Abstract #6033 Background: HER-2/neu (HER2) expression/amplification has been considered to be intrapatient stable in primary breast cancer vs corresponding metastatic lesions. Treatment decisions, in many institutions, only rely on status in primary tumors. Few studies have been published on this subject. Single small studies reveal a high rate of concordance, while others reveal change in HER2 status (one study had 9 of 24 patients with no HER-2 amplification in the primary tumor changed genotype in circulating tumor cells, Meng et al PNAS 2004). At Radiumhemmet, Karolinska in Stockholm we have, whenever possible, morphologically verified all new metastases since 1999 using ultrasound-, CT- or X-ray guided or manually guided cytological aspirates. In addition to morphology, we aim to analyze receptors, HER-2 and proliferation MIB-1 on aspirates.
 Materials and methods: Retrospective analysis of intra patient HER-2 over expression/amplification on routinely analyzed primary cancers and corresponding metastatic lesions during the time period 1999 to 2007. Data from the Pathology laboratory at the Karolinska University Hospital and the population based registry at the Regional Cancer Registry in Stockholm were used for patient identification. Most immunihistochical/immunocytochemical (IHC) with 2+ or 3+ samples (using several antibodies with cell line controls) were fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) verified. IHC 3+ and/or FISH amplification (av. >2 copies per cell) was considered HER2 positive.
 Results: A total of 1067 breast cancers recurrences from the Stockholm hospitals were reported to the Regional Cancer Registry, 401 patients had a fine needle aspirate including a HER-2 analysis of recurrence/metastasis. 141 patients had HER-2 analyzed in both primary tumor (133 IHC, 8 FISH, 81 combined analyses) and the corresponding metastatic lesion (73 IHC, 67 FISH and 33 combined analyses). We identified 44 (31%) HER2 positive primary tumors and 44 (31%) HER2 positive metastases, respectively, in the 141 double tested tumors. 16 patients (11%) had a change in HER2 expression. 10 changed from negative to positive, and 6 changed from positive to negative (6/44 and 10/97, respectively altered their HER2 status). The metastatic sites of these patients were: loco-regional 3, liver 6, skeletal/ bone-marrow 2, lung 1, skin 4.
 Discussion: Our study shows that there are discrepancies between primary tumor and corresponding metastasis in HER-2 expression/amplification, within the same patient. If this is related to the heterogeneity of both the primary tumor and the metastasis, or if it is a true change in tumor cells is not yet clear. We also need to establish eventual inter metastatic heterogeneity in HER-2 expression. Our findings may, to some extent, explain why some patients with "HER2 negative" cancers respond, and vice versa. Cytological confirmation of radiological lesions adds diagnostic precision and is in our hands a very safe procedure which has important impact on patient management, in this case the use of trastuzumab. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(2 Suppl):Abstract nr 6033.


The displacement of tooth and the deformation of flexspline of harmonic drive in transmission state were studied by finite element model with shell element. A finite element model of flexspline based on shell element was built with taper teeth on the flexspline, and the contact relationship was defined by contact element between the flexspline and wave generator. The deformation distribution of the flexspline and the deformed position of the teeth on the flexspline were obtained by nonlinear contact analysis in ANSYS environment under the transmission forces according to the loading distribution in the reference. The position of teeth tip and teeth root in front, middle and back plane along teeth length were given by the deformation results. The research shows that the positions and orientations of the teeth in the planes have quite different distributions, which may influence mesh property evidently. The deformation in transmission state in the paper is of importance in heavy loading harmonic drive design because there is no theory results for flexspline in transmission state.


The undrained remolded shear strength of soft clays is of importance in geosystem design, particularly for offshore structures. Common methods to estimate remolded shear strength, such as correlations with cone penetration data, direct measurement with an in situ field vane shear device, and laboratory measurements, produce varied results and can be particularly costly and time consuming. Full-flow penetrometers (T-bar and Ball) provide an alternative rapid method to estimate remolded shear strength and soil sensitivity through remolding soil by repeated cycling of the penetrometer up and down over a given depth interval. The cyclic penetration resistance degradation curve inherently contains information regarding remolded strength and sensitivity. The objective of this paper is to assess the ability of full-flow penetrometers to predict remolded strength and soil sensitivity, and to develop a suite of predictive correlations in which these properties can be estimated in the absence of complementary laboratory or in situ test data. To accomplish this, full-flow penetration profiles and cyclic tests were performed at five well characterized soft clay sites, which together represent the broad range of soils in which the penetrometers will be often used. A previously developed model for the reduction in penetration resistance with cycling is modified to predict the entire degradation curve, including the remolded penetration resistance using only measurements obtained during initial penetrometer penetration and extraction. Using field vane shear strength as the reference measurement, correlations are developed to predict soil sensitivity and remolded shear strength based solely on full-flow penetrometer data, which is particularly useful in site investigation programs where site specific data are not yet available or are sparse. Finally, the usefulness of these relationships is demonstrated by implementing them for two additional soft clay sites.


New high-speed /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ analog to digital converters (ADCs) are required for xDSL and RF receivers. As sampling frequency is upper limited by the amplifier bandwidth and power consumption, these high-speed, low-power converters operate with a small oversampling ratio. Usually, they are high-order cascade structures with a multibit quantizer in the last stage. All these approaches use a unique sampling frequency. This paper shows that multirating is a useful technique to reduce power consumption in high speed /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulators. To this end, two different multirate /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulators are proposed. The first one uses a low sampling frequency in the first integrator(s) of a single loop structure, while the second one uses a low oversampling frequency in the first stage(s) of a cascade converter.


Zingiberaceae is a ginger family, distributed throughout tropics, particularly in South East Asia. In Peninsular itself there are at least 150 species. Several ginger species are used as ingredients in traditional medicine including halia bara (Zingiber officinale var. rubra), turmeric (Curcuma domestica), lempoyang (Z. zerumbet), temu hitam (Curcuma aeruginosa), temu lawak (C. xanthorrhiza), bonglai (Z. cassumunar) and setawar (Costus speciosus). They are usually associated with post-partum treatment after child birth. A number of ginger species, such as the true ginger (Z. officinale), turmeric (C. domestica), lengkuas (Alpinia galanga), kantan (Phaemoria speciosa), cekur (Kaempferia galanga) and pelaga (Amomum cardamomum) are used mainly for spices by the Malays, Chinese and Indians. Another economic importance is their usage as ornamental plants, such as Alpinia purpurata, Hedychium coronarium, and Zingiber spectabile. Systematic study on the species are carried out due to the wide ranges of usage, for the production of bioactive compounds useful for agro, pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical industries. This paper will present some of the findings on the phytochemicals of selected plants of Zingiberaceae. These include sesquiterpenoids, diterpenoids, phenolics, flavonoids, diarylheptanoids and phenylpropanoids. Some of these constituents have been found to show some interesting bioactivities, such as antimicrobes, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer as well as tyrosinase inhibition activities.


Summary Over 40 years of research has examined the role of the ventral visual stream in transforming retinal inputs into high-level representations of object identity [1–6]. However, there remains an ongoing debate over the role of the ventral stream in coding abstract semantic content, which relies on stored knowledge, versus perceptual content that relies only on retinal inputs [7–12]. A major difficulty in adjudicating between these mechanisms is that the semantic similarity of objects is often highly confounded with their perceptual similarity (e.g., animate things are more perceptually similar to other animate things than to inanimate things). To address this problem, we developed a paradigm that exploits the statistical regularities of object colors while perfectly controlling for perceptual shape information, allowing us to dissociate lower-level perceptual features (i.e., color perception) from higher-level semantic knowledge (i.e., color meaning). Using multivoxel-pattern analyses of fMRI data, we observed a striking double dissociation between the processing of color information at a perceptual and at a semantic level along the posterior to anterior axis of the ventral visual pathway. Specifically, we found that the visual association region V4 assigned similar representations to objects with similar colors, regardless of object category. In contrast, perirhinal cortex, at the apex of the ventral visual stream, assigned similar representations to semantically similar objects, even when this was in opposition to their perceptual similarity. These findings suggest that perirhinal cortex untangles the representational space of lower-level perceptual features and organizes visual objects according to their semantic interpretations.


Retaining talented employees has become a major challenge confronting the management in hospitality industry. Researchers from different climes have advocated for adequate retention strategies such as career growth opportunities, for overcoming the alarming rate of employees' turnover in hotel organisations. However, there is paucity of empirical study on career growth opportunities and employees' turnover intention. To fill this gap, quantitative data were gathered with 327 copies of questionnaire, administered to the frontline employees working in twenty-two 5-star hotels in Nigeria. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses, with descriptive statistics, path analysis, maximum likelihood estimates and goodness of fit indices. The results revealed that all the parameters for career growth opportunities used in this study, inversely interact with turnover intention among the respondents. The findings indicate that organisations should pay adequate attention to career goal progress, professional ability development, promotion speed and remuneration growth of their talented employees. It implies that, these factors are pivotal for saving the cost of hiring new entrants, reduce the rate of turnover intention/actual turnover, and retain experienced high performers in hotel industry. This research established the effects of career growth opportunities on turnover intention in Nigerian context.


