramter values. We derive equations to calculate the false positive ratio and false negative ratio for given values of the sampling rate, granularity, statistics of normal traffic, and volume of anomalies to be detected. Specifically, assuming that the normal traffic has a Gaussian distribution, which is parameterized by its mean and standard deviation, we analyze how sampling and monitoring granularity change these distribution parameters. This analysis is based on observation of the backbone traffic, which exhibits spatially uncorrelated and temporally long-range dependence. Then we derive the equations for detectability. With those equations, we can answer the practical questions that arise in actual network operations: what sampling rate to set to find the given volume of anomaly, or, if the sampling is too high for actual operation, what granularity is optimal to find the anomaly for a given lower limit of sampling rate.


This research aims to investigate the impact of Common Knowledge Construction Model (CKCM) based science education teaching on the entrepreneurship skills of the eight grade students. The participants of this research are 50 students; 25 in control group (10 girls and 15 boys) and 25 in experimental group (9 girls and 16 boys). Mixed methods were employed in the research. Entrepreneurship Scale and Semi-structured entrepreneurship interview forms were used. While the data of the Entrepreneurship Scale were analysed using dependent and independent t-test, the semi-structured Interview were analysed by content and descriptive analysis. The findings showed that current teaching process applied in CKCM-based science teaching and control group (5Es learning model) was effective on entrepreneurial skills of secondary school students. When the experimental and control groups were compared, it was found out that in the experimental group, science teaching based on CKCM was more effective on the entrepreneurial skills of students as opposed to the 5Es learning model-based science teaching used with the control group students. The effect of CKCM on entrepreneurship skills could be more clearly identified if more research is taken with different levels of teaching.


The former literary scholar Grigory Chkhartishvili, now better known as the popular Russian detective writer under the pen name Boris Akunin, who is also a visible figure in the ranks of the Russian liberal opposition, in 2013 started the ambitious project of writing a multivolume history of Russia. Akunin announces his History of the Russian State as an alternative to the new mandatory history textbook currently under preparation by a group of professional historians on the request of President Vladimir Putin. According to Akunin, what sets his history of Russia apart from histories done by competitors is its objectivity: as he explains, he just wants to describe the past "as it actually happened."Turning to the first volume of Akunin's History of the Russian State published in the fall of 2013, Ilya Gerasimov does not discuss its merits as a history study, for it is beyond any professional criticism: Akunin is a pulp fiction writer, whose idea of historical craft corresponds to the standards of the 1820s or 1830s. Rather, Gerasimov uses this opportunity to discuss the influential "canon of Russian history" shared by both "conservative" and "liberal" historians. This canon was formed by the first Russian professional historian, Nikolai Karamzin in the 1820s, and then perfected by great historians of the late imperial period, the classic Stalinist historical text History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course, and the academic historiography of the 1970s. Despite conflicting interpretations of individual historical events and figures, all of these historians shared the fundamentally common view of Russian history as the history of "the Russian people" on Russian "historical territory". The history of the state became pivotal to this dominant view of Russian history, as only political institutions offered the necessary sense of continuity and consistency to the millennium-long process. Akunin's History of the Russian State provides Gerasimov with an ideal example of the archetypal version of the "canon of Russian history" as understood and thoroughly reproduced by a modern-day educated Russian. Akunin reveals the whole intellectual gestalt of social imagination of the Romantic historiography of the 1820s Restoration epoch that was preserved almost intact by the "scheme of Russian history": the organicist perception of nation, the "blood and soil" imagery of national territory, the idealization of the state as a mystic embodiment of the nation's "will," the racialized understanding of the "people." This type of thinking about society was instrumental in producing the ideal of nation-state in the late nineteenth century, and informed the politics of national purges in the 1930s (on political or ethnic grounds). Without dismantling this dominant scheme, Russian society is doomed to reproducing ideologies of variously framed nationalism, and even liberal historians will cultivate in their students the ideal of national purity and domination over "national" territory.


