Azeotrope mixture is a liquid mixture which has constant boiling point and at a given pressure and temperature the liquid composition and vapor composition is the same where it is the equilibrium point. It has two or more component mixed together to form 'inseparable" compositions. In my project, I took ethanol and water to represent the azeotropic mixture which will be formed at 96% volume of ethanol and 4% volume of water. With the existences of azeotropic mixture it will complicated the operating region of vapor liquid envelope of the equilibrium temperature.

There are four main objectives of this project which are:
• To find a replacement for benzene or toluene as an entrainer.
• To investigate the possibilities of using ionic liquid to separate azeotropic mixture (ethanol and water).
• To evaluate the performances of using ionic liquid to separate azeotropic mixture (ethanol and water).
• To compare the results of using different ionic liquid to separate azeotropic mixture (ethanol and water).

The scope of study for this separation process of ethanol and water using ionic liquid is conducted by performing experimental analysis purity of the separation. This is done by collecting, analyzing and documenting data obtained from simple distillation. For my project I will be using the simple distillation method to separate water and ethanol mixture. With that, I will be using three different types of ionic liquids to compare the performances of separating the water and ethanol mixture. So at first, simple distillation will be performed only for water and ethanol mixture followed by addition of benzene and toluene and also the three different ionic liquids.

The results are plotted and it will be discussed according to the works that have been done. Using three different types of ionic liquids will give the comparison which ionic liquid will be the best choice to separate water and ethanol mixture. Just to give an overview, 2-hydroxyethylammonium Lactate gives the highest value of ethanol been distillate out. Following are the graphs that are plotted:
i). Purity vs. volume of ionic liquid.
ii). Volume of ethanol distillate vs. volume of ionic liquid

By adding three different types of ionic liquids, water-ethanol mixture can break the azeotrope but 2-hydroxyethylammonium Lactate gives the highest value of ethanol been distillate out. Therefore, it opens new possibilities as an entrainer for this ionic liquid.


An Innovative micropayment solution is proposed which incorporates both distributed security and social networking features. This has significant potential to impact on both the provision of new services and community features in online massive multiplayer online role-playing gaming (MMORPG) worlds. Initial feasibility implementation and testing of the micropayments system on both desktop and handheld device clients is presented. The system is well suited to gaming applications and our preliminary studies indicate the practical feasibility of integrating it within an operational MMORPG architecture.


Role extension agent of agriculture these days more centering at group approach, that is through farmer group construction. This matter is relied by role extension agent of agriculture as counsellor, as technician, as link agent and also as and dinamisator organizer influencing farmer group. existence Role of extension agent to farmer group performance will very assistive the happening of relation interpersonal between both. Is so that expected by a process transfer information and also adopt innovation will walk at ease which in the end able to alter farmer prosperity become better. Matter of that's which the background doing of this research. Intention of this research is: (1) Identifying role extension agent of agriculture in farmer group construction. (2) Identifying to farmer group performance in Subdistrict Sukodono. (3) To know relation of between role extension agent of agriculture with farmer group performance. Research Area determination [done/conducted] in intend (Purposive) that is in Subdistrict Sukodono Regency Lumajang. With consideration that counselling process to farmer still walk better and expected can deputize relation growth storey;level of agriculture to farmer group performance. Method of this Research use descriptive method and inferensia. Descriptive method give all mind to his at invention of fact to be presented objectively or used to depict phenomenon in area of research and to explain number in tables. To prove hypothesis that is anticipated by there are relation of between role of extension agent of agriculture with performance of group of farmer by Rank is Spearman test. Role extension agent of agriculture in area of research in this time still be at level is. This matter because of role of extension agent as counsellor, as organizer and dinamisator, as technician and role of extension agent as link still not yet maximal in running his role. The circumstance above excusable because to maximize role of extension agent in activity of counselling of agriculture require to be supported availablely of medium as energy support at activity of counselling of agriculture especially the fund support, and also the really program can touch [at] resolving of problems faced by farmer ( farmer group) as partner work agriculture counselling. Performance of Group of farmer in Subdistrict of dynamic Sukodono enough or at category is, This matter is becoaused less reach of target and satisfaction expected by group of farmer and also still not yet its optimal is performance of group of farmer in improvement of productivity us, mount growth is effort group and acktifity of farmer group From correlation Rank Spearman result got by that there are relation of between role extension agent of agriculture with farmer group performance with value of correlation coefficient [of] equal to 0,735. The number show high or strong correlation existence, its meaning if extension agent role high agriculture hence the high farmer group performance also, so also on the contrary. if extension agent role low agriculture hence the farmer group performance also lower. Relation of [among/between] extension agent of agriculture with group performance told [by] a strength or high because obtaining correlation of equal to 73,5 Research result expected able to create and improve harmonious relation between extension agent of agriculture with farmer group. the harmonious relation is improvedly is attention intensity of farmer group, improving activity and visit frequency, socialization and counselling items benefit improvement of items or program in more intensive also can improve better farmer group performance Keyword : penyuluh pertanian; kelompok tani Link terkait : http://skripsi.umm.ac.id/files/disk1/39/jiptummpp-gdl-s1-2005-agusajilak-1913-Pendahul-n.pdf


Background A number of countries in the South Pacific have very low cancer incidence. In spite of a high percentage of the population habituated to tobacco, the cancer incidence in countries such as Vanuatu and Fiji experience age-standardized cancer incidence in the 70's. A number of studies have noted the low cancer incidence in these countries and have postulated that a dietary chemopreventive agent might be responsible. Methods The cancer incidence studies for the Pacific Islands were completed in the 1980's. During this time period accurate records allow for a calculation of local kava consumption. This study compares the cancer incidence for a number of Pacific Island Nations with local kava consumption. Results/conclusions The data indicates that the more kava consumed by a population the lower the cancer incidence for that population. The data suggests there is a close inverse relationship between cancer incidence and kava consumption.


Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are the promising approach to provide safety and other applications to the drivers as well as passengers. It becomes a key component of the intelligent transport system. A lot of works have been done towards it but security in VANET got less attention. In this article, we have discussed about the VANET and its technical and security challenges. We have also discussed some major attacks and solutions that can be implemented against these attacks. We have compared the solution using different parameters. Lastly we have discussed the mechanisms that are used in the solutions.


AI planning techniques is exploited for automatic service composition by representing service composition as a planning problem. An enhanced HTN planning method is developed in which action decomposition is used as plan refinements in partial-order planning. How abstract planning constructs map to the domain of Web services is also discussed, which is based on semantic type matching. Furthermore, execution for service composition is separated from planning and an ECA-based workflow engine is used to execute the service-dependent plan.


A major open challenge in neuroscience is the ability to measure and perturb neural activity in vivo from well-defined neural sub-populations at cellular resolution anywhere in the brain. However, limitations posed by scattering and absorption prohibit non-invasive (surface) multiphoton approaches1,2 for deep (>2mm) structures, while Gradient Refreactive Index (GRIN) endoscopes2–4 are thick and cause significant damage upon insertion. Here, we demonstrate a novel microendoscope to image neural activity at arbitrary depths via an ultrathin multimode optical fiber (MMF) probe that is 5-10X thinner than commercially available microendoscopes. We demonstrate micron-scale resolution, multispectral and volumetric imaging. In contrast to previous approaches1,5–8 we show that this method has an improved acquisition speed that is sufficient to capture rapid neuronal dynamics in-vivo in rodents expressing a genetically encoded calcium indicator. Our results emphasize the potential of this technology in neuroscience applications and open up possibilities for cellular resolution imaging in previously unreachable brain regions.


The resolution of measures related to multimodal trip making and corresponding network designs are identified by solving a multiobjective optimisation problem. Methods to analyse the resulting Pareto set provide insight into how total travel time, CO2 emissions, urban space used by parking and costs relate. In the Randstad case study increasing frequencies appears to be more effective to improve sustainability than introducing P&R facilities and train stations.


At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries significant contribution to the approval authority of the Department of Pharmacy, Military Medical Academy introduced Professor Leo F. Ilyin (1871-1937)--a major domestic scholar and social activist, organizer of military medical supplies, physician by training, pharmacist, dedicated chemist and educator. Research, first launched in Russia by L.F. Ilyin, served as the basis for the production of morsulus--one of the most widely used dosage forms. Many works of L.F. Ilyin, his fellow workers and students are devoted to studying the structure of the active principles, properties and pharmacological action of wild and cultivated medicinal plants in Russia: herbs of marsh gilled, leaves of lobelia and May lily, roots and rootstocks of serpent grass, all-heal, pieplant, licorice, etc.


Obesity is the excessive deposition of fat. Prevalence of obesity to be higher among women. In some modern day societies, women are more likely to diet to lose weight for cosmetic than for health reasons.
Aims & objective: The aim of the present study was delineate the effective parameters of obesity.
Material and method: The present study (cross sectional study) was performed at Department of Anatomy, Dr. S.N. Medical College, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, on 46 obese females (21-45 yr age group) which are found from total 100 selected subjects on the bases of BMI. BMI, Waist circumference, Hip circumference, waist hip ratio and sub scapular & Suprailiacal skin fold thickness were measured.
Results: In the present study Observation shows that Mean BMI, Waist circumferenc have highly significant relationship and Hip circumference, waist hip ratio, Subscapular and Suprailiacal (skin fold thickness) have significant relationship in obese females between 26-30 yrs and 31-35 yrs age group.