An automatic layout generation system, called LiB, for the small-scale integrated (SSI) cells used in CMOS VLSI design, is presented. LiB takes a transistor-level circuit schematic in SPICE format and outputs a mask layout in CIF. The layout style is a modification of that proposed by T. Uehara, and W. M. van Cleemput (IEEE Trans. Comput., vol.C-30, no.5, p.305-12, 1981). An optimal transistor chaining algorithm has been developed to derive a transistor placement with a minimum number of diffusion separations. To meet the cell height constraint, large transistors are folded into multiple columns algorithmically. The whole cell is divided into five routing regions. Two are on the diffusion island and the others are rectilinear-shaped routing channels. A graph-theoretic method for selecting nets (subnets) for routing on the diffusion island is proposed. A global routing algorithm has been developed to assign the remaining nets to the three rectilinear channels. For the detailed routing SILK, a simulated evolution router, is employed. LiB can be used as a cell library builder or as a subsystem of a random logic module generator. Users can alternate LiB's layout using a symbolic editor. >


Three fibrolytic bacteria were isolated from sheep's colon using cellulose (b), xylan (c) and lignin (d) as selective substrates. The potency of fibrolytic was identified by Subbarao methods. These isolates were then used both in pure and mixed culture with cattle cellulolytic bacteria (a) from the previous research. The isolates were subsequently selected based on their ability to produce gas through biogas and methan measurement using in vitro gas test technique of Tilley and Terry methods. Based on the parameter, the potential isolates then were applied as inoculum for dairy cattle feces fermentation. The application research was based on Randomized Completely Design with inoculum concentration (0, 3, 6 and 9%) as the treatment with three replications. The result showed that the highest in vitro biogas and methane production was obtained from a-c-d co-culture addition. The a-c-d co-culture as inoculum for in vitro feces fermentation could increase gas production 56.36% and methane 18.09% compared to natural fermentation by feces microbes. Application of 3 to 9% of a-c-d inoculum at the fermentation scale was highly significant (P < 0.01) in increasing biogas production, however, addition of more than 3% of a-c-d inoculum decrease methane concentration. The fibrolytic bacteria from sheep's colon were potential to increase the efficiency of biogas and methane production; thus, it should be considered as an inoculum for anaerobic fiber waste fermentation.


Scheduling university courses is a combinatorial optimization problem where a set of events such as lectures, seminars and labs have to be scheduled into certain time slots while taking various constraints into account. The problem is considered dicult by conventional methods andthe amount of required computations usually increases exponentially with the size of the problem. However, for universities such as KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, this is a task that has to be dealt with regardless of its complexity. In this report, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) were applied to solve the course scheduling problem for multiple data samples inspired by KTH. The sizes of the input data were carefully designed to study the scalability of the GA. The results indicate on an exponential growth of the running time measured not in actual time but number of iterations. The scalability is highly dependent on the denition of a high quality solution as well as algorithm parameters but also dierent methods being used in the GA.Keywords - Scheduling, Timetabling, KTH, Royal Institute of Technol-ogy, Scalability, Genetic Algorithm, GA, Constraints, Fitness, Selection,Crossover, Mutation, Repair, Extinction, Generation


It is established that tilorone-hydrochloride, the antiviral agent, stimulating the interferon synthesis in the organism of animals under experiment inhibits monooxygenase reactions in the albino rat hepatocytes being administered in combination with phenobarbital and 20-methylcholanthrene. The tilorone effect on the N- and O-demethylase activity of the liver microsomes in vitro was studied. It is established that the rate of dimethylaniline N-demethylation and anisole O-demethylation in this case lowers considerably, the character of the kinetic curves being unchanged.


alone. Four weeks later she was discharged from hospital taking 62 IU daily. The chloroquine dose was gradually reduced, and she remained responsive to subcutaneous insulin. The rarityoftruesubcutaneous insulin resistance has been emphasised.3 The patient reported on byBlazaretalhad accelerated insulin degradation in subcutaneous fat but also showed severe resistance to intravenous insulin.2 There is evidence that, in addition to its action on hepatocyte receptors and receptor mediated degradation, chloroquine also inhibits lysosomal degradation in human skeletal muscle4 and fibroblasts5 and that it inhibits adipocyte insulin degradation in vivo.6 Chloroquine's action may help to explain the pathogenesis of this rare syndrome as well as being useful in its management. RICHARD G REES


Distinct regions of the primitive streak (PS) have diverse potential to differentiate into several tissues, including the hematopoietic lineage originated from the posterior region of PS. Although various signaling pathways have been identified to promote the development of PS and its mesoderm derivatives, there is a large gap in our understanding of signaling pathways that regulate the hematopoietic fate of PS. Here, we defined the roles of Wnt, activin, and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling pathways in generating hematopoietic‐fated PS from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). We found that the synergistic balance of these signaling pathways was crucial for controlling the PS fate determination towards hematopoietic lineage via mesodermal progenitors. Although the induction of PS depends largely on the Wnt and activin signaling, the PS generated without BMP4 lacks the hematopoietic potential, indicating that the BMP signaling is necessary for the PS to acquire hematopoietic property. Appropriate levels of Wnt signaling is crucial for the development of PS and its specification to the hematopoietic lineage. Although the development of PS is less sensitive to activin or BMP signaling, the fate of PS to mesoderm progenitors and subsequent hematopoietic lineage is determined by appropriate levels of activin or BMP signaling. Collectively, our study demonstrates that Wnt, activin, and BMP signaling pathways play cooperative and distinct roles in regulating the fate determination of PS for hematopoietic development. Our understanding of the regulatory networks of hematopoietic‐fated PS would provide important insights into early hematopoietic patterning and possible guidance for generating functional hematopoietic cells from hPSCs in vitro.


Frequent changes in tactical, rear and medical situations cause the medical service officials of airborne division (ABD) to obtain and transmit the data characterizing the medical service forces and means for a lot of times. It decreases the effectiveness of the control process. Equipping of ABD medical service staff with programming-and-technical systems (PTS), development of algorithm of official interaction, creation of report forms and selection of materials necessary for PTS database input will contribute to the effectiveness of ABD medical service control.


Highlighting in this item renders some text unreadable. A hard copy is available in UCD Library at GEN 330.08 IR/UNI


A constructive heuristic algorithm (CHA) to solve distribution system planning (DSP) problem is presented. The DSP is a very complex mixed binary nonlinear programming problem. A CHA is aimed at obtaining an excellent quality solution for the DSP problem. However, a local improvement phase and a branching technique were implemented in the CHA to improve its solution. In each step of the CHA, a sensitivity index is used to add a circuit or a substation to the distribution system. This sensitivity index is obtained by solving the DSP problem considering the numbers of circuits and substations to be added as continuous variables (relaxed problem). The relaxed problem is a large and complex nonlinear programming and was solved through an efficient nonlinear optimization solver. Results of two tests systems and one real distribution system are presented in this paper in order to show the ability of the proposed algorithm.


Within the scope of this study, six different recipes were developed for the production of cheese halva. White unsalted cheeses were produced by using cow milk or sheep milk or a blend of cow and sheep milk, and each was produced with white flour or semolina. It was found that there was no significant difference among the recipes in terms of chemical properties, but there were significant differences in sensory properties. Moreover, the microbial quality of cheese halva were determined. It was found that the shelflife of cheese halva can be up to 10 days at ambient temperature and for up to 1 month when refrigerated.


Massively Distributed Control Nets (MDCN) is a CAN (Controller Area Network) based high-level protocol that has the following featorcs: (I) Three types communication: individual, group and broadcast, with eight priority levels. (2) Addressing of up to 254 nodes and groups in standard CAN format, and up to 100,000's in extended CAN format. (3) I/O (node-to-node) and (point/proces~to-point/process) communications, where I/O is mostly reserved for system processes with high priorities and short message sizes, and port is for user applications, with lower priorities and possibly large message sizes. Compared to the existing widely used high-level CAN protocols, MDCN can address more communication nodes, has simpler APIs, is easier and more efficient to implement. Also the bridge protocol is transparent to users as whether it is a single CAN bus or a networked CAN buses. MDCN is currently implemented in C for MPC555 TouCAN controller on the Real-Time Operating Systems vxWorks, and in Java on host PC. The API is designed and implemented for multi-threaded environments. MDCN is a general protocol that not only can be applied to modular robots, but also can be applied to any industry control or automation using CAN bus network with hundreds of communication nodes.


Iris recognition systems typically enrol a person based on a single 'best' eye image. Research has shown that the probability of a false non-match result increases with increased difference in pupil dilation between the enrolment image and the probe image. Therefore, dilation-aware methods of enrolment should improve the accuracy of iris recognition. The authors examine a strategy to improve accuracy through a dilation-aware enrolment step that selects one or more enrolment images based on the observed distribution of dilation ratios for that eye. Additionally, they demonstrate that an image with median dilation is the optimal single eye image dilation-aware enrolment choice. Their results confirm that this dilation-aware enrolment strategy does improve matching accuracy compared with traditional single-image enrolment, and also compared with multi-image enrolment that does not take dilation into account.


: Ten 75- to 105-day-pregnant does each were inoculated orally within 1 million (2 does), 10,000 (4 does), or 1,000 (4 does) sporocysts of Sarcocystis from coyote feces. Two does not inoculated with sporocysts served as controls. The 2 does inoculated with 1 million sporocysts died from acute sarcocystosis 21 and 22 days after inoculation (DAI), and each had 2 dead fetuses. The 4 does inoculated with 10,000 sporocysts were ill 19 to 33 DAI but survived; 1 aborted at 33 DAI, 1 had a live kid that died within 2 hours of birth 31 DAI, 1 aborted 2 dead fetuses 23 DAI, and 1 had a normal kid 56 DAI. The 4 does inoculated with 1,000 sporocysts and the 2 control does remained clinically normal and had normal kids. Does and their offspring were killed within 24 hours of parturition, and their tissues were examined histologically and microbiologically. Meronts of Sarcocystis were found in the maternal placenta of does inoculated with 1 million sporocysts. Sarcocystis was not found in the placenta, fetuses, or tissues of kids from does inoculated with 10,000 or 1,000 sporocysts, or from control does. Other abortifacient agents were not found in the placenta, fetuses, or kids from any does.