Quality control Charts were used to monitor the number of infections with the emerging corona virus (Covid-19) for the purpose of predicting the extent of the disease's control, knowing the extent of its spread, and determining the injuries if they were within or outside the limits of the control charts. The research aims to use each of the control chart of the (Kernel Principal Component Analysis Control Chart) and (K- Nearest Neighbor Control Chart). As (18) variables representing the governorates of Iraq were used, depending on the daily epidemiological position of the Public Health Department of the Iraqi Ministry of Health. To compare the performance of the charts, a measure of average length of run was adopted, as the results showed that the number of infection with the new Corona virus is out of control, and that the (KNN) chart had better performance in the short term with a relative equality in the performance of the two charts in the medium and long rang


This paper examines whether nonlinear and non-Gaussian features of earnings dynamics are caused by hours or hourly wages. Our findings from the Norwegian administrative and survey data are as follows: (i) Nonlinear mean reversion in earnings is driven by the dynamics of hours worked rather than wages since wage dynamics are close to linear, while hours dynamics are nonlinear—negative changes to hours are transitory, while positive changes are persistent. (ii) Large earnings changes are driven equally by hours and wages, whereas small changes are associated mainly with wage shocks. (iii) Both wages and hours contribute to negative skewness and high kurtosis for earnings changes, although hour-wage interactions are quantitatively more important. (iv) When considering household earnings and disposable household income, the deviations from normality are mitigated relative to individual labor earnings: changes in disposable household income are approximately symmetric and less leptokurtic.


Objective: the genus Xanthium l., of the Asteraceae Dum. family, (tribe Heliantheae) comprises 30 species of cosmopolitan distribution, many of which, as X. spinosum and X. strumarium are used as medicinal plants. this genus has been the object of numerous phytochemical investigations being sesquiterpene lactones with guaiane or secoguaiane frameworks the main secondary metabolites. Several sesquiterpene lactones have been demonstrated to have antimicrobial activity, in particular against Gram+ bacteria and in Uruguay the infusion of Xanthium cavanillesii Show (common name "abrojo" or "abrojo grande") which grows wild, is used as antiseptic in popular medicine. In this work we present the results of the antibacterial analysis of several extracts, fractions and pure compounds from X. cavanillesii against both sensitive and resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus. Materials and Methods: Compounds were isolated from X. cavanillesii aerial parts by several chromatographic and spectroscopic methods antimicrobial analysis were performed according to Clinical and laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. Results: The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) found were high for the sensitive 6538p strain when compared with common antibiotics. For the resistant strains, the pure compounds activity clearly outperformed the antibiotics, especially in the case of the multiresistant 700,699 strain with MICs of 31, 236 and 356 μg/mL for the Xanthium compounds, gentamicin and oxacillin respectively.


This empirical study applies the authors' model of enforcement intensity to quantify the severity of sanctions imposed on defendants for market manipulation and insider trading in Australia, Canada (Ontario), Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, providing comparative measures of the relative levels of enforcement intensity in each jurisdiction. The enforcement sanctions studied are custodial sentences, monetary sanctions (both punitive and corrective/restorative) and banning orders. Under the model, the level of enforcement intensity is influenced by both the level of enforcement activity and the severity of the sanctions imposed. The authors find significant differences between the severity of sanctions and levels of enforcement intensity relating to insider trading and market manipulation between the five jurisdictions, which may indicate differences in regulatory enforcement priorities. For example, sanctions for insider trading were more severe than for market manipulation in each of the jurisdictions apart from Singapore. In addition, the stronger enforcement focus in Hong Kong and Singapore is on market manipulation, while in Australia, Ontario and the UK it is on insider trading. The authors' findings have implications in terms of the ability of the various regulators to create a credible deterrent against insider trading and market manipulation.


The evolution of systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) to septic shock is a continuum that can be stemmed using dedicated and early goal directed interventions. In the setting of necrotizing soft tissue infection, mortality approaches 100% when debridement is delayed or altogether omitted. Volume depletion, vasodilatation, myocardial depression, high metabolism and attendant global hypoxia that precede multi- organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) and mortality need to be addressed early, avoiding delays in the emergency department, hospital ward, or the intensive care unit. Early goal directed therapy denotes the use of interventions such as administration of crystalloid solutions, vaso-active agents, blood transfusion and inotropic agents to achieve specific targets, namely, a central venous pressure of 8 – 12 mmHg, a mean arterial pressure of 65 – 90 mmHg, a urine output of > 0.5mls/kg/hr, a hematocrit of >30% and a central venous oxygen saturation of > 70% in a patient who is intubated, sedated and paralysed.We present an illustrative case of the management of severe Fournier's gangrene and how a series of misadventures at home, the A & E and the wards contributed to the inevitable demise.