The Late Miocene ''Solitary Channel," Tabernas-Sorbas basin, SE Spain, has been interpreted as a submarine channel fed by sediment gravity flows from the east. In this paper, the channel is reinterpreted as a lower-slope erosional channel fed by sediment gravity flows from the west. The channel shows cobble/pebble lag deposits, including breccias, associated with erosional phases with substantial sediment bypass, and a later infill by episodes of inclined backstepping macroforms (the primary focus in this paper), mainly comprising sands, interpreted here for the first time as channel backfill deposits. These inclined sandy macroforms, typically 2-5 in in height and 3040 in in length, are described in detail for the first time in this paper, and are interpreted as a new large-scale sedimentary structure. We observe that the seeding process for the inclined sandy macroforms appears to have been in the upstream depression immediately behind ridges on the surface directly overlying cohesive debris-How deposits.The internal channel architecture is interpreted in terms of fluctuating relative base levels. A purely local tectonic explanation for the inclined sandy macroforms is discounted because within the bed bundles, dips are essentially constant across the intrachannel disconformities. We speculate that the most likely overall change in base level throughout the history of the channel was driven by regional tectonic change. The higher-frequency variations were probably a consequence of fluctuations in sediment supply/caliber from the source area and/or of cycles of eustatic or regional sea-level changes. The channel was abruptly overlain by about 200 in of marls and then a heterolithic sheet-like turbidite system typical of a confined basin-floor setting. This change in depositional style represents a response to a significant overall decrease in basin-floor gradient, in which there was a differential change in base level, shown by the coeval development of a major angular unconformity farther east (Sorbas area). The channel history is important for sequence-stratigraphic modeling because it demonstrates that a backstepping fill can be caused by an overall tectonic control on the accommodation space (initiation and abandonment). Higher-frequency source-area changes in sediment flux/caliber and/or eustatic sea level probably exert a strong influence on the detailed depositional architecture in the channel (multiple bypass-backfill events).


The community of Bene-Ephraim was established in the late 1980s in Andhra Pradesh by a group of Christianised Madiga who declared that they belonged to one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The paper explores the extent to which Bene Ephraim narratives of origin have been and are being shaped by the responses of others on the level of national and international politics. It is demonstrated that while in the beginning the leaders of the community were keen to stress their affinity to the scheduled castes of India and portrayed their social and economic problems in terms of the upper and lower caste dichotomy, later on they modified their story of origin to dissociate the community from the untouchables. Their self-representation as victims of caste domination gave way to expressions of concern about the possibility of becoming victims of anti-Jewish terrorist attacks. The paper argues that this change in the way the Bene Ephraim chose to frame the socio-political problems that the community is facing was linked to their attempts to be recognized as a Jewish group and be accepted in the State of Israel. At the same time, it is also suggested that this tactic provides yet another example of a Dalit group attempting to attract the attention of the international community to their condition of discrimination by reinterpreting their plight in the terms that foreign audiences would be more familiar with and could relate to more easily.


Mixtures of (14)C-labelled glucose plus pyruvate were incubated either with rat diaphragm or slices of rat liver. Incorporation of glucose carbon into glycogen was compared with its incorporation into glucose 6-phosphate relative to the incorporation of pyruvate carbon into these metabolic products. There was no preferential incorporation of glucose carbon relative to pyruvate carbon into glycogen compared with glucose 6-phosphate in the liver slices, but there was in diaphragm. On the assumption that glucose 6-phosphate is a necessary intermediate in the conversion of pyruvate carbon into glycogen, this is evidence for the existence in muscle, but not in liver, of more than one pool of glucose 6-phosphate or of a pathway from glucose to glycogen without glucose 6-phosphate as an intermediate. Galactose carbon, relative to pyruvate carbon, was preferentially incorporated into liver glycogen, so that a substrate converted in liver into glycogen without glucose 6-phosphate as an intermediate could be detected by this approach.


Primitive melt inclusions in chrome spinel from the Ogasawara Archipelago (Japan) compose two discrete groups of high-SiO2, high-MgO (high-Si) and low-SiO2, low-MgO (low-Si) boninitic suites, with ultra-depleted dish- and V-shaped, and less-depleted flat, rare earth element patterns. The most magnesian melt inclusions of each geochemical type were used to estimate the temperature-pressure conditions for primary boninites, which range from 1345 °C at 0.56 GPa to 1421 °C at 0.85 GPa for the 48–46 Ma low-Si and high-Si boninites, and 1381 °C at 0.85 GPa for the 45 Ma low-Si boninite. The onset of the Pacific slab subduction at 52 Ma forced upwelling of depleted mid-oceanic ridge basalt mantle (DMM) to yield proto-arc basalt (PAB). With the rise of DMM, refractory harzburgite ascended without melting. At 48–46 Ma, introduction of slab fluids induced melting of the PAB residue and high-temperature harzburgite, resulting in the low-Si and high-Si boninites, respectively. Meanwhile, convection within the mantle wedge brought the less-depleted residue of PAB and DMM into the region fluxed by slab fluids, which melted to yield the less-depleted low-Si boninite at 45 Ma, and fertile arc basalts, respectively.


Abstract Field margin weeds may contribute to the invasion and persistence of weeds in arable fields. Experimental studies of this hypothesis, however, have been inconclusive. We examined the role of field margin weed populations with a spatially explicit simulation model of Canada thistle population dynamics. We measured the contribution of field margin populations to weed pressure in the field across a wide range of parameter values and compared the weed control value of efforts applied to the field margin to that of similar efforts applied to the field. Under most combinations of parameter values, field margin weeds contributed little to weed pressure in the field, suggesting that controlling field margin weeds may often be of little value. Two conditions appeared to be necessary for field margin weeds to influence weed population dynamics within the field: the presence of unoccupied weed habitat, which increased the importance of dispersal to population growth, and high dispersal rates of field margin weeds relative to field weeds, which increased the relative contribution of field margin weeds to dispersal. Nomenclature: Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop. CIRAR.


Despite growing interest in estimating individualized treatment rules, little attention has been given the binary outcome setting. Estimation is challenging with nonlinear link functions, especially when variable selection is needed. We use a new computational approach to solve a recently proposed doubly robust regularized estimating equation to accomplish this difficult task in a case study of depression treatment. We demonstrate an application of this new approach in combination with a weighted and penalized estimating equation to this challenging binary outcome setting. We demonstrate the double robustness of the method and its effectiveness for variable selection. The work is motivated by and applied to an analysis of treatment for unipolar depression using a population of patients treated at Kaiser Permanente Washington.


Article history: Received 17 May 2018 Accepted 07 June 2018 Available online 08 June 2018 Pure and strontium doped nickel oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by co-precipitation method and calcinated at 400 °C from nickel chloride as precursor agent and strontium chloride as doping agent. The samples have been studied by various characterization techniques such as UV-visible, FTIR, XRD and FESEM. The crystallite size and structure of NiO nanoparticles were calculated from XRD pattern. The morphology and particles shape were analyzed by FESEM studies. The SPR absorption peak and band gap value were calculated by UV-visible absorption spectra.


Inorganic—organic hybrid nanocomposites were prepared by the following steps: (1) homogeneous dispersion of various percentages (1 to 5% w/w) of organically modified montmorollonite clay in epoxy matrix resin; (2) the resulting homogeneous epoxy—clay hybrids were modified with 10 wt.% of hydroxyl-terminated polydiemthyl siloxane (HTPDMS) using γ -aminopropyltriethoxysilane (γ APS) as coupling agent in the presence of dibutyltindilaurate catalyst; and (3) the siliconized epoxy—clay prepolymers were further modified separately with 10 wt% of three different cyanate ester monomers and cured with diaminodiphenylmethane. The chemical interactions between epoxy, clay, HTPDMS and cyanate ester were confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectral analysis. The values obtained from differential scanning calorimetry and dynamic mechanical analysis showed that there was a significant loss of glass transition temperatures in the resulting hybrid epoxy nanocomposite systems compared with that of neat epoxy system. The inorganic clay mineral and the formation of thermally stable oxazolidinone structures and siloxane linkages during curing led to significant improvement in the thermal properties of the resulting nanocomposites. A decreasing trend was identified in the resulting nanocomposites from their values of dielectric constant and dielectric loss by the incorporation of clay, HTPDMS and cyanate ester in the epoxy resin. The intercalation/exfoliation structure was studied using X-ray diffraction analysis and the homogeneous/heterogeneous morphology was studied using scanning electron microscopy analysis in the resulting nanocomposites.


Background: Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a clinical condition that occurs due to atherosclerosis and narrowing of the arteries involving the aorta, branches of the visceral arteries such as the iliac arteries, and the arteries of the distal extremities. The femoropopliteal artery is the most commonly involved site in patients with atherosclerotic PAD. Ankle Brachial Index (ABI) determination may have limited value in some patients with diabetes, because calcification of the tibial artery can render it uncompressible, resulting in a very high ABI value (>1.40). Handheld vascular Doppler with pulse volume waveform interpretation (PVW) is an easily available and non-invasive modality for evaluation of the inferior extremity arteries and can detect the severity of blood flow disturbances or ongoing PAD. The best diagnostic method for PAD is angiography using digital substraction angiography (DSA) to assess existing atherosclerotic lesions. The advantages of ABI and PWHD examinations are in terms of simplicity, ease of use, and non-invasiveness instead of angiography in PAD diagnosis led the investigators to compare the sensitivity and specificity values between ABI and PWHD with angiography as a diagnostic test for PAD patients.