Abstract:This article addresses two topics related to disgust in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche: (1) how moral disgust is harmful and (2) to what extent moral disgust is conditionally fitting. Nietzsche argues that self-disgust is dangerous because it is characteristic of ascetic morality. Yet disgust is conditionally fitting insofar as it triggers an adverse reaction to ascetic moral systems, or what I have called "disgusting moralities." The first section is a general analysis of the role of self-disgust in the cultivation of ascetic morality. In the second section, I compare this analysis of disgust to two popular contemporary theories of disgust (the Terror Management and Animal-Nature Reminder theories). In the third section, I argue that Nietzsche advocates disgust at certain harmful moral systems. He thinks disgust is a fitting emotion for such moral systems because it causes an immediate adverse reaction. This reaction is fitting, Nietzsche thinks, because such moral systems are infectious. I maintain his view of disgust is compatible with convincing psychological theories of disgust, namely the Entanglement Thesis and Co-Opt Thesis.


Trust is a major challenge to the consumer acceptance of e-commerce: the lack of trust is an important reason for the hesitant growth in e-commerce and for the reluctance of consumers to engage in online buying transaction. Communicating trustworthiness is therefore a major challenge companies encounter. This study concentrates on the various means communicating trustworthiness proposed by researchers. An overview of means is presented according to a buying transaction process life cycle spanning the four phases information, agreement, handling, and postpurchase. Besides enabling the categorization of the various means to develop consumer trust, the four phases in addition illuminate the dynamic aspect of trust development and allow the introduction of a simple measure to determine success in the domain of e-commerce by evaluating the repetitiveness of consumer transacting with the e-vendor. A web site analysis was conducted to evaluate the trust means usage in practice. The findings of the web site analysis indicate three general trends. First, the analyzed web sites hint at an absent exploitation of second and third degree information. Second, the results of the study obtained from the indicators regarding the later phases portray a lack of means usage during the handling and postpurchase phase. Third, the web site analysis points out multiple possibilities for e-vendors to adjust, improve, and implement additional trust means. In general, the discovered trends are an indication for e-vendors to adopt their strategies to employ trust means towards the relevant consumer perspective of the company.


To examine the effectiveness of trauma systems, in-hospital mortality rates are key indicators. However, to date there has been little research examining the congruence of morbidity and mortality data as recorded in hospital databases and mortality databases. A retrospective review of coded medical records from a trauma registry, a metropolitan teaching hospital and the National Death Index for 1747 patients admitted to hospital for ≥ 24 hours for acute treatment of injury was undertaken. This study was established to determine the number and cause of differences in coded data between hospital records and National Death Index (NDI) records for in-hospital deaths following admission for trauma. Of the 60 patients who died in hospital, 26% died from non-traumatic causes according to NDI coded data. Over half of the cases with trauma coded in the NDI contained external cause data which were less specific or did not match external cause data from hospital records. When reviewing trauma-related outcomes, where possible injury researchers and policy advisors should consider both mortality and morbidity datasets when reviewing in-hospital deaths, as this research identified that the morbidity dataset provides greater detail for injury and external causes of injury than mortality coded data for inhospital deaths.


Death of brain cells by either apoptosis or necrosis is the hall mark of the pathology of most brain infections such as Alzheimer's disease and AIDS dementia. The death of astrocytes in association with brain tumours appears to be an insignificant event. Detection of apoptosis in human brain tissues fixed in 10% buffered formalin and embedded in paraffin wax was determined in the Department of Medicine, in conjunction with the Department of Dermatology, University of Wales College of Medicine using three selected methods, namely Heamatoxylin and Eosin (H and E) which intensely stains the nuclei of apoptotic cells dark, Methyl Green Pyronin (MGP) which stains the nuclei of apoptotic cells deep pink purple and terminal deoxynucleotidyl tranferase uridine nick end labeling (TUNEL) method which stains the DNA fragments of apoptotic cells dark brown. By looking at changes in the cell nuclei, together with mRNA levels in the cytoplasm and also by analyzing DNA fragments in situ, evidence of apoptosis was found both in neurons and astrocytes. The type and number of brain cells that died from apoptosis varied from case to case. Apoptosis was not detected in normal aging brain control. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


In this paper, I will analyze the encounter between animated sequences and live action sequences in movies such as Jean-Francois Laguionie's The Painting (Le Tableau in original, 2011), Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008) and David Alapont's and Luis Briceno's short film Blusher (Fard in original, 2011). Such an intermedial encounter has important implications at different levels. For example, by being presented in as a metalepsis in Le Tableau, it raises interesting questions about the creative process and about the relation between fiction and reality. In Waltz with Bashir, it is used as a way to represent a traumatic event from the past. In Fard, it shows the characters that their world vision is the result of an ideological and physiological indoctrination.In all the films mentioned above, this encounter exploits the tension between iconic and indexical, between stylization and realism or between fiction and documentary. A closer look at these examples, with the help of Werner Wolf's and Lars Ellestrom's intermediality models, will allow me to study more in detail how this tensions are represented, as well as the narrative and thematical implications.


This chapter reviews various learning theories about e-pedagogical strategies for the effective use of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in higher education. E-pedagogical strategies refer to the various teaching methods or approaches used by educators when encouraging students to engage with online learning. An up-to-date broad knowledge of learning theories is required by educators to inform and inspire their teaching approaches. Before developing lesson plans, educators should have a clear idea of the learning outcomes which they hope the learners will achieve by engaging with the lessons, be they delivered on or off line. By knowing the desired learning outcomes in advance of developing the lesson plans, educators have the opportunity to consider various learning theories, teaching methods, and pedagogical strategies to select the most appropriate one(s) to use when creating course content for MOOCs. The chapter continues the discussion on 'ePedagogy and interactive MOOCs' from the perspective of addressing the topic of 'ePedagogy and students' use of HCI (integrating interactivity into asynchronous MOOCs).


Emerging markets continue to dominate the global economy news space. The Pricewatehouse Coopers (PWC) report on capital markets in 2025 projects that the focus of initial public offering (IPO) activity is shifting to the East. The report refers to a survey conducted by Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) on behalf of PwC with almost 400 senior managers at companies across the globe. The survey is about factors that shape the development of equity capital markets. One of the key findings of the survey projects that India will emerge as an attractive destination for IPOs next only to China. But, current status of Indian capital markets depicts a muted performance and it could be inferred that there is more inclination towards debt than equity. In this back ground, this paper explores the need for alternate financial intermediation options to foster growth in next generation enterprises in India. The model could be studied for relevance in other similar emerging economies. Other sources of funds include: • Private Equity (PE) funds have already burnt fingers due to bad investment rationale and decisions resulting in 300 odd funds sitting over USD 20 Bn of unutilised funds (Source: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-17/news/31749390_1_pe-firms-pe-investments-subbu-subramaniam ) • Venture Capital (VC) funds that could invest in investments less than USD 20 Mn are interested in disruptive technology based investments. • New breed of investments in social entrepreneurship provide some hope but the sustenance of the investments is yet to be evaluated. This paper discusses the need for growth capital for MSME segments for companies in general business space with an investment size less that USD 20 Mn. These companies are not tech startups that get wide coverage in mainstream business media. These companies fall under the definition of MSME, represent the real economy and will be the next generation growth propellers. These businesses have limited access to primary markets and will not be an attractive target for the PE and VC players in existing formats. Keywords: MSMEs, Growth Capital, Private Equity, Primary Market, Equity Capital


Knowledge Distillation (KD) is a well-known training paradigm in deep neural networks where knowledge acquired by a large teacher model is transferred to a small student. KD has proven to be an effective technique to significantly improve the student's performance for various tasks including object detection. As such, KD techniques mostly rely on guidance at the intermediate feature level, which is typically implemented by minimizing an lp-norm distance between teacher and student activations during training. In this paper, we propose a replacement for the pixel-wise independent lp-norm based on the structural similarity (SSIM). By taking into account additional contrast and structural cues, feature importance, correlation and spatial dependence in the feature space are considered in the loss formulation. Extensive experiments on MSCOCO demonstrate the effectiveness of our method across different training schemes and architectures. Our method adds only little computational overhead, is straightforward to implement and at the same time it significantly outperforms the standard lp-norms. Moreover, more complex state-of-the-art KD methods using attention-based sampling mechanisms are outperformed, including a +3.5 AP gain using a Faster R-CNN R-50 compared to a vanilla model.