All economic action is a moment of cultural creation and interpretation. This process occurs, according to classic political-economic theory, when productive labor is applied to transform matter into socially valued resources. Lacking the material resources so conspicuous in food-producing economies, hunter-gatherers are not usually considered transformational, but rather appropriative. This is an unfortunate dichotomy from the standpoint of cultural identity, because the intentionality of labor-action embodies histories of socially valued relations, if not material resources, that link particular people to land and to one another. Cultural identities are created and transformed in craft production and exchange, among other actions. Although intention cannot be inferred from craft items alone, variation in the context and scale of craft production attests to multivocal expressions of individual and group identity. The crafting of pottery and bannerstones among members of the fourth millennium Stallings Culture of the American Southeast illustrates how gender and kinship may have been manipulated for purposes of alliance building and ethnic identity. Crafting was among the actions used to assert egalitarian relations in Stallings Culture, but judging from the divergent histories of alternative crafts, identities along lines gender, kinship, and ethnicity were routinely contested.


Aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy is a powerful tool for the structural characterisation of materials at the atomic scale, but the passage of high velocity electrons through the material can often induce structural changes via the transfer of large amounts of energy from the beam. The work in this thesis theoretically considers the nature of this transfer of energy and its impact upon the material being studied.
The computational modelling of molecular species encapsulated inside carbon nanotubes and their response to electron irradiation is compared to results from TEM experiments, and used to explain the experimental observations. The high rate of destruction of C-H bonds under the beam is quantified, and its implications for TEM studies of organic materials considered. An effective solution for mitigating this rate of destruction is found, applied to a model system, and then confirmed experimentally. Using the considerations of stability under the beam, two experimentally witnessed reactions are investigated in detail, and careful comparison to intermediate structures observed in TEM allows full reaction mechanisms to be proposed.
The dynamic motion of atomic defects in irradiated graphene is considered with the aid of a large library of experimental TEM images. A novel defect structure is observed, and is seen to undergo structural rearrangements on a quicker time-scale than accessible to TEM imaging. This species enables the very quick migration of defect structures across the graphene lattice, and is attributed to a trivacancy structure.
The rates of beam induced reactions are considered in the framework of chemical kinetics, and a method for extracting kinetic parameters of a reaction from the statistics of a large number of TEM observations of it occurring is developed. This is used to obtain the first cross-sections for the formation and healing of the irradiation induced Stone-Wales bond rotation, and the first experimental activation energy for its healing. The latter agrees well with a theoretically predicted mechanism of catalysis, while the former demonstrates that the widely assumed process of direct knock-on damage cannot be responsible for the beam induced reaction. An alternative mechanism is proposed, resulting from the electronic excitation of the defect.


<100> is the favoured crystal growth direction during solidification of cubic metals. However, it is the hard magnetisation axis for Ni-rich soft magnetic materials. In this work, a strategy to enhance the magnetic shielding characteristics of laser powder bed processed soft magnetic alloy (permalloy-80) through the control of the crystallographic texture was developed. The strategy involves initially assessing the influence of the process parameters on the development of the (001) orientation within dense builds, then tilting the build orientation to achieve a crystallographic orientation along the magnetisation soft axis. Using this approach, dense cubic samples with the expected (001) texture were produced, with minimised cracking density. Thereafter, cubic samples tilted to achieve (111) and (110) textures were fabricated, as confirmed by X-ray diffraction and electron backscattered diffraction. Over 200 folds improvement in the magnetic susceptibility was found in the (111) textured build, compared with the (100) oriented build. The paper highlights the possibility to control the grain orientations to achieve improved magnetic properties in the build during laser powder bed processing.


Effective and consistent success with artificial regeneration of northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) has been achieved on many sites using 1-0 graded seedlings produced with the nursery protocol developed by the USDA Forest Service at the Institute of Tree Root Biology in cooperation with the Georgia Forestry Commission. Small northern red oak (NRO) plantings of one or two acres have demonstrated that artificial regeneration can play a vital role in restoring this species in stands where it has been difficult to establish NRO naturally for different reasons.


The results presented are part of a doctoral thesis which is being finalized. The research is centred on the online distance learning student experience in higher education, considering the variable time management, its relationship with technologies, and the virtualization of teaching and learning. Exploratory in nature, the research takes the form of a case study using a mixed methodology. One of the main objectives of the study is to contribute to the construction of a theoretical framework on the distance learning student time variable. We present a profile of academic time use by e-students (monochronic or polychronic) and suggest an intermediate profile. The conclusions point out that the profile of academic time use varies according to the degree of the course attended. It was found that undergraduate students show a more polychronic profile than masters and doctoral students.