Methods: This study used a cross-sectional diagnostic test design with the subjects were patients diagnosed with PAD, both outpatients and inpatients at Prof. DR. R.D Kandou Manado. ABI, PWHD and angiography examination were performed on all study subjects.

Results: The data show that ABI has a sensitivity of 95.2% and a specificity of 80% in diagnosing PAD patients when compared to angiography as the standard of diagnosis of PAD. PWHD compared to angiography has a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 100%. When ABI and PWHD are combined, it has a sensitivity of 100% with a specificity of 80%. The sensitivity and specificity of PWHD compared to angiography based on angiographic location in popliteal artery has a sensitivity of 91.7% and a specificity of 92.6%. PWHD compared with angiography on posterior tibial artery (PTA) has a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 88.9%. ABI compared with angiography on dorsalis pedis artery has a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 71.4%, with p <0.0001.

Conclusion: The high sensitivity and specificity of ABI and PWHD can be used as a diagnostic test tool for PAD patients by general practitioners in first level health facilities.


Abstract.
 Physiological drought stress responses were assessed in recombinant inbred lines (RILs) from three soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) crosses, in preparation for quantitative trait locus (QTL) analyses using Diversity Arrays Technology (DArT) markers. The three RIL populations were derived from pairwise crosses between three genotypes, cv. Valder, CPI 26671 and G2120, which in previous studies had differed in drought-stress response. Of particular interest was the landrace variety G2120, which in the previous reports had recovered better after severe drought. To assess drought-stress response, the plants were grown in deep cylindrical pots in the glasshouse and exposed to severe water deficit followed by re-watering. Two plants to be genotyped were grown in each pot, together with one plant of G2120, which served as a reference plant against which the responses of the two other plants were assessed. Traits recorded included measures of relative water content (RWC), epidermal conductance (ge) and recovery in growth following re-watering. The responses in the reference and parental plants and the RIL populations were broadly consistent with previous studies. As plant-available water in the soil declined, both RWC and ge declined, although the relation between RWC and ge was exponential, rather than linear as in previous studies. Analysis of variance revealed large environmental effects on most of the traits, which resulted in high coefficients of variation and low estimates of broad-sense heritability. However, there were significant differences at both the population and genotype levels for all key traits, confirming the presence of genetic variation for drought-stress response. Some opportunities for enhancing the observed genetic differences and reducing the environmental noise in future studies are canvassed. Application of the observed phenotypic data reported in this paper in subsequent QTL analyses based on DArT markers is reported in the companion paper.


Abstract Development of hyperuricemia is associated with excessive body mass, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, overuse of diuretics, elderly age, and abnormal renal function. Data are accumulated on existence of links between elevated uric acid level and arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart disease, and chronic heart failure (CHF). Hyperuricemia has been found in 60% of patients hospitalized because of decompensation of CHF. In CHF isolated hyperuricemia (irrespective of the state of renal function and administration of drugs) appears to be a marker of altered oxidative metabolism characterized by elevation of levels of free radicals which damage cardiomyocytes and vascular endothelium inducing disturbances of myocardial contractility and vasoconstriction. Hyperuricemia associated with insulin resistance, tissue hypoxia, elevated production of cytokines and free radicals can negatively affect cardiovascular system and worsen prognosis in patients with CHF.


INTRODUCTION AND AIM
Data on epidemiology of liver diseases in Brazil is scarce. This study aimed to estimate the burden of chronic viral hepatitis and liver cirrhosis in the country.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The indicator used was disability-adjusted life year (DALY), a sum of years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD). Liver cirrhosis was analyzed in etiologic categories and cirrhosis of viral origin was considered part of the burden of chronic hepatitis.

RESULTS
There were 57,380 DALYs (30.3 per 100,000 inhabitants) attributable to chronic hepatitis B and cirrhosis due to hepatitis B, with 41,262 DALYs in men. Most burden was caused by YLL (47,015 or 24.8/100,000) rather than YLD (10,365 or 5.5/100,000). Chronic hepatitis C and cirrhosis due to hepatitis C were responsible for 207,747 DALYs (109.6/100,000), of which 137,922 were YLL (72.7/100,000) and 69,825 (36.8/100,000) were YLD, with a higher proportion of DALYs in men (73.9%). Cirrhosis due to alcohol or other causes had a total of 536,169 DALYs (1,4% of total DALYs in Brazil), with 418,272 YLL (341,140 in men) and 117,897 YLD (97,965 in men). Highest DALYs' rates occurred at ages 60-69 in chronic hepatitis and at ages 45-59 in cirrhosis due to alcohol or other causes.

CONCLUSION
Chronic viral hepatitis and liver cirrhosis are responsible for a significant burden in Brazil, affecting mainly men and individuals still in their productive years. Most burden is related to non-viral causes of cirrhosis, with a major contribution of alcohol.


The SDiT project aimed to consider how repurposing existing data resources housed at the UKDA for teaching and learning might increase their use, while recognising that there is considerable scope for increasing use of specially tailored teaching datasets and associated online learning materials within the FE sector. Simplifying and re-purposing complex data, for example, the larger government survey datasets held by the UKDA, is one way of opening up their accessibility. In attempting to meet the Programme's key challenge of elucidating strategies that might encourage sustainability and widespread adoption of e-learning materials, the project was primarily concerned with learning activities, outcomes and models. Thus pedagogical outcomes were very much at the heart of the project. In this respect, a longer-term aim of the SDIT project was to find ways of helping teachers and learners work towards improving the data literacy of GCE 'A' level and university students to: • enable a better understanding of the use of social science data as applied to real life problems • enhance skills in manipulating numerical data - textbooks, newspapers, reports and databases • conceptualise the characteristics of quantitative data so that they can be used to support substantive arguments • increase the ability and confidence of students in producing and communicating data • become critical consumers of these data. The initial aims of the project were: first to develop, pilot and evaluate a set of survey data-based resources for use in the teaching of social science courses at both HE and FE level; and second, to document the experiences, process and outcomes of the project itself.


This research report makes the following claims: 1] There was not an unambiguous economic advantage of hybrid corn over the open-pollinated varieties in 1936. 2] The early adoption of hybrid corn before 1937 can be better explained by a sustained propaganda campaign conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the direction of the Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Agard Wallace. The Department's campaign echoed that of the commercial seed companies. The most prominent hybrid seed company, Pioneer Hi-Bred Company, was founded by Wallace and he retained a financial interest while serving as Secretary. 3] The early adopters of hybrid seed were followed by later adopters as a consequence of the droughts of 1934 and especially 1936. The eventual improvement of yields as newer varieties were introduced explains the continuation and acceleration of the process.


We employ a technique that combines the configuration interaction method with the singles-doubles coupled-cluster method to perform calculation of the energy levels, transition amplitudes, lifetimes, g-factors, and magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole hyperfine structure constants for many low-lying states of neutral actinium. We find very good agreement with existing experimental energy levels and make accurate predictions for missing levels. It has been noted that some of the levels have been previously misidentified; our analysis supports this claim. If spectroscopy is performed with actinium-225, our calculations will lead to values for nuclear structure constants. The accuracy of this can be constrained by comparing with actinium-227.


In order to provide the means to set up a control theory lab experiment involving position control of a brushed DC motor with current feedback, a pulse-width modulated motor controller was designed. The output voltage is controlled by an analog reference signal and the magnitude of the output current and voltage are measured and output. These inputs and outputs are connected to a DAQ I/O-unit such that the lab experiment can be implemented digitally. In addition, defining equations for the whole system were derived. Comparison between measurements and model showed it possible to use the current as feedback if low-pass filtered and the angular displacement controlled over a small angular interval.


Per-instance automated algorithm configuration and selection are gaining significant moments in evolutionary computation in recent years. Two crucial, sometimes implicit, ingredients for these automated machine learning (AutoML) methods are 1) feature-based representations of the problem instances and 2) performance prediction methods that take the features as input to estimate how well a specific algorithm instance will perform on a given problem instance. Non-surprisingly, common machine learning models fail to make predictions for instances whose feature-based representation is underrepresented or not covered in the training data, resulting in poor generalization ability of the models for problems not seen during training.In this work, we study leave-one-problem-out (LOPO) performance prediction. We analyze whether standard random forest (RF) model predictions can be improved by calibrating them with a weighted average of performance values obtained by the algorithm on problem instances that are sufficiently close to the problem for which a performance prediction is sought, measured by cosine similarity in feature space. While our RF+clust approach obtains more accurate performance prediction for several problems, its predictive power crucially depends on the chosen similarity threshold as well as on the feature portfolio for which the cosine similarity is measured, thereby opening a new angle for feature selection in a zero-shot learning setting, as LOPO is termed in machine learning.


The North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) community initiated dataARC to develop digital research infrastructures to support their work on long-term human-ecodynamics in the North Atlantic. These infrastructures were designed to address the challenges of sharing research data, the connections between those data and high-level interpretations, and the interpretations themselves. In parallel, they were also designed to support the reuse of diverse data that underpin transdisciplinary synthesis research and to contextualise materials disseminated widely to the public more firmly in their evidence base. This article outlines the research infrastructure produced by the project and reflects on its design and development. We outline the core motivations for dataARC's work and introduce the tools, platforms and (meta)data products developed. We then undertake a critical review of the project's workflow. This review focuses on our understanding of the needs of stakeholder groups, the principles that guided the design of the infrastructure, and the extent to which these principles are successfully promoted in the current implementation. Drawing on this assessment, we consider how the infrastructure, in whole or in part, might be reused by other transdisciplinary research communities. Finally, we highlight key socio-technical gaps that may emerge as structural barriers to transdisciplinary, engaged, and open research if left unaddressed.