MIIENJ has paid $30,144,636 in indemnity from 1977 through 1988 for medical malpractice suits arising from medication errors. A review of these files revealed that patients incurred death and serious morbidity, and that several specific behavior errors accounted for the majority of patient injury. Among the damages that occurred during that time period were 88 deaths, 15 patients with profound brain damage, 15 patients who alleged that they had become addicted to medications prescribed for pain, 10 patients who required amputations of limbs, and 12 patients who suffered some degree of hearing loss or decreased visual acuity. The predominant categories where insureds incurred difficulty were in disregarding patient allergies to specific drugs (acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), penicillin and its derivatives); prescribing drugs without consideration of the patient's medical history; failing to monitor therapy with anticoagulants, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, digitalis derivatives, theophylline, and aminoglycoside antibiotics; antibiotic therapy; and errors in the writing of prescriptions. In order to reduce the number of patient injuries and accompanying medical malpractice suits from medication errors, the following suggestions are offered: 1. Heed the patient's warning regarding drug allergies and prescribe a substitute drug, especially if the drug is aspirin or penicillin (and derivatives) or if the patient gives a history of having asthma. If the patient gives a history of aspirin sensitivity, make certain the drug you are prescribing does not contain aspirin as one of its components. Often physicians stated that they were not aware that aspirin was contained in the drug they prescribed for patients with a documented allergy to aspirin.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


ABSTRACT Multi-temporal repeat monitoring of flood-vulnerable rivers is crucial due to rapid alteration of morphological properties of in-channel landforms. Besides, the characteristics of the river crossing bridges may deteriorate due to flood induced scouring around bridge piles or due to flood loads. Thus, in this study high-resolution topography of the study region was acquired during two consecutive years by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) based surveys using Structure-from-Motion (SfM) processing. Following the extraction of digital elevation models (DEM), repeat data that were obtained at each UAV survey were compared using Geomorphic Change Detection (GCD) to calculate volumes of deposition and erosion via DEM of difference (DoD) algorithm. Thus, detailed high-resolution maps of the river channels can be rapidly and efficiently generated by low cost UAV based measurement methods in order for continuous tracking of stream channel morphology for the rivers sensitive to floods.


The Williamstown Naval Dockyard was the Australian federal government's
premier naval dockyard. It had a long-standing reputation for poor productivity,
inefficient work practices and industrial unrest and had been described as the
Iron Lung of Australian Industry (Irving, 1993), and Australia's worst worksite
(White, 1983). After several failed attempts to restructure the dockyard, the
federal government demonstrated its willingness to employ commercial
measures by privatising this utility. On 1 January 1988, the dockyard was
transferred to the highly competitive private shipbuilding sector. As the first
public utility sold by an Australian federal government it provides an
opportunity to examine the restructuring of the dockyard to compete within an
international market.
It has been argued since the economic crises of the 1970s that competitive
advantage will increasingly be derived from an organisation's human resources,
in particular how they are organised and managed (Piore & Sabel, 1984;
Mathews, 1989; Wood, 1989). The micro-economic reform of the Australian
labour market since the 1980s has been an important contextual factor in
providing the opportunity for the development of innovative work patterns and
practices. In line with these emerging themes of work organisation, this thesis
examines the development of new patterns of work as a way of enhancing
resource utilisation and performance through the framework of the flexible firm
or core-periphery model (Atkinson, 1984). This organisational framework was
developed as a response to increasingly dynamic and volatile market conditions.
The development of the model infers an increasingly planned rather than reactive
approach to the development of the organisation's human resources to enhance
the organisation's capabilities and therefore competitiveness.
The broad theme of this thesis is the analysis of the organisation of work. First,
the analysis of work organisation involves investigation of contextual factors.
Second, the extent to which the flexible firm model has been replicated. Third,
this thesis aims to extend the theoretical advancement of work organisation
theory. Employing a qualitative methodology, the case study used the QSR
NUD*IST software package to analyse interview transcripts and documents
and provide categories of subject matter for analysis. Careful attention was
given to the contextual and historical background in keeping with the
contextual approach to this investigation.
The findings indicate that an integrative approach to work patterns and practices
combined with a high level of management commitment through investment in
training and development, are central factors in increased human resource
utilisation. This holds a number of implications for organisations operating in
dynamic environments with regard to the organisation of work.


Asymmetric cryptography brings the ability for anyone on earth to check the signature of a digital object (Diffie & Hellman, 1976). From that perspective, trusted timestamping of a digital object provides very strong evidence of its author or inventor and integrity (Haber, 1991). 26 years later, one might have expected that trusted timestamping would have long ago replaced traditional paper laboratory notebooks, which has not happened yet. In this paper, we argue that the reason is that authenticity is a document process: while trusted timestamping remains a necessary part of the process, a digital object must be involved in a sociotechnical process in order to become a document. We first point out the gap, intractable with paper, between the strict administrative workflow required to create strong evidence, and the fluidity of collaborative authoring needed for creativity. This gap is relevant to laboratory notebooks, as they are commonly used by inventors to attest that they discovered elements at a specific time, in a specific context. Then we explain the design and implementation of our software system, according to document theory (Buckland, 1997), in order to reinvent the whole process to minimize the administrative burden, while preserving its well-known and valuable properties.


Although end-to-end automatic speech recognition (E2E ASR) has achieved great performance in tasks that have numerous paired data, it is still challenging to make E2E ASR robust against noisy and low-resource conditions. In this study, we investigated data augmentation methods for E2E ASR in distant-talk scenarios. E2E ASR models are trained on the series of CHiME challenge datasets, which are suitable tasks for studying robustness against noisy and spontaneous speech. We propose to use three augmentation methods and thier combinations: 1) data augmentation using text-to-speech (TTS) data, 2) cycle-consistent generative adversarial network (Cycle-GAN) augmentation trained to map two different audio characteristics, the one of clean speech and of noisy recordings, to match the testing condition, and 3) pseudo-label augmentation provided by the pretrained ASR module for smoothing label distributions. Experimental results using the CHiME-6/CHiME-4 datasets show that each augmentation method individually improves the accuracy on top of the conventional SpecAugment; further improvements are obtained by combining these approaches. We achieved 4.3\% word error rate (WER) reduction, which was more significant than that of the SpecAugment, when we combine all three augmentations for the CHiME-6 task.


In this paper, further investigations into a simpler automated use of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) in the process of Fetal ECG (FECG) extraction are performed. Extracting FECG signals through abdominal electrodes helps clinicians in diagnosing the overall health of the fetus non-invasively. In the ICA technique, FECG signals are separated from Abdominal ECG (AECG) mixtures containing maternal and noise signals. 300,000 Data samples of three AECG recordings are obtained from PhysioNet database at 1 kHz sampling frequency. Data are pre-processed through MATLAB software by centering, whitening, and filtering techniques. Then, a simpler Fast ICA algorithm is developed and used to smoothly distinguish between AECG components through automatic signal characteristics matching. Moreover, further analysis of the extracted FECG signal is performed to determine the fetus heart rate. Results successfully show efficient automatic separation between the FECG, Maternal ECG (MECG), and noise from the AECG recordings. In addition, the developed characteristics matching algorithm automatically identified the fetus signal and smoothed it to be ready for further fetal health observations. The integration of AECG signal characteristics as a prior information into the ICA algorithm promises to assist clinicians in decision making when diagnosing fetal health conditions non-invasively.


We explore the lexical choices made by authors published in Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ), a major academic journal in business and management studies. We do so via a corpus constructed from all the articles published in ASQ from its first publication in 1956 up until the end of 2018. Specifically, our focus is on lexical items that represent social actors. Our findings suggest that, compared with earlier work, recent articles typically ascribe greater status and prestige to organizational elites. Relatively contemporary papers are also more likely to use language that obfuscates or ignores unpalatable aspects of organizational life, such as power asymmetries, hierarchy and control through identity regulation. We suggest that these changes in word choices can be understood to reflect a wider trend towards neo-liberal rhetoric – a rhetoric increasingly pervading contemporary social life more generally.


As a result of new methods tried first in France and England, European production of buttons began its gradual transition to industrial forms in the second half of the seventeenth century. These creations were in demand in Italian markets, and the importation of foreign buttons was steadily rising. Many consumers found an alternative to precious buttons in Englishand French-style metal buttons. In this essay, I analyze these innovations in the context of northern Italy and discuss their interaction with more traditional products, strictly regulated by corporative systems often connected to the goldsmith's art. This process was parallel to, and contemporary with, the spread in Italy of the early production of bijouterie (fake and plated jewels). I focus on the concession of privileges by political powers in order to stimulate innovation, counterbalancing the rules imposed by the corporative system. The cases discussed concern the manufacture of Venetian glass buttons, in which the innovative processes were mostly developed within the corporative system, and metal button production in Turin, Milan, and Bergamo, more strongly influenced by the importation of new techniques.


A Review of:
Welsh, T. S. & Higgins, S. E. (2009). Public libraries post-Hurricane Katrina: A pilot study. Library Review, 58(9), 652-659.

Objective – This paper analyzes Hurricane Katrina-related narratives to document the challenges faced by public libraries after the disaster and the disaster-relief services these libraries provided.

Design – A qualitative thematic analysis of narratives obtained by convenience sampling.

Setting – Narratives were collected and analyzed in 2005 and 2006 across the Gulf Coast area of the United States.

Subjects – Seventy-two library and information science students enrolled in the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Library and Information Science. Many worked in local libraries.

Methods – In this pilot study, students
volunteered to participate in a confidential process that involved telling their stories of their post-Hurricane Katrina experiences. Data was collected in a natural setting (the libraries in which the students worked), and inductive reasoning was used to build themes based on these research questions: What post-disaster problems related to public libraries were noted in the students' narratives? What post-disaster public library services were noted in the narratives?

NVivo7 qualitative analysis software was used to analyze and code the narratives. Passages related to public libraries were coded by library location and student. These passages were analyzed for themes related to post-disaster challenges and disaster-recovery services pertaining to public libraries.
Main Results – Ten of the 72 narratives contained passages related to public libraries. The libraries included four in Alabama, one in Louisiana, and five in Mississippi. Results related to the first research question (What post-disaster problems related to public libraries were noted in the students' narrative?) were physical damage to the building, from light damage to total destruction (reported in 8 or 80% of the students' narratives), and inundation by refugees, evacuees, and relief workers (reported in 8 or 80% of the narratives). Results pertaining to the second research question (What post-disaster public library services were noted in the narratives?) included providing information for things such as providing information via the use of computers and the filling out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Red Cross aid forms (6 or 60% of the narratives included this), listening and providing comfort (5 or 50% of the narratives), and volunteering and donating, both from others and of the students' own time, money, or materials (noted by 5 or 50% of the narratives).