AIMS
The aim of this study was to provide contemporary outcome data for patients with de novo coronary disease and Medina 1,1,1 lesions who were treated with a culotte two-stent technique, and to compare the performance of two modern-generation drug-eluting stent (DES) platforms, the 3-connector XIENCE and the 2-connector SYNERGY.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Patients with Medina 1,1,1 bifurcation lesions who had disease that was amenable to culotte stenting were randomised 1:1 to treatment with XIENCE or SYNERGY DES. A total of 170 patients were included. Technical success and final kissing balloon inflation occurred in >96% of cases. Major adverse cardiovascular or cerebrovascular events (MACCE: a composite of death, myocardial infarction [MI], cerebrovascular accident [CVA] and target vessel revascularisation [TVR]) occurred in 5.9% of patients by nine months. The primary endpoint was a composite of death, MI, CVA, target vessel failure (TVF), stent thrombosis and binary angiographic restenosis. At nine months, the primary endpoint occurred in 19% of XIENCE patients and 16% of SYNERGY patients (p=0.003 for non-inferiority for platform performance).

CONCLUSIONS
MACCE rates for culotte stenting using contemporary everolimus-eluting DES are low at nine months. The XIENCE and SYNERGY stents demonstrated comparable performance for the primary endpoint.


Less costly but still accurate methods for monitoring HIV treatment response are needed. We prospectively evaluated if a qualitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification assay for virologic monitoring could maintain accuracy while reducing costs in Seoul, South Korea. We conducted the first prospective study comparing a qualitative PCR amplification of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) versus a commercial real time PCR assay (i.e., viral load) for virologic monitoring of 150 patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) between November 2011 and August 2012 at an urban hospital in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 215 blood plasma samples from 150 patients receiving ART for more than 6 months were evaluated. Using the individual viral load assay, 12 of 215 (5.6%) plasma samples had more than 500 HIV RNA copies/ml. The qualitative PCR amplification assay detected individual samples with ≥500 HIV RNA copies/ml with 100% sensitivity. The specificities of the qualitative PCR amplification of the HIV-1 RT assay were 94.1%, 93.6%, and 93.2% compared to the real time PCR at 500, 1,000, and 5,000 threshold of HIV RNA copies/ml, respectively, and $24,940 USD would have been saved for 150 patients during 10 months. The qualitative PCR amplification of the HIV-1 RT assay might be a useful approach to effectively monitor patients receiving ART and save resources.


The usages of public key infrastructure (PKI) in secure e-mail service, e-commerce service, client authentication service with SSL, etc. have increased. However, a PKI faces many challenges in the practice, especially the scalability of the infrastructure. ID-based cryptosystem (ID-C) has been proposed to solve the problems of PKI by eliminating the necessity for the infrastructure to authenticate public keys and manage directories to store certificates. But, the key escrow is integrated in this setting such that private key generator can easily threaten security of agents. In this paper, to enhance the security of multi-agent in distributed computing environment, we first propose an ID-based threshold decryption scheme without key escrow which has a lost share recovery property. Also, the proposed scheme can provide the group division/merge and key update scheme for a dynamic group membership


The sensitivity of machine learning (ML) algorithms w.r.t. their hyper-parameters and the difficulty of finding the ML algorithm and hyper-parameter setting best suited to a given dataset has led to the rapidly developing field of automated machine learning (AutoML), at the crossroad of meta-learning and structured optimization. Several international AutoML challenges have been organized since 2015, motivating the development of the Bayesian optimization-based approach Auto-Sklearn (Feurer et al., 2015) and the Bandit-based approach Hyperband (Li et al., 2016). In this paper, a new approach, called Monte Carlo Tree Search for Algorithm Configuration (Mosaic), is presented, fully exploiting the tree structure of the algorithm portfolio and hyper-parameter search space. Experiments (on 133 datasets of the OpenML repository) show that Mosaic performances match that of Auto-Sklearn.


The empirical study of spatial issue voting has experienced a resurgence in recent years due to advances in data collection and research design. Grynaviski and Corrigan make several important contributions to this literature. In this note, we comment on one of Grynaviski and Corrigan's recommendations—to not include a main effect for issue importance when estimating models assessing the interactive relationship between importance and policy proximity. According to the authors, including the main importance term is incorrect because it is not necessary in representing a scale-invariant functional form under some assumptions and is insufficient under others. In deriving their reduced-form expression, the authors produce a model that is unintuitive and inappropriate for most data. Moreover, the restrictions Grynaviski and Corrigan impose on their model can produce perverse empirical predictions. We show that a model including main effect terms for importance is indeed scale invariant and that inclusion of the main importance term is necessary for scale invariance with respect to partial utility functions.