Lymphangioma of the urinary bladder is a very rare tumour in adulthood. Robotic partial cystectomy is evolving for treatment of a limited number of bladder tumours. We describe a case of an adult woman with a bladder dome lymphangioma for which robotic partial cystectomy was carried out.


Recalcitrant chemicals in wastewater cannot be degraded by primary and secondary treatments. So the need of tertiary treatment processes such as ozonation. Primary treatment comprises flocculation and coagulation while secondary treatment comprises activated sludge process or filtration through trickling filters. Tertiary treatment process comprises ozonation, membrane filtration, adsorption and other advanced oxidation processes. The importance of ozonation as an advanced oxidation process is due to the fact that ozonation process is environmental friendly and sound. Our review will delineate the research work done in the area of ozonation and nanofiltration, primarily the ozonation of dye effluent in wastewater from textile industries. The ozone method is known to be effective for decomposing organic chemicals containing carbon-carbon double bonds, olefenic double bonds, acetylenic triple bonds, aromatic compounds, phenols, polycyclic aromatics, heterocyclics, carbon-nitrogen double bonds, carbonhydrogen bonds, silicon-hydrogen and carbon-metal bonds. Some visionary work has been done in the ozonation of reactive dyes in the wastewater effluent of textile industries. Synthetic dyes and pigments released to the environment in the form of effluents by textile, leather and printing industries cause severe ecological damages. These dyes include several structural varieties of dyes such as acidic, reactive, basic, azo, diazo, anthraquinone based and metal complex dyes. Neither simple chemical nor biological treatment alone has proved adequate in decolorization and sufficient depletion of inorganic matter. Due to the inhibitory nature of many compounds for biological oxidation, the need for pretreatment by advanced oxidation process (AOP) has become essential. One of the AOP processes is ozonation, which is versatile and environmentally powerful. Ozonation of water is a well known technology and the strong oxidative properties of O3 and its ability to effectively oxidise many organic compounds in aqueous solution have been well documented. Ozone treatment of several types of wastewater has resulted in considerable COD reduction and has been used for treatment of dyes, phenols, pesticides etc. In recent years, ozonation is emerging as a potential process for color removal of dyes, since the chromophore groups with conjugated double bonds, which are responsible for colour can be broken down by ozone either directly or indirectly forming smaller molecules, thereby decreasing the colour of effluents. Due to its high electrochemical potential (2.08 V), O3 is the strongest oxidant available and applicable as compared to H2O2 (1.78 V) and can react with several classes of compounds through direct or indirect reaction. Unlike other oxidising agents such as Cl2, oxidation with O3 leaves no toxic residues that have to be removed or disposed. Studies carried out by several scientists show that ozone generally produces non-toxic end products which are converted to CO2 and H2O depending on the conditions.Nanofiltration is very effective and the next generation science and technology. Our aim, objective and vision is to delineate the major research work done in the field of ozonation in order to project it as a powerful advanced oxidation process and also describe significant work done in the field of nanofiltration of dyes.


A portfolio's asset allocation determines the portfolio's risk and return characteristics. To maintain its original risk and return characteristics over time, the portfolio must be rebalanced. This paper identifies the factors that influence a rebalancing strategy. We present a conceptual framework for developing rebalancing strategies that can accommodate changes in the financial market environment and in asset class characteristics, as well as account for an institution's unique risk tolerance and time horizon. We conduct simulations to analyze how these different factors and different rebalancing guidelines affect a portfolio's risk and return characteristics. We conclude with a review of practical rebalancing considerations.


: By means of electron microscopy cells in the human submandibular glands were studied. It was demonstrated that in acini two types of glandular cells were present: mucosal and seromucosal. In the latter, secretory granules are descrete with electron opaque cores in most of them. Mucocytes are filled with an electron transparent secrete; secretory granules often confluent and their membranes rupture. The acini are surrounded with myoepithelial cells. Intercalated ducts consist of cells with moderately electron opaque granules. In some granules there are dense bodies excentrically situated. In these cells there occur lipid inclusions. Striated ducts are composed of basal (electron transparent) and high cylindric (light and dark) cells. The cylindrical cells have a large amount of mitochondria, deep folds in their basal plasmolemma protruding into cytoplasma. Most of the cells in these parts contain small apically accumulated secretory granules with a dense matrix and separate larger ones scattered in the cell. It is possible to suggest that some secretory granules of ductal or, perhaps, acinar origin contain hormonal products.


The paper discusses the strong output decline in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It starts from the puzzling observation that the former CSFR, Hungary and Poland experienced a relatively similar decline in output in spite of completely different stabilization and transformation policies. Using an aggregate supply/demand (AS/AD) framework it can be shown that there are obvious `real' causes for an output drop. The command economy was characterized by a dual disequilibrium (labour market and goods market). The removal of the high excess employment leads to an inevitable drop of natural output and employment together with a reduction of real wages. This is amplified by a downward shift of the production function, mainly because of lack of corporate governance. With very flexible nominal wages, the transitional economy can be represented by the `classical' version of the AS/AD model, which suggests that the theoretical basis for demand-side explanations is rather weak. This supply-side view is compatible with the popular explanation given by Calvo and Coricelli, but their evidence for a `credit crunch' in Poland is not very strong. The paper also discusses the `Soviet trade shock' as a possible cause for the output drop. It shows that Hungary and Poland -- and to some extent the CSFR -- were able to compensate their loss of CMEA exports by expanding their exports to the West, so that an overall trade shock cannot be observed. The `classical' explanation of the output decline rules out policies stimulating demand. What is required is a framework enhancing the transfer of resources from state-owned enterprises to the emerging private sector.


In order to reduce overall costs of developing high-quality digital courses (including both the content, and the learning and teaching activities), the exchange of learning objects has been recognized as a promising solution. This article makes an inventory of the issues involved in the exchange of learning objects within a community. It explores some basic theories, models and specifications and provides a theoretical framework containing the functional and non-functional requirements to establish an exchange system in the educational field. Three levels of requirements are discussed. First, the non-functional requirements that deal with the technical conditions to make learning objects interoperable. Second, some basic use cases (activities) are identified that must be facilitated to enable the technical exchange of learning objects, e.g. searching and adapting the objects. Third, some basic use cases are identified that are required to establish the exchange of learning objects in a community, e.g. policy management, information and training. The implications of this framework are then discussed, including recommendations concerning the identification of reward systems, role changes and evaluation instruments.


The paper aims to investigate food expenditure behaviours and dynamics of Italian households, by identifying the main characteristics of different socioeconomic groups. In particular, the study focuses on relevant food categories in terms of healthy diet to investigate different food styles consumers. In this framework, the paper stresses the linkages between food demand behaviours and socioeconomic characteristics to give some insights on the difference between wealthy/not wealthy consumers. The analysis uses the 2000 and 2006 Consumption Expenditure Surveys at household level, implemented by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT), that provide useful data on households socioeconomic conditions and consumption expenditures dynamics on a cross-sectional population sample of about 24000 units. In a first step, the work analyses food expenditures characteristics and dynamics across different consumers classes in order to describe demand profiles. In a second step, the work directly investigates relations between socioeconomic characteristics (e.g. income, age, household size, education) and households food expenditures, by adopting advanced econometric methods, e.g. quantile regression methods, to identify existing differences across socioeconomic groups.


The major aim of the present work is to provide a re-assessment of the morphological and taxonomic affinities of several adult and juvenile fossils from the territory of the former Soviet Union that retain frontal bones. Nine fossils were analysed and compared with a sample of Late Pleistocene hominins and recent modern populations. Analytical techniques included traditional inter-landmark measurements, as well as a geometric morphometric toolkit for the 3D surfaces. The following patterns were found in the comparative sample: 1) the best differentiation in the frontal bone morphology exists between the 'modern' and 'archaic' groups of hominins, where the former is composed of recent and Upper Palaeolithic modem humans, and the latter incorporates Neanderthals and early modern humans from Africa and West Asia 2) Upper Palaeolithic humans from central and eastern Europe differ significantly from the pooled sample of the nine recent modern human populations 3) the morphology of the complete frontal bone discriminates between hominin groups better than the supraorbital relief 4) recent modern humans and Neanderthals display diverging growth trajectories in the shape of the frontal bone differences already exist at the earliest age stages represented here (2.5 years in Neanderthals) and increase towards adulthood. Within the above framework, all Sungir' fossils align with the recent modern human morphological variation. In contrast, the fossil frontal from Podkumok, North Caucasus, is associated with the Upper Palaeolithic sample of fossils. Satanay, Khvalynsk and Skhodnya frontal bones have an ambiguous morphological associations generally aligning with the modem morphology but demonstrating particular combination of features that sometimes make them closer to the 'archaic' fossils in the sample. The Teshik-Tash child is found to be similar to Neanderthals in the frontal bone morphology. However, it shows lesser degree of the development of the 'classical' Neanderthal morphology and deviates towards the early modern humans. The Starosel'e child did not demonstrate any affiliation with the 'archaic' morphological pattern in its frontal bone.