Conclusion – The researchers concluded that while public libraries suffered devastation during the hurricane, after the hurricane, those libraries that could open provided essential services to people in need. These services included providing access to computers and access to information via computers, aid in filling out necessary relief aid forms, listening and providing comfort, and volunteering time, money, and materials. The public library clearly played a role in both providing information and facilitating communication. Documenting such contributions serves to illustrate the value of public libraries, especially in a post-disaster setting, and helps to demonstrate the value of public libraries in their communities.


Servo control of the hybrid stepping motor is complicated due to its highly nonlinear torque-current-position characteristics, especially under low operating speeds. The purpose of this paper is to develop simple and efficient control algorithms for the high-precision tracking control of hybrid stepping motors. The principles of learning control have been exploited to minimize the motor's torque ripple that is periodic and nonlinear in the system states with specific emphasis on low-speed conditions. The proposed algorithm utilizes a fixed PI feedback controller to stabilize the servomotor and the feedforward learning controller to compensate for the effect of the torque ripple and other disturbances for improved tracking accuracy. The stability and convergence performance of the learning control scheme is discussed. It has been revealed that all the error signals in the learning control system are bounded and the motion trajectory converges to the desired one asymptotically. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed algorithm.


• We report 18 consecutive neonates with severe respiratory failure due to pulmonary hypertension treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was begun at 52 ± 36 hours of age with an arterial partial pressure of oxygen (Po 2 ) of 36±14 mm Hg despite maximal pharmacologic and ventilator support (inspired fraction of oxygen [Fio 2 ], 0.99±0.03; respiratory rate, 98±31/min; and positive inspiratory pressure, 54±11 cm of water). With initial flows of 130±17 mL/kg per minute, ventilator settings were reduced to the following: Fio 2 , 0.30; respiratory rates, 15/min; and positive inspiratory pressure, 24 cm of water. Support using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was gradually reduced to 22% of initial flows and arterial blood samples showed pH 7.48 ±.05, Po 2 of 106 ± 27 mm Hg, and Pco 2 of 36 ± 5 mm Hg just prior to decannulation. After 107±45 hours, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was stopped and infants were extubated 61 ±53 hours (median, 46 hours) afterward. There was one death (94.4% survival rate); all survivors were discharged and underwent a follow-up examination at 1 to 27 months of age. Complications included two intracranial hemorrhages (one death and one asymptomatic), one patent ductus arteriosis requiring ligation on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and chronic lung disease in one patient. In selected neonates, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation allows for resolution of pulmonary hypertension, results in improved survival, and is associated with a low incidence of chronic lung disease. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation should be considered in the treatment of severe respiratory failure. ( Arch Surg. 1990;125:1286-1292)


The society around the forest generally depends on the forest to extract their daily needs by taking the result of forest like timber and non-timber products for sale. However, since 2006 the illegal logging activity has been curbed and gave an impact to the communities' livelihoods around the forest which caused the decline in their income. The objective of the research is to find out the alternative livelihoods after the controlling of the illegal logging, to determine the size of the income of the people before and after the controlling of illegal logging is executed, and to see the factors that is expectedly has an influence on the people´s income. This research was conducted using a descriptive survey method with interview techniques. The result of the research showed that the occupations of the people before the controlling of illegal logging are tree feller/penebang, rafting agen/pengengkut, and log collector agent/pengepul. After the controlling, their changes their occupation as rice farmers,rubber farmers, fisherman, traders and rattan collectors. The people's income before the controlling of illegal logging are; as much as 7 respondents have the lowest-income, that is less then Rp. 11.912.661, as much as 51 respondents have middle-income between Rp. 11.912.661-Rp. 21.284.645, and as much as 2 respondents have the higher-income, that is more than Rp. 21.284.645. While the incomes of the former of illegal loggers are as many as 9 respondents has high-income, > Rp. 26,337,189, -/year. And as many as 45 respondents have middle-income between Rp. 7.488.064, - Rp. 26.337.189, -/year. Then as many as six respondents have the lowes-income, that is below Rp. 7488064, -/year. Based on Chi-Square statisticsThere was no relationship between the level of income with the attitudes, people perceptions about the illegal logging activities. Keywords: Illegal Logging, Ex-Actor Illegal Logging, community income.


We sought to identify specific gaps in preventive care provided to outpatients with cirrhosis and to determine factors associated with high quality of care (QOC), to guide quality improvement efforts. Outpatients with cirrhosis who received care at a large, academic tertiary health care system in the United States were included. Twelve quality indicators (QIs), including preventive care processes for ascites, esophageal varices, hepatic encephalopathy, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and general cirrhosis care, were measured. QI pass rates were calculated as the proportion of patients eligible for a QI who received that QI during the study period. We performed logistic regression to determine predictors of high QOC (≥ 75% of eligible QIs) and receipt of HCC surveillance. Of the 439 patients, the median age was 63 years, 59% were male, and 19% were Hispanic. The median Model for End‐Stage Liver Disease–Sodium score was 11, 64% were compensated, and 32% had hepatitis C virus. QI pass rates varied by individual QIs, but were overall low. For example, 24% received appropriate HCC surveillance, 32% received an index endoscopy for varices screening, and 21% received secondary prophylaxis for spontaneous bacterial peritonitis. In multivariable analyses, Asian race (odds ratio [OR]: 3.7, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.3‐10.2) was associated with higher QOC, and both Asian race (OR: 3.3, 95% CI: 1.2‐9.0) and decompensated status (OR: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.1‐4.2) were associated with receipt of HCC surveillance. A greater number of specialty care visits was not associated with higher QOC. Conclusion: Receipt of outpatient preventive cirrhosis QIs was variable and overall low in a diverse cohort of patients with cirrhosis. Variation in care by race/ethnicity and illness trajectory should prompt further inquiry into identifying modifiable factors to standardize care delivery and to improve QOC.


The importance of the internet-of-things (IOT) is now an established reality. With that backdrop, the phenomenal emergence of cameras/sensors mounted on unmanned aerial, ground and marine vehicles (UAVs, UGVs, UMVs) and body worn cameras is a notable new development. The swarms of cameras and real-time computing thereof are at the heart of new technologies like connected cars, drone-based city-wide surveillance and precision agriculture, etc. Smart computer vision algorithms (with or without dynamic learning) that enable object recognition and tracking, supported by baseline video content summarization or 2D/3D image reconstruction of the scanned environment are at the heart of such new applications. In this article, we summarize our recent innovations in this space. We focus primarily on algorithms and architectural design considerations for video summarization systems.


BACKGROUND/AIM
The cancer stem cell (CSC) model postulates the existence of a small proportion of cancer cells capable of sustaining tumor formation, self-renewal and differentiation. Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling is known to be selectively activated in breast CSC populations. However, it is yet to be determined which molecular mechanisms regulate STAT3 signaling in CSCs and what chemopreventive agents are effective for suppressing CSC growth. The aim of this study was to examine the potential efficacy of curcumin and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) against CSC and to uncover the molecular mechanisms of their anticancer effects.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
To suppress the CSC phenotype, two breast cancer cell lines (MDA-MB-231 cells and MCF7 cells transfected with HER2) were treated with curcumin (10 μM) with or without EGCG (10 μM) for 48 h. We used tumor-sphere formation and wound-healing assays to determine CSC phenotype. To quantify CSC populations, Fluorescence-activated cell sorting profiling was monitored. STAT3 phosphorylation and interaction with Nuclear Factor-kB (NFkB) were analyzed by performing western blot and immunoprecipitation assays.

RESULTS
Combined curcumin and EGCG treatment reduced the cancer stem-like Cluster of differentiation 44 (CD44)-positive cell population. Western blot and immunoprecipitation analyses revealed that curcumin and EGCG specifically inhibited STAT3 phosphorylation and STAT3-NFkB interaction was retained.

CONCLUSION
This study suggests that curcumin and EGCG function as antitumor agents for suppressing breast CSCs. STAT3 and NFκB signaling pathways could serve as targets for reducing CSCs leading to novel targeted-therapy for treating breast cancer.


In vitro tests of lymphocyte function have been performed in 61 patients with `classical' or `definite' rheumatoid arthritis. In vitro lymphocyte function was assessed by lymphocyte transformation responses to phytohaemagglutinin (PHA), Pokeweed mitogen (PWM), Candida antigen, and herpes simplex type I (HSV1). Follow up data were available after 6 months of treatment in 32 of these patients. Spontaneous lymphocyte transformation was assessed in all patients. Results obtained in patients with rheumatoid arthiritis were compared to those seen in a normal control population. Disease activity of patients with rheumatoid arthritis was assessed using standard clinical methods. Lymphocytes from patients with rheumatoid arthritis showed a similar degree of spontaneous transformation to that seen in normal subjects. In contrast, lymphocytes from patients with rheumatoid arthritis responded less well to PHA and Candida and HSV1 antigens when compared to normal patients. In patients with rheumatoid arthritis the response to PWM was markedly enhanced compared to normals. Clinical improvement was noted in 19 of the 32 patients seen at follow up, all of whom had received gold or penicillamine therapy. The abnormal responses of PHA and PWM seen before treatment became normal in those patients who improved clinically. The responses to Candida and HSV1 antigens not only returned to normal following treatment but were increased above those seen in normal controls. A statistically significant association was seen between clinical improvement and improvement of in vitro tests of lymphocyte function.