A system-level model for power control in the uplink of direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) cellular networks is presented. The model takes into account the effects of the closed loop, namely average transmit power rise, power headroom, and variable soft hand-off gains, which are not considered in existing power control models. The power control problem is analyzed in this setting, and a number of properties are derived which generalize results from the classical model without closed-loop effects. Based on this analysis, an algorithm is given that determines required transmit powers taking into account these effects. This algorithm is a generalization of classical iterative algorithms without closed-loop effects. Finally, simulation results are presented to assess the validity of the approach


Soft Weighted Median Filter Method (SWMF) is one of the new methods for noise filtering in image processing. This method is used for two types of noise in images, there is fixed valued noise (FVN) and random valued noise (RVN). Fixed valued noise is a noise type with an unchanged value, it changes the pixel value of the image to the maximum and minimum values (0 and 255), while random valued noise is a noise type with a changed value. An example of fixed valued noise is salt & pepper noise, while for random valued noise can be exemplified as gaussian, poisson, speckle, and localvar noise. Based on previous research, SWMF method can be applied to all images with all kinds of noise (FVN and RVN) and able to reduce the noise well. This method has a higher PSNR value than other methods, especially for random valued noise types such as: gaussian, speckle, and localvar noise. In this study, we propose to examine the performance of the SWMF method further by comparing this method with other methods such as Median Filter, Mean Filter, Gaussian Filter, and Wiener Filter in an image segmentation process. The image segmentation process in this research is based on area detection using Top-Hat transform and Otsu thresholding and line detection using Sobel edge detection. The performance measurement process uses the calculation of sensitivity value, specificity, and accuracy on the image segmentation with the groundtruh image. The results show that Soft Weighted Median Filter method can improve the quality of image segmentation with the average accuracy of 95.70% by reducing fixed value noise and random valued noise in the images.


Background: Controversies persist concerning the association between intake of dietary saturated fatty acids (SFAs) and cardiovascular disease risk.Objective: We compared the impact of consuming equal amounts of SFAs from cheese and butter on cardiometabolic risk factors.Design: In a multicenter, crossover, randomized controlled trial, 92 men and women with abdominal obesity and relatively low HDL-cholesterol concentrations were assigned to sequences of 5 predetermined isoenergetic diets of 4 wk each separated by 4-wk washouts: 2 diets rich in SFAs (12.4-12.6% of calories) from either cheese or butter; a monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA)-rich diet (SFAs: 5.8%, MUFAs: 19.6%); a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA)-rich diet (SFAs: 5.8%, PUFAs: 11.5%); and a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet (fat: 25%, SFAs: 5.8%).Results: Serum HDL-cholesterol concentrations were similar after the cheese and butter diets but were significantly higher than after the carbohydrate diet (+3.8% and +4.7%, respectively; P < 0.05 for both). LDL-cholesterol concentrations after the cheese diet were lower than after the butter diet (-3.3%, P < 0.05) but were higher than after the carbohydrate (+2.6%), MUFA (+5.3%), and PUFA (+12.3%) diets (P < 0.05 for all). LDL-cholesterol concentrations after the butter diet also increased significantly (from +6.1% to +16.2%, P < 0.05) compared with the carbohydrate, MUFA, and PUFA diets. The LDL-cholesterol response to treatment was significantly modified by baseline values (P-interaction = 0.02), with the increase in LDL cholesterol being significantly greater with butter than with cheese only among individuals with high baseline LDL-cholesterol concentrations. There was no significant difference between all diets on inflammation markers, blood pressure, and insulin-glucose homeostasis.Conclusions: The results of our study suggest that the consumption of SFAs from cheese and butter has similar effects on HDL cholesterol but differentially modifies LDL-cholesterol concentrations compared with the effects of carbohydrates, MUFAs, and PUFAs, particularly in individuals with high LDL cholesterol. In contrast, SFAs from either cheese or butter have no significant effects on several other nonlipid cardiometabolic risk factors. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02106208.