Introduction Rural New Zealand is being transformed by a number of intersecting pressures and dynamics. Some are locally driven, but many are generated by changes taking place in the global economy. The 2007 State of the Environment Report [MfE 2007] has highlighted that these transformations have significant environmental consequences, some of which are coming into tension with the rising expectations of overseas consumers, as well as urban New Zealanders. This paper briefly reviews some historical and current factors that shape contemporary rural landscapes. It critiques the dominant model of environmental planning; identifies limitations and future challenges; and presents an alternative vision for the future. The main theme of the paper is to highlight the potential of landscape regeneration as an integrating vision. It argues for a national policy statement that establishes a strategy and targets for the regeneration of the ecological infrastructure of rural New Zealand. The aim is to create a long term matrix of sustainable and self regenerating ecosystems within which productive land uses can be undertaken. Landscape thinking and understanding becomes a means to stimulate the rural transformation needed to achieve sustainability goals.


The FPN is an important part in CCD noise. The positions of the FPN in CCD are fixed, and the magnitude follows some rules. Through measuring the positions and magnitude of the FPN beforehand, we could eliminate the FPN in the image processing afterward. The causes and forms of the FPN are analyzed. The FPN of the science grad CCD Alta U9000 is introduced. The relationship between the FPN of U9000 and the exposure time is determined with the shutter closed. And the FPN of images taken in another experiment is eliminated. The experiment results well.


Both postmodernism and corporate culturalism, each in distinctly different ways, have had the effect of suppressing links between diverse populations and identity politics in regards to the work environment. For example, the "politics of difference" debates of the 1980s began to take on ominous developments in the 1990s with the dispersal of multiple identity characteristics into a fragmented morass. In turn, personal diversity attributes have been collapsed into the agenda of corporate cultural cloning such that an individual's presentation of self is expected to conform to malestream managerial characterisations. However, there is evidence of contradictory impulses associated with these events, which provides space to envisage a contemporary form of community‐orientated activism that avoids the dilemmas of overly disparate difference approaches and narrowly prescribed models of subjectivity. This article describes how such a committed social movement politic might be operationalised in organisational/teaching contexts. The objective is to demonstrate the relevance of poststructural feminist ideas of communities of practice and notions of relationalism as a substantial charter for enriching organisational life. Ironically, in the current "new economy" environment, the discourse of management itself provides a means for such an endeavour to be legitimated. The article addresses the crucial factors required to achieve this substantive change process via expanded notions of difference, diversity and hybridity.


The temperature, time and cooling rate are key factors in the hardening process using the grinding heat instead of the high frequency induction heat source. Thus, this paper established the mathematical model estimating the grind-hardening temperature, experimentally determined the grinding temperature and the cooling rate of different grinding parameters for 48MnV microalloyed steel using the conventional aluminum grinding wheel on a surface grinder, and investigated the grind-hardening effects and the forming mechanism of grind-hardening layer. The results show that the estimating temperatures are comparatively close to the measuring ones and hence the model could be utilized to optimize the processing parameters, and the satisfactory grind-hardening temperature and cooling rate could be achieved under the optimized processing parameters. The microstructure of the grind-hardening layer, the fine needlelike martensite in the entirely hardened zone, the martensite and ferrite in the transitional region is similar to that acquired through the high frequency induction technique. Especially, the average hardness of the entirely hardened zone is 740HV and the depth of the hardened layer is adjacent to 1.5mm, which indicate that the grind-hardening effects are very excellent. Different from the forming mechanism of the high frequency induction hardened layer, higher grind-hardening temperature is needed to compensate shorter time austenitization, and because of thermo-mechanical loading induced during grinding, from surface to inside, the morphology of martensite changes from fine to thicker, then to finer, other than from thick to finer.


This Article empirically examines how litigation shapes the substantive agenda of a social movement. Critical scholars have argued that movement lawyers, as professionals and elites, tend to substitute their own priorities for those of their clients. Yet lawyers and litigation can also influence a movement's agenda through subtle, organizational dynamics rather than through the volitional, ethical choices made by movement lawyers. This Article reexamines critiques of civil rights lawyering through a case study of the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ("LGBT") rights. This case study draws on quantitative and qualitative analyses of original data from more than two decades of LGBT movement history. These analyses reveal that litigation garnered more news media coverage than other tactics and that the LGBT movement organizations that used litigation had a greater likelihood of survival than organizations that did not. These benefits made litigation the most visible and established of all the LGBT movement's tactics. In addition, LGBT protest organizations responded to the legal issues projected in the mainstream media to form their agendas, subtly redirecting those protest organizations away from their original priorities and toward legal goals. This Article makes a novel contribution to existing scholarship by exposing systemic processes that may privilege movement litigation relative to protest, elevating the issues being litigated to top movement priorities. Significant implications follow for theories of law and social change. The dominance of legal issues on the LGBT movement's agenda marginalized movement demands for cultural transformation or structural change in favor of assimilationist goals, such as the right to marry, that translate well into formal legal claims. Understanding the dynamics revealed here, which allow litigation to set a social movement's agenda, will help civil rights lawyers in the LGBT movement and beyond to provide more effective representation and to achieve more far-reaching social change.


Entropy is a measure of information carried by a signal. It has also been used as a feature for the modeling or classification of signals. In this paper, we investigate the use of entropy for modeling EEG (Electroencephalography) based scent intensity levels. The paper examines three variations of the entropy design (i.e. entropy ratio, entropy difference, and entropy mean) and two other parameters namely root-mean-square (RMS), and Kurtosis. In order to derive the feature vectors, EEG signals are collected from 14 healthy volunteer human subjects on two levels of scent intensities. The results show that, EEG signals with higher scent stimulation have lower feature parameter values for all the five features considered. The feature vectors are also observed to clutter together for the same intensity level. A mathematical model using the five features is also proposed to represent or differentiate the intensity levels. An example of 3D visualization using three of the features considered is given to illustrate the modeling concept. In comparison to previous works, our paper focuses on the use of a mathematical model, involving variations of entropy as the features, to represent and differentiate EEG signals generated in response to different scent intensity levels.


Even though silver and silver nanoparticles at low concentrations are considered safe for human health, their steadily increasing use and associated release in nature is not without risk since it may result in the selection of silver-resistant microorganisms, thus impeding the utilization of silver as antimicrobial agent. Furthermore, increased resistance to metals may be accompanied by increased antibiotic resistance. Inactivation of the histidine kinase and concomitant upregulation of the cognate response regulator (RR) of the AgrRS two-component system was previously shown to play an important role in the increased silver resistance of laboratory adapted mutants of Cupriavidus metallidurans. However, binding of AgrR, a member of the OmpR/PhoP family of RRs with a conserved phosphoreceiver aspartate residue, to potential target promoters has never been demonstrated. Here we identify differentially expressed genes in the silver-resistant mutant NA4S in non-selective conditions by RNA-seq and demonstrate sequence-specific binding of AgrR to six selected promoter regions of upregulated genes and divergent operons. We delimit binding sites by DNase I and in gel copper-phenanthroline footprinting of AgrR-DNA complexes, and establish a high resolution base-specific contact map of AgrR-DNA interactions using premodification binding interference techniques. We identified a 16-bp core AgrR binding site (AgrR box) arranged as an imperfect inverted repeat of 6 bp (ATTACA) separated by 4 bp variable in sequence (6-4-6). AgrR interacts with two major groove segments and the intervening minor groove, all aligned on one face of the helix. Furthermore, an additional in phase imperfect direct repeat of the half-site may be observed slightly up and/or downstream of the inverted repeat at some operators. Mutant studies indicated that both inverted and direct repeats contribute to AgrR binding in vitro and AgrR-mediated activation in vivo. From the position of the AgrR box it appears that AgrR may act as a Type II activator for most investigated promoters, including positive autoregulation. Furthermore, we show in vitro binding and in vivo activation with dephosphomimetic AgrR mutant D51A, indicating that unphosphorylated AgrR is the active form of the RR in mutant NA4S.


This thesis provides a possible solution to the problem of illiteracy among black South Africans. It is argued that for adult literacy to be translated into an effective policy, it should be fought for as an emancipatory ideological construct integrated into the Mass Democratic Movement's political theories. The arguments leading to such a recommendation are based on an analysis of the state's character as illuminated by its orientation to policy formation in relation to blacks. Through an analysis of the formal education system and literacy provision for blacks, it is argued that illiteracy is reproduced as a characteristic of the black working class. Thus, literacy is identified as a vehicle that could provide adults with access to different forms of education in order to transcend political, social and economic subjugation, and to participate in the reconstruction of South Africa to a


In this paper, two gait transition models of a quadruped are derived based on gait kinematics. The learning and generalization capability of the cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) neural network in learning gait transitions is then studied. The two gait transition models are the transition between two general periodic gaits and the transition between a periodic gait and a continuous follow-the-leader (FTL) gait, while maintaining FTL mode during the transition. These models are nonlinear and require either heuristic rules or simultaneous solution of several nonlinear equations. Many transition gaits are then generated by these kinematic gait transition models under various gait conditions and evaluated in terms of stability and smoothness of leg movements. The CMAC neural network is then applied to learn the good transition gaits in four transition conditions: (1) from wave gait to wave gait; (2) from wave gait to FTL gait; (3) from walk to trot; and (4) from trot to transverse gallop. The learning and generalization capability of the trained CMAC neural network is evaluated and found to be satisfactory. This study has demonstrated the potential of applying neural networks to learn walking machine gaits and gait transitions.