Granular cell tumors (GCT) are uncommon, generally benign soft tissue neoplasms that can affect virtually any site of the body, the most common locations being tongue, breast, upper respiratory tract, skin and soft tissues of upper extremities. Most patients are middle-aged, with a peak incidence in the fourth to sixth decade of life. GCT commonly presents as an asymptomatic slowly growing, painless nodule. Atypical and malignant counterparts are rare. Herein, we report on the case of an atypical GCT in an 8-months-old baby who presented at our Department with well-defined papulomatous lesion of one month duration on his back. A solitary, firm, painless nodule, about 1.5 cm in size was found on clinical examination. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of the lesion was performed using a 22-gauge needle. Smears were stained with May-Grunwald-Giemsa and Papanicolaou stain. Cytomorphology revealed highly cellular tumor composed of loosely dispersed group of cells and stripped bare nuclei. The cells were large, polygonal to spindle-shaped with an abundant eosinophilic granular and fragile cytoplasm and round to oval nucleus with fine chromatin pattern. Focally cells were larger with prominent nucleoli. Rare mitotic figures were present. Diagnosis of malignant mesenchymal tumor was suggested and excision was advised. Histological examination revealed tumor tissue composed of large, polygonal cells with granular eosinophilic cytoplasm, vesicular nuclei, moderate nuclear pleomorphism and focally prominent nucleoli. There were 2 mitosis per 10 HPF. The tumor cells were positive for S-100 and vimentin. A diagnosis of atypical GCT was established. In conclusion, benign GCT has a distinctive cytomorphologic appearance and can be diagnosed on the basis of the cytological examination alone. Nuclear pleomorphism, spindling of the cells, prominent nucleoli and mitotic figures are worrisome features that suggest malignancy and necessity of histological examination. Considering the patient's age and atypical morphology, to the best of our knowledge, there have been up to 15 GCT cases described in medical literature by now in the children less than one year.


This research study employed a mixed methods approach to explore connections between teachers' use of online technologies in their personal lives, for professional development and/ or within classroom practice in Ireland and the USA. In phase 1 of this study, over 80 Irish primary school teachers' experiences of online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) were examined, through the deployment of interviews, focus groups and an online survey. Almost half of the Irish teachers felt that engagement in online CPD impacted positively on classroom practice, and reported having integrated information and communication technologies in their teaching as a direct result of engagement in the online course. Phase 2 of the study examined online technologies usage in the personal lives, professional development and classroom practice of K-12 educators in the USA, through the deployment of an online survey (with 632 respondents) and follow-up interviews. The results revealed low levels of integration of social media in classroom practice, although there were strong correlations between US teachers' use of online technologies and/ or social media in their personal lives, for professional development and within classroom practice. Recommendations that emerged from this study include the need for policies to support (rather than restrict) the use of social media in schools and the need for teacher training on how to effectively infuse online technologies and/ or social media in teaching and learning.


ABSTRACT Nowadays, breast cancer is one of the riskiest and common cancer types. The early diagnosis of breast cancer is very important just as in other cancer types. Recent investigations demonstrate the biomarkers can be useful for the disease phase. These biomarkers are the very important materials to determine the good or bad diagnostic of the patient. Vascular endothelial growth factor is considered the most powerful mitogen for endothelial cells and also is an important regulator of vascular permeability and angiogenesis. In the frame of this study, it is purposed to design an electrochemical immunosensor system based on indium-tin oxide covered polyethylene terephthalate electrode. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, which is a quick and sensitive method, was used for vascular endothelial growth factor determination. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry techniques were used in all optimisation processes of the produced biosensor. Scanning electron microscopy images, energy-dispersive X-ray spectra and mapping, atomic force microscopy and infrared spectra were examined to support the optimisation studies and to reveal surface morphology and chemical components. In the electrochemical characterisation studies, repeatability, reproducibility, storage, regeneration, single frequency impedance, square wave voltammetry and Kramer's-Kronig transform studies were performed. The measurements were taken in human serum.


Postquantum cryptography requires a different set of arithmetic routines from traditional public-key cryptography such as elliptic curves. In particular, in each of the lattice-based NISTPQC Key Establishment finalists, every state-ofthe-art optimized implementation for lattice-based schemes still in the NISTPQC round 3 currently uses a different complex multiplication based on the Number Theoretic Transform. We verify the NTT-based multiplications used in NTRU, Kyber, and SABER for both the AVX2 implementation for Intel CPUs and for the pqm4 implementation for the ARM Cortex M4 using the tool CryptoLine. e extended CryptoLine and as a result are able to verify that in six instances multiplications are correct including range properties.We demonstrate the feasibility for a programmer to verify his or her high-speed assembly code for PQC, as well as to verify someone else's high-speed PQC software in assembly code, with some cooperation from the programmer.


This article focuses on the manuscript collection currently located in the Riyadha Mosque in Lamu, Kenya. From its foundation in the late nineteenth century, the Riyadha has had a close connection to the Ḥaḍramī-ʿAlawī scholarly network of the Indian Ocean, through family and intellectual links. The article investigates the impact of the ʿAlawī devotional, Sufi and genealogical traditions, as reflected in the manuscript collection of the Riyadha.


In view of low-pressure area for dynamic reactive power compensation device application present situation, a more advanced static reactive power compensation techniques was proposed that is STATCOM (Static Synchronous Compensator-STATCOM) which based on the modern power electronic technology, and it applied to the low-voltage dynamic reactive power compensation area, developed a new and more advanced low-voltage dynamic reactive power compensation device. In this paper, STATCOM compensation system simulation model was established in MATLAB6.5, futher to study its real-time compensation. Theory analyze and simulation results indicate that compare with static capacitor compensation,dynamic compensation achieved zero phase angle between power source current and voltage on rating frequency,demand for power supply rating power is reduced and power transmission performance is ensured.


BACKGROUND
The goal of this research was to study the relationship between family practice residency training in geriatrics and subsequent postresidency geriatric practice patterns.

METHODS
We surveyed all graduates of the University of Maryland Family Practice Residency Program through 1990 to determine their attitudes toward their geriatric training and the extent of their geriatric practice. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with 1) making house calls, 2) making weekly nursing home visits, and 3) having a practice in which more than 25% of patients were older than age 65.

RESULTS
The responses of 143 graduates were analyzed. Most respondents (58.8%) made house calls, and the majority (51%) saw nursing home patients weekly. Older respondents and those possessing Certificates of Added Qualifications in Geriatric Medicine (CAQGMs) were more likely to treat patients older than age 65. Respondents with larger nursing home practices rated their geriatric training more favorably. Multivariate logistic regression analysis found that the following factors were associated with making house calls: working in a group family practice (odds ratio [OR] = 3.88, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.58-5.84) and a rural practice location (OR = 2.71, 95% CI = 1.77-4.17). Physicians who had additional training after residency (OR = 0.16, 95% CI = 0.10-0.25) were less likely to make house calls. Factors associated with making weekly nursing home visits were: additional training after residency (OR = 0.31, 95% CI = 0.19-0.50) and working in a group family practice (OR = 2.43, 95% CI = 1.63-3.65). Attainment of a CAQGM was the only factor associated with having more than 25% geriatric patients in the office practice (OR = 6.00, 95% CI = 2.72-13.24).

CONCLUSIONS
Most graduates of the University of Maryland Family Practice Residency Program maintain significant geriatric practices and value geriatric training, but whether favorable training experiences influence graduates' practices is unknown. Prospective studies of family practice residents are needed to clarify the influence of geriatric curricula on residents' future clinical practices.


Background: Evidence suggests that the dimer configuration of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) enzyme might be destabilized by polymorphisms in monomers at the positions C677T and A1298C. It has been observed that these polymorphisms may lead to stable (CCAA, CCAC, CCCC) and unstable (CTAA, CTAC, TTAA) enzyme dimer configurations. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of the MTHFR enzyme dimer configuration and folate dietary intake with the stage of meiotic nondisjunction in mothers of children with maternally derived trisomy 21. Methods: A total of 119 mothers of children with maternally derived free trisomy 21 were included in the study. The mean maternal age at the time of the birth of the child with trisomy 21 was 32.3 ± 6.4 (range 16–43) years. All mothers were Caucasian. Parental origin of trisomy 21 and meiotic stage of nondisjunction was determined using short tandem repeat markers spanning from the centromere to the telomere of chromosome 21q. The MTHFR C677T and A1298C polymorphism was evaluated by PCR-RFLP. Results: Increased frequency of the MTHFR genotype combinations CTAA, CTAC, and TTAA was found in the group of mothers with meiosis I (MI) nondisjunction (p = 0.007). No differences were found between study participants regarding dietary and lifestyles habits. Conclusion: The risk for MI nondisjunction of chromosome 21 was 4.6-fold higher in cases who had CTAA, CTAC, and TTAA MTHFR genotype combinations and who did not used folic acid supplements in the preconception period.