Disparities in mental health, school functioning, and substance use for LGBTQ youth are exacerbated when they live in foster care or unstable housing. BrightcoveDefaultPlayer10.1542/6138657594001PEDS-VA_2017-4211 Video Abstract BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are suggested to be overrepresented in unstable housing and foster care. In the current study, we assess whether LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in unstable housing and foster care and examine disparities in school functioning, substance use, and mental health for LGBTQ youth versus heterosexual youth in unstable housing and foster care. METHODS: A total of 895 218 students (10–18 years old) completed the cross-sectional California Healthy Kids Survey from 2013 to 2015. Surveys were administered in 2641 middle and high schools throughout California. Primary outcome measures included school functioning (eg, school climate, absenteeism), substance use, and mental health. RESULTS: More youth living in foster care (30.4%) and unstable housing (25.3%) self-identified as LGBTQ than youth in a nationally representative sample (11.2%). Compared with heterosexual youth and youth in stable housing, LGBTQ youth in unstable housing reported poorer school functioning (Bs = −0.10 to 0.40), higher substance use (Bs = 0.26–0.28), and poorer mental health (odds ratios = 0.73–0.80). LGBTQ youth in foster care reported more fights in school (B = 0.16), victimization (B = 0.10), and mental health problems (odds ratios = 0.82–0.73) compared with LGBTQ youth in stable housing and heterosexual youth in foster care. CONCLUSIONS: Disparities for LGBTQ youth are exacerbated when they live in foster care or unstable housing. This points to a need for protections for LGBTQ youth in care and care that is affirming of their sexual orientation and gender identity.


It is ten years since Volume 1 of The World Wheat Book was completed and the intervening years have seen many changes in the world economy, in agriculture in the countries where wheat is grown, and major developments in the techniques of wheat breeding.

This second volume therefore updates the first volume by adding to the countries discussed, giving an update on agronomy and cropping practices, and reviewing the technological advances in wheat breeding techniques.

The opening chapters summarise the history of wheat growing, the development of wheat breeding, and the current status of breeding in the countries covered. The next set of chapters looks at agronomy and cropping practices in a wide range of wheat growing regions across the world. The third set of chapters records the latest advances in wheat breeding, looking at concepts and strategies as well as current and developing techniques. The fourth set reviews the developing end uses. The final group of chapters examines specific biotic and abiotic threats from viruses, insect pests and diseases.

This book is subtitled A History of Wheat Breeding. It would be even more accurate to say that it records and discusses the continuing history of wheat breeding.


Accumulated evidence suggests that bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are capable of regenerating damaged tissue. This study evaluated whether intravenously (noninvasively) administered, GFP-labeled BMSCs would migrate into damaged brain tissue and improve neurological function after a stroke. Wistar rats were subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion and reperfusion. Twenty-four hours after injury, the rats received an i.v. injection of culture medium or BMSCs isolated from adult Wistar rats expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP). Two hours after injury and 1, 3, and 7 days after cell transplantation, neurological function was evaluated using a neurological severity scale. On day 7, the brain scar size was determined using tetrazolium chloride staining, and the implanted cells were identified using confocal microscopy. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate apoptosis and angiogenesis in the ischemic region, as well as the spatial distribution of the implanted BMSCs relative to the native neural cells. Implanted BMSCs migrated throughout the territory of the middle cerebral artery by 7 days after transplantation. Most implanted cells were located in the scar area and border zone of the ischemic region, and some expressed the neuronal marker NeuN. Rats receiving BMSC transplantation exhibited reduced scar size, limited apoptosis, and enhanced angiogenic factor expression and vascular density in the ischemic region relative to the control group, as well as significant improvements in the neurological severity scores. Intravenously administrated BMSCs facilitated the structural and functional recovery of neural tissue following ischemic injury, perhaps mediated by enhanced angiogenesis.


The paper presents a self-organized approach for coverage and capacity optimization by vertical antenna tilt adaptation. The approach is based on Cooperative Fuzzy Q-Learning and operates in a fully autonomous manner. To speedup the learning process, the proposed learning mechanism is cooperative in exploration phase and fully distributed in exploitation phase. The solution is capable of handling diverse network scenarios like initial configuration of antenna tilt at deployment, optimization of tilt during network operation and recovery from an outage in the neighborhood. This can significantly save the operational expenditure (OPEX) by minimizing the costly manual optimizations. For performance evaluation, system level simulations of LTE networks are performed and the results show that cells can learn to quickly converge to the global optimal configurations in normal operation and deployment phases. Moreover, dynamic antenna tilt adaptation can also deliver higher performance than networks with fixed configurations during cell outages in the neighborhood.