The study's relevance relates to the transformation of the human capital reproduction during the transition to a new socio-economic model and changes (digitalization, cyberization, customization, etc.) that are now taking place within Industries 4.0 and 5.0. The purpose of the study is to formulate the content and key directions of learning processes based on modeling and the formation of digital twins for the production and consumption of goods. The research method is based on the analysis of structural links in socio-economic systems, where the potential of human capital is realized. The study describes a trialectic model for the system development mechanism, which gives grounds to distinguish three types of essential components of implementing the specialists' competencies (material, information, and communication). Based on the concept of "system of systems", the necessity of multifunctional training of specialists for socio-economic systems is substantiated and shown on the list of personal knowledge/skills in the renewable energy sector. Recent trends in the reproduction of human capital, such as intellectualization, increased communication, internationalization, acquisition of skills, customization, and communication with consumers, are stated in line with Industries 4.0 and 5.0. The potential for future research is aimed at harmonizing relations between humans and cyber-physical systems, motivating the needs for self-development, and using disruptive technologies in the reproduction of human capital.
AcknowledgmentThe publication contains the results of research of the European Commission grants "Jean Monnet Chair in EU Economic Policies and Civil Society" (619878-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPJMO-CHAIR) and EU legislative, economic and social transition to sustainable society within Industry 4.0 and 5.0 (619997-EPP-1-2020-1-UA-EPPJMO-CHAIR).The paper is prepared within the scientific research projects "Sustainable development and resource security: from disruptive technologies to digital transformation of Ukrainian economy" (No. 0121U100470) and "Fundamentals of the phase transition to the additive economy: from disruptive technologies to institutional socialization of decisions" No. 0121U109557), funded by the general fund of the state budget of Ukraine.


Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is an enzyme of the pentose phosphate shunt pathway a major function of which is to prevent cellular oxidative damage. Deficiency in red blood cells is associated with a number of varied clinical manifestations. Chronic non-spherocytic haemolytic anaemia is uncommon but is usually characterized by chronic haemolysis, often with severe anaemia. In the past splenectomy in this condition has been thought to be of questionable benefit. We report a case of G6PD Guadalajara where splenectomy produced transfusion independence and have reviewed the literature. Those cases with exon 10 mutations often have a severe clinical phenotype, which responds to splenectomy. This procedure should be considered in this condition.


Background: Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) disease is caused by lesions or dysfunction of beta cells of pancreatic islets, causing less insulin to be secreted into the blood and thereby increasing glucose levels in the blood. In this study, we evaluated and compared the efficiency of treatment for T1D using autograft and allograft adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs).
 Methods: ADSCs were collected from the belly of mice before they were injected using a single dose of streptozotocin (100 mg/kg) to induce T1D. T1D mice were intravenously injected with a dose of 2x106 ADSCs into the tail vein. Therapeutic efficacy was assessed by survival rate, blood glucose levels, serum insulin levels, histology and immunohistochemistry of pancreatic islets.
 Results: The results showed that both autograft and allograft transplantation of ADSCs demonstrated similarities in mortality rate, blood glucose level, blood insulin level, quantity and size of pancreatic islets. Both transplantations significantly improved T1D mice, which showed a decrease in mortality rate as well as blood glucose level, and increases in blood insulin level, quantity and size of pancreatic islets.
 Conclusion: The similar results suggest that both autologous and allogeneic transplantations of ADSCs are promising therapy for T1D treatment.


The present study presents the bioactive profile of Polygala arillata Buch.-Ham ex D.Don using GC-MS. The phytochemical constituents of leaf and stem ethanolic extracts of Polygala arillata were investigated using Fisons Gas-chromatography – Mass spectrometry. The mass spectra of the compounds in the leaf and stem extracts was matched with National Institute of standards and Technology (NIST) Library. GC-MS analysis of ethanolic extracts of leaf and stem revealed the presence of eight compounds. The retention time and peak areas of the identified compounds are presented in the table. The identified chemical compounds will prove valuable in pharmacology investigations.


The determination of the abundance of oxygen (O) is important in our understanding of mass–spectrum of previous generations of stars, the evolution of the Galaxy, stellar evolution, and the age-metallicity relation. We have measured O in 24 unevolved stars with Keck HIRES observations of the OH lines in the ultraviolet spectral region at a spectral resolution of ∼45,000. The spectra have high signal-to-noise ratios, typically 60–110, and high dispersion, 0.022 Å per pixel. Very special care has been taken in determining the stellar parameters in a consistent way and we have done this for two different, plausible temperature scales. The O abundance from OH has been computed by spectrum synthesis techniques for all 24 stars plus the Sun for which we have a Keck spectrum of the daytime sky. In addition, we determined O abundances from the O I triplet with our stellar parameters and the published equivalent widths of the three O I lines from six sources. The comparison of data analyzed with the same, consistently determined, parameter sets show generally excellent agreement in the O abundances; differences in the origin of the models (not the parameters) may result in abundance differences of 0.07 to 0.11 dex. We show that the O abundances from OH and from O I are reliable and independent and average the two for the adopted O. This averaging has the great benefit of neutralizing uncertainties in the parameters since OH and O I strengths depend on effective temperature and gravity in opposite directions. For these cool, unevolved stars we find that O is enhanced relative to Fe with a completely linear relation between [O/H] and [Fe/H] over 3 orders of magnitude with very little scatter; taking the errors into account in determining the fits, we find [O/H] = +0.66 (±0.02) [Fe/H] + 0.05 (±0.04). The O abundances from 76 disk stars of Edvardsson et al. have a measured slope of 0.66 (identical to our halo dwarf stars) and fit this relationship smoothly. The relation between [O/Fe] and [Fe/H] is robustly linear and shows no sign of a break at metallicities between -1.0 and -2.0, as has been discussed by others. At low metallicities, [Fe/H] < -3.0, [O/Fe] > +1.0. The fit to this relationship (taking the errors into account) is [O/Fe] = -0.35 (±0.03) [Fe/H] + 0.03 (±0.05). The enrichment of O is probably still from massive stars and Type II supernovae; however, the absence of a break in [O/Fe] versus [Fe/H] runs counter to traditional galactic evolution models, and the interplay of Type II and Type Ia supernovae in the production of O and Fe should be reexamined. It appears that either Fe or O can be used as a chronometer in studies of galactic evolution.


ISIS is the world's most successful pulsed spallation neutron source that provides beams of neutrons and muons that enable scientists to study the properties of the matter at the atomic level. Restrictions are imposed on the muon target regarding thickness as this will affect the proton transmission to the second neutron target. However, it could be possible to improve the muon production by optimizing the target geometry. Currently the muon target is a 7 mm thick graphite plate oriented at 45 degrees with respect to the proton beam. A set of slices placed at variable distance is proposed instead of the 7 mm thick graphite target. The performance of the set of slices is examined in this paper.


A tele-nanorobotics system using an atomic force microscope (AFM) as the nanorobot has been proposed. Modeling and control of the AFM cantilever, and modeling of nanometer scale forces have been realized for telemanipulation applications. Besides 3-D virtual reality visual feedback in the user interface, a 1 DOF haptic device has been constructed for nano scale haptic sensing. For feeling the nano forces, a bilateral teleoperation control system with virtual impedance approach has been introduced. Initial experiments and simulations on the AFM and teleoperation system show that the system can be utilized for different tele-nanomanipulation applications such as 2-D nano particle assembly or biological object manipulation.


This paper presents a novel Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics computational framework for the simulation of large strain fast solid dynamics in thermo-elasticity, with a tailor-made implementation into the modern CFD open source package "OpenFOAM". The formulation is based on the Total Lagrangian description of a system of first order conservation laws written in terms of the linear momentum, the deformation gradient tensor and the total energy of the system. To ensure the stability (i.e. hyperbolicity) of the formulation from the continuum point of view, a well-posed internal energy density is expressed as a combination of the deformation measure and the entropy density. Moreover, and to guarantee stability from the spatial discretisation point of view, consistently derived Riemann-based numerical dissipation is carefully introduced where global numerical entropy production is demonstrated via a novel technique in terms of the time rate of the so-called ballistic free energy of the system. A series of numerical examples is presented in order to assess the applicability and robustness of the proposed formulations, where the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics scheme is benchmarked against an alternative in-house Vertex Centred Finite Volume implementation.


Since the incorporation of the Nigerian economy into the World Capitalist System, the indigenous social structure was fundamentally restructured. This restructuring was (and is still) affecting the family institution in its performance of the most important task of youth socialization leading to cases of what have been described as child abuse, urban violence, working children and, even, sexually deteriorating/ transmitted infections as a result of irresponsible sexual behavior among the youth. If the situation persists, what are the implications for the future of the individual youth and the family? How can the transition being experienced by the family be controlled to positively influence the future of the youth and, by implication, the society as a whole? This paper attempts to provide answers to these questions.