The objective of this prospective study was to assess the effects of a low-dose oral contraceptive (OC) containing 15 microg ethinylestradiol and 60 microg gestodene on sexuality. Forty-eight healthy volunteers (age range, 18-35 years), having regular menstrual cycles with ovulation, participated in the study. Sexual behavior was assessed using the self-administered Personal Experience Questionnaire, at baseline, and at 3, 6 and 9 months of pill use. Women reported decreased sexual desire (p < 0.005) and sexual activity (p < 0.05) at the 9th month of pill use, and diminished sexual arousal at the 3rd month of pill intake (p < 0.05), with respect to baseline. The frequency of orgasm did not change during OC use (p = NS). Moreover, sexual enjoyment was worse at the 3rd, 6th and 9th month with respect to baseline (p < 0.001). The low dose of ethinylestradiol could cause decreased vaginal lubrication, and diminished sexual arousal could be due to hypoandrogenism. Women may expect increased sexual performance when they take the pill, as compared to before starting contraception. Consequently, they could have an unexpected effect with pill use, though sexuality may remain the same.


Unlike discounting and the damage function, the social welfare function has not received so much attention in the debate on climate economics. An important challenge has been to combine efficiency and equity considerations in a single social welfare framework. The Chichilnisky criterion is one way to resolve this. We consider its implementation in the climate-economy model Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy (DICE), and compare results for different damage functions, namely the standard one in DICE and the one proposed by Weitzman implying potential large climate damages at high temperature increases. We calculate optimal climate policy for different parameter settings and compare the results with those under the green golden rule (only final utility matters) and classical utilitarianism (no discounting). Optimal emission abatement trajectories turn out to be very different between standard discounted utilitarianism, classical utilitarianism and Chichilnisky specifications. The results are very sensitive to the damage function, the climate sensitivity parameter and especially the "Chichilnisky weight" given to utility of generations in the far future. We discuss conditions and reasons for preferring either classical utilitarianism or the Chichilnisky criterion, and conclude that a critical factor is the time horizon used in climate policy analysis. Adopting sustainable preferences as formalized by the Chichilnisky criterion in climate policy analysis has the advantage that the very long-term implications of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on the environment and human welfare are not downplayed.


Innate immune system dysfunction has been known to be a key player in preeclampsia (PE). Activation of the maternal innate immunity may be triggered by invading microorganisms or endogenous ligands, which are detected by different pattern recognition receptors (PRRs). Although some studies have linked PRR activation to PE, it is still unclear if dysregulated PRR expression is associated with the development of this complication. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of the literature, searching articles that evaluated associations of PRRs with PE. Twenty-six studies met the inclusion criteria: 20 of them analyzed PRR expressions and 6 studies investigated the association between PRR polymorphisms and PE. Among the PRRs, only few studies analyzed retinoic acid–inducible gene I-like helicase (RLH) and/or toll-like receptor (TLR)-1, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 expressions in immune cells or placentas from women with PE and controls; thus, it is inconclusive if these PRRs are involved in PE. Results from the 10 studies that analyzed TLR-2 expressions in women with PE and controls are also contradictory. The majority of the studies that investigated TLR-3 and -4 expressions indicate that these PRRs are increased in placenta or immune cells from women with PE compared to pregnant control woman. To date, polymorphisms in TLR-2, -3, and -4 and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor 2 genes do not seem to be associated with PE development. No study has evaluated the association between polymorphisms in genes codifying other TLRs or RLHs genes. In conclusion, available data in literature support a role for TLR-3 and TLR-4 in the pathogenesis of PE.


ABSTRACT Objective: To share our first experience with laparoscopic pectopexy, a new technique for apical prolapse surgery, and to evaluate the feasibility of this technique. Materials and Methods: Seven patients with apical prolapse underwent surgery with laparoscopic pectopexy. The lateral parts of the iliopectineal ligament were used for a bilateral mesh fixation of the descended structures. The medical records of the patients were reviewed, and the short-term clinical outcomes were analyzed. Results: The laparoscopic pectopexy procedures were successfully performed, without intraoperative and postoperative complications. De novo apical prolapse, de novo urgency, de novo constipation, stress urinary incontinence, anterior and lateral defect cystoceles, and rectoceles did not occur in any of the patients during a 6-month follow-up period. Conclusion: Although laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy has shown excellent anatomical and functional long-term results, laparoscopic pectopexy offers a feasible, safe, and comfortable alternative for apical prolapse surgery. Pectopexy may increase a surgeon's technical perspective for apical prolapse surgery.


The effects of alpha 2-adrenergic receptors are usually attributed to inhibition of adenylyl cyclase through pertussis toxin-sensitive Gi coupling. In kidney distal convoluted tubule (DCT) cells, stimulation of Na+/K(+)-ATPase by alpha 2 receptors involves activation of protein kinase C (PKC). To identify the signal pathways coupled to alpha 2 receptors, we measured cAMP production and show that the alpha 2 agonist B-HT 933 had no effect on basal or stimulated (forskolin, parathyroid hormone) cAMP accumulation in DCT cells but inhibited parathyroid hormone-stimulated cAMP accumulation in proximal tubule cells. I tested whether alpha 2 receptors on DCT cells stimulate PKC through second messengers generated from phospholipase C (PLC) activation. In DCT cells, B-HT 933 increased inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate formation by 4-6-fold over control and increased diacylglycerol formation by 46%. Basal intracellular calcium concentration in single DCT cells averaged 114 nM and increased within 2 min to 196 nM with B-HT 933. Treatment with the PLC inhibitor U-73122 but not pertussis toxin blocked B-HT 933-induced rises in inositol-1,4,5-trisphosphate and intracellular calcium concentration. B-HT 933 increased PKC activity by 45% over control in DCT cells. These findings provide evidence that alpha 2-adrenergic receptors activate PLC in DCT cells through a pertussis toxin-insensitive mechanism.


We study the capabilities of virtual addressing schemes for efficient and failure tolerant routing in sensor networks. In particular, we present the Virtual Cord Protocol (VCP) that uses techniques known from peer-to-peer networks, i.e. Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) are used to associate data items in sensor networks with particular node addresses. The addresses of nodes are dynamically maintained by the protocol to form a virtual cord. VCP uses two mechanisms for finding paths to nodes and associated data items: First, it relies on the virtual cord that always points towards the destination. Furthermore, locally available neighborhood information is exploited for greedy routing. Our simulation results show that VCP is able to find paths close to the possible shortest path with very low overhead. The routing performance of VCP, which clearly outperforms other ad hoc routing protocols such as Dynamic MANET On Demand (DYMO), is similar to other virtual addressing schemes, e.g. Virtual Ring Routing (VRR). However, we improved VCP to handle frequent node failures in an optimized way. The results presented in this paper outline the capabilities of VCP to handle such cases.


The inability to implement the principles of good corporate governance (GCG) as demonstrated in the surveys is due to a number of constraints which can be classified into three; namely internal constraints, external constraints, and constraints coming from the structure of ownership. The issues in the internal constraints mentioned are related to the function of several elements of the company. As a business organization, corporation is unable to achieve its goal to successfully implement GCG principles since it is not support by its internal elements' functions. Two of several numbers of internal elements of a company are ethical work climate and leadership style of the top management. To prove the correlation between internal function of organization (in this case ethical work climate and transformational leadership) and the successful implementation of GCG principles, this study proposes two hypotheses to be empirically tested on thirty surveyed organizations; eleven of which are state-owned companies and nineteen are private companies. These thirty corporations are listed in the Jakarta Stock Exchange. All state-owned companies in the samples are those which have been privatized. The research showed that internal function of organization give support to the successful implementation of GCG principle. In this research we can prove that : (i) ethical work climate has positive significance of correlation with the successful implementation of social awareness principle (one of principles on GCG) and, (ii) only at the state-owned companies, transformational leadership have positive significance effect to forming the ethical work climate. Keywords—Good Corporate Governance Principles, Ethical Work Climate, Transformational Leadership .


As an open, inexpensive, collaborative platform, the Web is ideal for facilitating communication among scholars, enabling near free access to knowledge. The Web's potential goes further still however, allowing researchers to utilise the digital, networked medium to publish more of their research data in comparison to paper-based journal articles, and to publish them in context sensitive formats enabling wider access and visibility, increased discoverability and potential for further use including through e-science techniques. Yet this potential has not been fully realised. Whilst much research is made freely available via open access, this remains a contentious subject, along with other facets of scholarly communication such as peer review and journal impact factors. The range of functions fulfilled by the processes of academic publishing ultimately inhibits the Web's ability to instigate change. This thesis presents an all-encompassing study examining the roles of the major stakeholders in the process of capturing research and making it publicly available, to understand why the full potential of the application of the Web in scholarly discourse has not yet been fully realised. Through doing so a new approach to scholarly discourse, termed disintermediation, is formulated whereby the researcher is placed in a central role, using the Web to communicate research findings directly with their peers. An evaluation of disintermediation via a socio-economic analysis of researchers' behaviour finds that publisher-enabled mechanisms of reward and recognition are crucial in driving scholarly dissemination. Therefore a more pragmatic approach to instigating change in academic publishing is then investigated. This leads to the development of a prototype Web service to facilitate a process termed disaggregation, the breaking down of conventional publications so that their constituent elements may be disseminated and used more freely. An evaluation of disaggregation via expert interviews, seeds a final proposal that builds on the disaggregation approach. Whilst not immediately implementable, this proposal recognises the need for a significant cultural shift and engagement from all the stakeholders of scholarly discourse, if it is to truly benefit from the affordances of the Web.