Background ACCEPt is a cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate annual opportunistic chlamydia screening for 16–29-year-old men and women in general practice (GP). Objective To report enrolment and baseline results. Methods The unit of randomisation is a town; all GP clinics are enrolled and towns are randomised using a minimisation design. In intervention towns a multifaceted approach to increase chlamydia testing includes: an education package, a computer prompt; incentive payments; a recall system for annual testing; partner notification; and regular feedback on testing rates. The intervention will be in place for up to 4 years. Control towns will continue usual practice. The primary outcome is change in chlamydia prevalence estimated from samples of 80–100 consecutive GP patients in each town (total 4000) at the beginning and end of the trial. Results From July 2010 to December 2011, we enrolled 603 GPs from 154 clinics (clinic response rate >80%) in 52 geographically diverse towns in four Australian states (total population 72 000 16–29-year-olds). To date, 27 towns have been randomised (13 intervention, 14 control). Intervention and control towns are similar: baseline chlamydia prevalence (5.8%, 95% CI 4.4 to 7.5% vs 5%, 95% CI 3.9 to 6.3%, individual response rate 63%); past chlamydia testing rate in 16–29-year-olds (6.1%, 95% CI 5.8 to 6.4% vs 5.8%, 5.6 to 6%). After 3 months of the intervention in the first two towns the chlamydia testing rate was 10.9% (95% CI 10.1% to 11.7%; 691 people tested), a 160% increase compared with the testing rate (4.1%) in the year before the intervention. Conclusions Our high recruitment rate shows that Australian GPs are willing to test for chlamydia. The baseline data show a high prevalence of chlamydia among young adults in the study towns. While testing rates are increasing, ongoing work is needed to get coverage up to levels that might reduce prevalence in intervention towns.


As we move into the first year of a new decade (2010-2020), there are hopes expressed in the secular press that the next ten years – compared to the last decade -  will bring an improvement in our lives and new hope for our world.  At the close of 2009 "Time" magazine made headlines with their eye-catching story, "The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade from Hell."  The author took note of the massive Y2K computer scare at the beginning of the last decade (January 1, 2000) and the global financial wipeout at the close of the decade – and ten years of misery, mishaps, and misfortunes - that caused  the decade to also be labeled the "Decade of Reckoning," the "Decade of Broken Dreams," and even, "The Lost Decade" (Andy Serwer, "Time," November 24, 2009).


Based on the case studies of India and Sri Lanka, the paper combines conceptual and empirical findings on power-sharing arrangements as a key to conflict management in deeply divided, post-colonial societies. The two countries were chosen because of the similarity of their ethnopolitical conflicts but also because of their differences in conflict management practices and outcomes.
For the case study on India, I argue that by applying power sharing principles the conflicts resulting from demands of minorities, such as homeland and linguistic recognition, were met through provisions based on the principle of segmental autonomy; demands for proportional representation in political decision-making were met through the specificity of "centric-regional" parties and through policies of reservation; whereas demands for security, such as preservation of cultural identity were met through segmental autonomy as well as formal and informal blocking rights.
Conversely, Sri Lanka was originally blessed with favorable conditions at independence, but sub-optimal political choices after independence turned "milder ethnic conflict" into a protracted civil war. I argue that a policy based on a majoritarian control system was at the root of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka.
Two interrelated claims are advanced. Based on the consociational approach, 1) in a deeply divided society, conflict regulation can be achieved only through adoption of power sharing arrangements; and based on the majoritarian "control" approach: 2) in a deeply divided society majoritarian practices will exacerbate rather than regulate a conflict.


The challenges for creating a greener economy and the institutional framework for sustainable development pass necessarily, or mostly, through cities, as they concentrate a large and growing part of the world's economy and population, as well as decision-making power. With the processes of urbanization and rural-urban transformation, the economy in cities, especially in cities of developing countries, has been shifting from traditional artisanal crafts and markets to more modern industry and service sectors.

The concentration of people, resources, knowledge, political power and economic activities in urban areas, if properly managed, can provide economies of scale and efficiency gains that lower the use of resources and energy, and thereby promote doing more with less, while offering fair outcomes to the most vulnerable people and the environment. In this sense, transitioning from the traditional "brown" economy to a greener economy could be achieved by reducing resource and energy consumption in cities through improving the key components of the urban economic process.


Point-of-care (POC) tests enable rapid results and are well established in medical practice. Recent advances in analytical techniques have led to a new generation of POC devices that will alter gastrointestinal diagnostic pathways. This review aims to identify current and new technologies for the POC diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancer. A structured search of the Embase and Medline databases was performed. Papers reporting diagnostic tests for gastrointestinal cancer available as a POC device or containing a description of feasibility for POC application were included. Studies recovered were heterogeneous and therefore results are presented as a narrative review. Six diagnostic methods were identified (fecal occult blood, fecal proteins, volatile organic compounds, pyruvate kinase isoenzyme type M2, tumour markers and DNA analysis). Fecal occult blood testing has a reported sensitivity of 66%-85% and specificity greater than 95%. The others are at a range of development and clinical application. POC devices have a proven role in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancer. Barriers to their implementation exist and the transition from experimental to clinical medicine is currently slow. New technologies demonstrate potential to provide accurate POC tests and an ability to diagnose gastrointestinal cancer at an early stage with improved clinical outcome and survival.


Cu(In,Ga) Se2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells have demonstrated very high efficiencies, but still the role of nanoscale inhomogeneities in CIGS and their impact on the solar cell performance are not yet clearly understood. Due to the polycrystalline structure of CIGS, grain boundaries are very common structural defects that are also accompanied by compositional variations. In this work, we apply valence electron energy loss spectroscopy in scanning transmission electron microscopy to study the local band gap energy at a grain boundary in the CIGS absorber layer. Based on this example, we demonstrate the capabilities of a 2nd generation monochromator that provides a very high energy resolution and allows for directly relating the chemical composition and the band gap energy across the grain boundary. A band gap widening of about 20 meV is observed at the grain boundary. Furthermore, the compositional analysis by core-loss EELS reveals an enrichment of In together with a Cu, Ga and Se depletion at the same area. The experimentally obtained results can therefore be well explained by the presence of a valence band barrier at the grain boundary.


This book is all about the interdisciplinary research that integrates engineering, life and applied
sciences, medical and biomedical engineering, agriculture engineering and food sciences. The aim was
to provide the initial roadmap at a cross section basic research, technological and social developments,
processes development, applications integrity, and real-world usage. The genuine motivation for the
book was to provide a suitable reference text for those who interested in the multi and inter
disciplinary studies which might be beneficial for basic and advance researches, enhancing the
curriculum and enriching teaching and learning materials, mostly in the level of postgraduate studies.
In addition, the book was also planned to provide advanced orientation and understanding for related
industries and governments to looking across industrial partnerships, business strategic, and policy and
regulations. In general, the book is expected to be beneficial for a wide range of readers.
This book consists of twenty five chapters divided into four sections i.e., engineering, life and applied
sciences, medical and biomedical engineering, agriculture and food science. Each chapter is a
completely self-directed contribution in chained discussion which aims to bring academia, researcher,
practitioners and students rise to speed with the novel developments within the particular area.
In order to enhance the reader experience, each book chapter contains its own abstract, instruction,
main body, as well as conclusion sections. Moreover, bibliography resources are available at the end
of each chapter.
To achieve all these aims and goals, the book should deliver a breadth of information. We are pleased
and thankful for all distinguish authors and reviewers for their contribution that have made this book
possible. We do hope that you will enjoy this book and find it as a useful guide and reference.


Recently, the reciprocal recommendation, especially for online dating applications, has attracted more and more research attention. Different from conventional recommendation problems, the reciprocal recommendation aims to simultaneously best match users' mutual preferences. Intuitively, the mutual preferences might be affected by a few key attributes that users like or dislike. Meanwhile, the interactions between users' attributes and their key attributes are also important for key attributes selection. Motivated by these observations, in this paper we propose a novel reinforced random convolutional network (RRCN) approach for the reciprocal recommendation task. In particular, we technically propose a novel random CNN component that can randomly convolute non-adjacent features to capture their interaction information and learn feature embeddings of key attributes to make the final recommendation. Moreover, we design a reinforcement learning based strategy to integrate with the random CNN component to select salient attributes to form the candidate set of key attributes. We evaluate the proposed RRCN against a number of both baselines and the state-of-the-art approaches on two real-world datasets, and the promising results have demonstrated the superiority of RRCN against the compared approaches in terms of a number of evaluation criteria.


Simulated annealing is a statistical computational technique for obtaining approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. An efficient simulated annealing algorithm is used to design binary sequence sets which have good autocorrelation and crosscorrelation properties. Some of the synthesized results are presented, and their properties are better than any other known in the literature. The synthesized binary sequence sets promise to be practically applicable.


Putting into print something long unpublished invites the rebuke that the thing was best left alone. It might be alleged that such a rebuke is warranted in respect of Meredith's short story, "The Friend of an Engaged Couple," which is undeniably slight. However, it was written at a time of great activity in Meredith's career - the manuscript is dated 1862 - and has connections with his other work at the time. Moreover, it appears that Samuel Lucas, editor of Once a Week, saw sufficient merit in the piece to accept it for publication, if a pencilled "Yes. S.L." on the first page of the manuscript can be assumed to be Lucas' note. But the story did not come out in Once a Week, perhaps because Lucas would not accommodate Meredith's requests for a generous rate of payment.


Twenty-five patients with acute renal failure following cardiac operations using cardiopulmonary bypass were analyzed retrospectively to identify predictors of survival or mortality. Age and the number of postoperative medical complications served as predictors of mortality, p less than 0.05. A low survival rate occurred if the patient was in the seventh decade of life. Nonsurvivors had a higher number of postoperative medical complications. However, only cardiac failure and bacteremia occurred in a significantly greater proportion of those patients who died, p less than 0.05. The presence of non-oliguric renal failure was associated with a 100 per cent survival rate, p less than 0.05. The mortality of these 25 patients was 28 per cent, which is lower than that generally reported. Although an extremely serious postoperative complication, acute renal failure following cardiac operations does not imply a hopeless prognosis. A vigorous therapeutic effort is warranted.


The study was carried out to ascertain if mother tongue instruction will facilitate the learning of Social Studies and English language concepts among Nursery School children. The design was a pretest posttest control group design. The sample comprises of 249 Nursery School pupils from Nursery Schools in Ile-Ife. The pupils were grouped into three namely A. B and C. The groups were presented different learning packages. A pretest on selected concepts was administered on the students in the first week while teaching took place using English language and Yoruba for groups A and B respectively' in the second week, A posttest was administered on the students in the fourth week. The data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics. The result showed that the mother tongue instruction aided learning better than English Language as a medium of instruction. It was therefore concluded that teachers should be encouraged to make use of mother-tongue instruction while teaching in nursery classes.


A major ecosystem effect of biodiversity is to stabilise assemblages that perform particular functions. However, diversity–stability relationships (DSRs) are analysed using a variety of different population and community properties, most of which are adopted from theory that makes several restrictive assumptions that are unlikely to be reflected in nature. Here, we construct a simple synthesis and generalisation of previous theory for the DSR. We show that community stability is a product of two quantities: the synchrony of population fluctuations, and an average species-level population stability that is weighted by relative abundance. Weighted average population stability can be decomposed to consider effects of the mean-variance scaling of abundance, changes in mean abundance with diversity and differences in species' mean abundance in monoculture. Our framework makes explicit how unevenness in the abundances of species in real communities influences the DSR, which occurs both through effects on community synchrony, and effects on weighted average population variability. This theory provides a more robust framework for analysing the results of empirical studies of the DSR, and facilitates the integration of findings from real and model communities.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate the expression of PAD4 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and to explore the relationship between PAD4 and the basic characteristics of 5-8F cells. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the overexpression of the PAD4 protein in the nasopharyngeal carcinoma tissue of 30 patients diagnosed by biopsy in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University from January 2018 to June 2019. At the same time, cell function in vitro was evaluated in 5-8F cell line. Cell proliferation, apoptosis and cell cycle were analysed using the MTT assay and flow cytometry. Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to evaluate the ability of invasion and angiogenesis. The expression level of PAD4 was related to the size and stage of the primary tumour, lymph node status and pathological grade. Compared to the control group, the activity of PAD4 knockdown cells decreased significantly, the number of the apoptotic cells and the percentage of cells in G0/G1 phase in the PAD4 siRNA group were significantly higher than that in the control group. The invasion and angiogenic ability of 5-8F cells in PAD4 siRNA group were significantly lower than that in the control group. PAD4 was overexpressed in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, which was related to its poor clinicopathological features. At the same time, silencing PAD4 can inhibit the proliferation and activity of 5-8F cell lines, which may provide a potential therapeutic target for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma.


Abstract Diurnal cycles in physical parameters in the environment modulate biochemical and physiological circadian rhythms in experimental animals, including cycles in the sensitivity to external influences. Environmental lighting synchronizes cycles of indole metabolism and melatonin synthesis in the rat pineal gland by modulating the activity of postganglionic sympathetic nerves. As a consequence, the sensitivity of pineal N-acetyltransferase to stimulation by isoproterenol or by dibutyryl cyclic AMP varies diurnally. Also, the capacity of actinomycin D to inhibit this induction varies with circadian periodicity. The cycles in sensitivity to isoproterenol reflect cycles in the system that regulates cyclic AMP production, and include variation in the availability of specific B-adrenergic binding sites, and in the sensitivity of receptor-coupled adenylate cyclase to catecholamines. Further, a variation in the response to dibutyryl cyclic AMP indicates in addition the participation of intracellular controls in the regulation of the sensitivity of N-acetyltransferase to catecholamines. The varying sensitivity to actinomycin D suggests a changing requirement for the synthesis of RNA as a function of prior environmental lighting conditions. The basic nature of these sensitivity changes suggests that diurnal cycles of environmental lighting may similarly affect other systems.


Book Summary: This book discusses research on the culture of postwar Germany (1945–1962), a topic that has become increasingly complex in recent years. Virulent topics such as war, destruction, homecoming, flight, expulsion, guilt, daily life, religion, etc., are explored systematically, using examples and by focusing on fiction, nonfiction, and film in the two German states. Historians and scholars in the field of literature and film have contributed to this compendium. They address various core questions concerning aesthetic representation and the formation of contemporary history.


We study the hybridized plasmonic-photonic modes supported by two-dimensional arrays of metallic nanoparticles coupled to light-emitting optical waveguides. Localized surface plasmon polaritons in the metallic nanoparticles can couple to guided modes in the underlying waveguide, forming quasi-guided hybrid modes, or to diffracted orders in the plane of the array, forming surface lattice resonances. We consider three kinds of samples: one sustains quasi-guided modes only, another sustains surface lattice resonances only, and a third sample sustains both modes. This third sample constitutes the first demonstration of simultaneous coupling of localized surface plasmons to guided modes and diffracted orders. The dispersive properties of the modes in the samples are investigated through light extinction and emission spectroscopy. We elucidate the conditions that lead to the coexistence of surface lattice resonances and quasi-guided hybrid modes, and assess their potential for enhancing the luminescence of emitters embedded in the coupled waveguide. We find the largest increase in emission intensity for the surface lattice resonances, reaching up to a factor of 20.


Low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) combines many advantageous features for low-range (force & pressure) piezoresistive sensors: ease of 3D structuration, availability of very thin sheets, low elastic modulus and yet reasonable mechanical strength. This work covers the design and fabrication low-range LTCC force sensors down to ideally 10 mN, together with mechanical characterisation of LTCC substrates. We show that LTCC is a viable substrate for piezoresistive sensing, and that 3D structuration can be used to both increase the output signal and simplify production. Moreover, very sensitive LTCC sensors may be manufactured, provided specific thick-film conductors with a sintering behaviour closely matched to that of the LTCC are applied.


Understanding the diversity of structural trends in the Laramide foreland of the conterminous United States is important to understanding the location, geometry, and fracturing of hydrocarbon reservoirs. East-west basement-cored arches in central Wyoming are oblique to the average northwesterly trend of foreland faults and folds. Tectonic models predict that these arches formed by one of the following mechanisms: north-south-directed thrust faulting; sinistral strike-slip faulting; or northeast-southwest-directed, oblique-slip thrust faulting. In the eastern Owl Creek Mountains, average slip directions given by slickenline directions trend from N37°E to N57°E. Geometric analysis of conjugate faults and stress inversion of minor fault data indicate nearly horizontal compression trending between N48°E and N65°E. In the east-west Casper Mountain structure, more limited minor fault data are consistent with the northeast-southwest compression seen in the eastern Owl Creek arch and indicate an additional stage of extension by normal faulting. The northeast-southwest compression documented by minor faults suggests oblique thrusting with a component of sinistral strike-slip on the underlying, east-west-striking Owl Creek and Casper Mountain thrusts. In this area of the Laramide foreland, east-west arches probably formed during a single stage of oblique slip on thrust ramps connecting northwest-trending arch culminations. This conclusion indicates that trap geometries and reservoir characteristics of foreland hydrocarbon accumulations are dependent on their obliquity to the regional stress field.


Direct thrombin inhibitors (DTIs) have been administered for anticoagulation during cardiopulmonary bypass for patients with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. While DTIs prolonged clot initiation and decreased clot propagation, clot strength did not change. Hydroxyethyl starches (HES), however, significantly decreased clot propagation and strength. We hypothesized that DTI with HES could significantly decrease hemostasis more than DTI alone. Plasma was exposed to 0 or 5 μg/ml argatroban with 0 or 30% dilution with 0.9% NaCl, 10% pentastarch or 6% Voluven. Additional argatroban-exposed samples diluted with HES had addition of α-thrombin (0.25 U/ml) and fibrinogen (150 mg/ml). Clot kinetics were determined via thrombelastography. While dilution with 0.9% NaCl significantly (P < 0.05) decreased the clot strength by 17% compared with samples only exposed to argatroban, dilution with pentastarch and Voluven significantly (P < 0.05) markedly decreased clot strength (53 and 78%, respectively). Voluven dilution significantly increased the time to clot initiation and decreased the velocity of clot propagation compared with samples only exposed to argatroban. Addition of α-thrombin/fibrinogen restored clot strength. DTI/HES administration diminished hemostasis to a greater extent than DTI exposure alone. Further investigation is warranted to determine whether this therapeutic approach can improve the safety of anticoagulation during cardiopulmonary bypass in patients with heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.


Abstract : This is one of a series of case studies prepared to illustrate how volunteerism has been used to gain access to National Guard and Reserve capabilities in support of recent military operations. The case studies have been prepared by reference to official documents and reports and interviews with unit members and other persons involved in the operation. This case study tells about the participation of the 258th Quartermaster Supply Company, Illinois Army National Guard, in the Humanitarian Support Unit Program of Operation Standard Bearer. The concept calls for company members to voluntary serve in active-duty status to provide 45 days of humanitarian assistance overseas. Whether the members voluntarily go on active duty when the need arises is crucial to the success of this program. The paper reviews the company's readiness for deployment in terms of personnel strength and composition and willingness to volunteer. It also explores the problems created by the need for the volunteers to sign agreements that they will volunteer and the importance of unit integrity and recognition. This case study is a background paper for a report on the role of volunteerism in Reserve accession policy being prepared for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.