The purpose of this study was to analyze humor formation elements and violence through the type of humor content and the three perspectives of humor asserted by Bergson. was chosen as a subject of analysis and the scenes of humor formation elements of the work were researched to conduct frequency analysis as a data collection method for the empirical analysis. This study conducted analysis through the correlations of humor content type of frequency analysis result, three perspectives of humor and violence. As for the analysis result, irony appeared mostly in the situation and verbal perspective as it appeared in a contradictory aspect that deviated from the situation that character faces. Also, there was one-sided violence being acted upon from the standpoint of attacker instead of punitive justice, and it alleviated tension through a unique idea in a critical situation. From the aspect of humor and movement, it showed lower numerical value compared to violence revealed in irony, situation and language. The foregoing is a result of humor being revealed in the scenes that show the characteristics of each character instead of the interaction between characters. With regards to wit, an element of humor appeared while establishing reversal and inversion according to the situation, and satire was found to be receiving punishment through violence. The result can be analyzed as follows. First, the contradictory tendency was predominant from the one-sided relation of power in the correlation between humor and violence, and violence shown in the standard of good and evil was revealed in punitive justice satirical type. Second, violence was hardly revealed in the situation that character faces and according personality and humor is formed based on the antisociality of inconsistency of the character's role and behavior. Third, it was found that violence and humor occurred at the point of alleviating the tension of incident with off the point idea.


Unlike most wild goose populations in the Western Palaearctic, the feral Greylag Geese Anser anser in Stuttgart, southwest Germany, are not known to migrate. In winter 2004/05, a study was carried out to determine how this resident group copes with snow and ice, since severe weather conditions are not unusual in the region. Changes in activity budgets, feeding behaviour and abdominal fat reserves were investigated. From January to March 2005, frequent snowfall resulted in persistent snow cover. In response to the resulting lack of food, the geese changed their daily feeding patterns, fed less, loafed more and subsequently lost abdominal fat reserves. Although they moved from small park lakes to the ice-free river for roosting, they did not leave the area in search of snow-free feeding sites.


The authors propose an original method of vasculogenic impotence surgery involving correction of arterial and arteriovenous insufficiency of the penis. This includes isolation of penile dorsal artery and deep dorsal vein in the proximal and middle third, then of the low epigastric artery along the entire length from the branching to the distal third. Upon establishing the shunt from the dorsal artery and vein, it is sutured with epigastric artery end-to-side. The procedure ends by placing the deep dorsal vein into the duplicature of the corpus cavernosum tunica albuginea. Follow-up results (within 3 years) available for 12 surgical patients demonstrate that improvement did not occur only in one case. This patient had corpus cavernosum sclerosis.


Background and Purpose— Because of the limitation in treatment window of the r-tPA (recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator), the development of delayed treatment for stroke is needed. In this study, we examined the efficacy of delayed poststroke treatment (post 3–8 days) of the sonic hedgehog pathway agonist on functional recovery and the underlying mechanisms. Methods— We evaluated functional recovery at 1 month after stroke using locomotion analysis and Barnes maze test for cognitive function. We used a genetically inducible neural stem cell–specific reporter mouse line (nestin-CreERT2-R26R-YFP) to label and track their proliferation, survival, and differentiation in ischemic brain. Brain tissue damage, angiogenesis, and cerebral blood flow recovery was evaluated using magnetic resonance imaging techniques and immunostaining. Results— Our results show that delayed treatment of sonic hedgehog pathway agonist in stroke mice results in enhanced functional recovery both in locomotor function and in cognitive function at 1 month after stroke. Furthermore, using the Nestincre-ERT2-YFP mice, we showed that poststroke sonic hedgehog pathway agonist treatment increased surviving newly born cells derived from both subventricular zone and subgranular zone neural stem cells, total surviving DCX+ (Doublecortin) neuroblast cells, and neurons (NeuN+/YFP+) in the ischemic brain. Sonic hedgehog pathway agonist treatment also improved the brain tissue repair in ischemic region supported by our T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, cerebral blood flow map by arterial spin labeling, and immunohistochemistry (&agr;-smooth muscle actin and CD31 immunostaining). Conclusions— These data confirm an important role for the hedgehog pathway in poststroke brain repair and functional recovery, suggesting a prolonged treatment window for potential treatment strategy to modulate sonic hedgehog pathway after stroke.


Most Iranian historians agree that Taqizadeh's activities in Germany, the enemy of the enemies of Iran, during World War I, were historically significant. They, however, disagree on the degree of importance one may assign to these activities that have not been described in any detail in the few accounts that have been published so far. The memoirs written by Taqizadeh, and by other Iranian exiles cooperating with him at the time, are undoubtedly of value in shedding some light on the subject, but they too have their own limitations. This article is based mainly on the relevant documents in the archives of the German foreign ministry, most of them unpublished. These documents pertain to the circumstances of Taqizadeh's cooperation with the Germans in this period.
Iranians have expressed different and at times contradictory judgments on Taqizadeh, and particularly his activities during the Great War. Some believe that he had been totally free of any financial dependence on the Imperial German government and consider his cooperation with that government designed to promote Iran's national interest. Others accuse him of having been a willing tool in the hands of German imperialists. Still others have set forth the far-fetched theory that in the period of his cooperation with the Germans, Taqizadeh was in fact trying to promote the interests of the British government.
As to what extent Taqizadeh was willing and able to promote Iranian national interest, one must bear in mind that he was not an equal partner with the representatives of Imperial Germany. Yet, it is also an incontrovertible fact that at this period German interests in the Middle East were generally compatible with some of the long-cherished objectives of Iranian nationalist who believed that Imperial Germany could play a significant role in helping Iran rid itself of British and Russian overbearing influences. However, the belief in being able to expel Russia and Britain from Iran with the help of victorious Germany and the Ottoman Empire turned out to be illusory.
It is certainly true that Taqizadeh and his Iranian colleagues were financially dependent on the German government and that their activities contributed to the expansion of the theatre of war to Iran. Yet, judging by the nature of his activities in this period, as evidenced in the materials found in the German archives, Taqizadeh had accepted the German offer for wartime collaboration solely for the purpose of serving his country under difficult and fast changing circumstances.


Tissue culturing has become a routine method for propagating plants in high technology laboratories. The cost of production using conventional tissue culture is, however, high for most of the countries in the sub-Saharan Africa. In this study, we evaluated a micropropagating protocol for local banana (Musa spp.) (Muunju landrace) in Kenya as an alternative to reduce the unit cost of tissue culture micropropagation. Matrices were satisfactory and comparable to the gelling agents. Glass beads were, however, the best matrix in shoot multiplication. Use of support matrices, locally available macronutrients, micronutrients, sugar, equipment and facility reduced the cost of consumable material for banana tissue culturing by about 94%. Putting into account energy, labour and capital investments, the cost dropped from approximately US $ 1.5 to 1.0 per plantlet. Contamination was not observed when the media and equipment were sterilised using a pressure cooker instead of an autoclave. Use of plastic syringes instead of glass cylinders and micropipettes, to measure volumes reduced the cost of the equipment by 96%. The risk of damage and loss due to breakage was eliminated compared to the use of glassware equipment. Shoots were rooted when they were transferred to Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium  supplemented with 1 mg l-1 napthaleneacetic acid (NAA) or 1 mg l-1 Anatone. Acclimatised plants were successfully transplanted and established in the field. There is potential for use of locally available low cost resources as alternatives to the conventional costly laboratory resources.


Abundance and distribution of decapods and stomatopods were studied, based on 90 samples collected from the western Bay of Bengal (Lat. 09 degrees 58' and 20 degrees 50'N and long. 80 degrees 00'E) between 24 August and 2 October, 1976. The decapod larvae were present in 50 samples. The maximum abundance of these larvae (11,000 specimens) was found in shallow, coastal waters. As much as 19 species were obtained from a single sample collected from a shallow station between Pondicherry and Nagapattinam. The maximum number of larvae obtained was 2393/100 m3 in a single haul from a coastal station, north off Madras. The major forms obtained in the present collections were penaeids, sergestids, carideans, thalassinids, pagurids, crab zoeae and megalopae and Alima larvae. Their relative occurrence and abundance in the western Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea have been discussed


We introduce a thermo-optic phase shifter (TOPS) array architecture with independent phase control of each phase shifter for large-scale and high-density photonic integrated circuits with two different control schemes: pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) and pulse width modulation (PWM). We realize a compact spiral TOPS and a 288-element high-density row-column TOPS array with this architecture and drive TOPS with waveforms of both control schemes and of different array sizes. We present a thermal excitation model and a finite difference method-based simulation to simulate large-scale TOPS arrays and compare both schemes experimentally and theoretically. We also analyze the effects of thermal crosstalk in the realized TOPS array and implement a thermal crosstalk correction algorithm with the developed model. The high-density TOPS array architecture and the thermal crosstalk correction algorithm pave the way for high-density TOPS arrays with independent phase control in large-scale photonic integrated circuits interfaced with electronics limited in voltage swing and bandwidth.


In looking over the life of Wallace recently, my attention was again drawn to the differences in opinion existing between Darwin and himself, with reference to sexual selection. Wallace objected to Darwin's assumption that a bright or peculiar color or a peculiar note or call would attract the attention of other individuals of the same species but of the opposite sex, on the ground that such a process could not become operative in forms which did not have sufficient intelligence to discriminate, and hence could not explain the occurrence of such characters in the lower forms. And if the plaint of the eugenists be accepted at its face value, the degree of intelligence even in the human subject to-day is not sufficient to insure discrimination in choosing a mate. The development of our knowledge of animal behavior, on the one hand, and the advances in our knowledge of the nervous system, on the other, appear to me to make possible a reconsideration of the matter from the point of view of one or the other of these two lines of work at the present time. It must not be supposed that the approach from this angle will settle the question quite independently of other considerations, but such a method of approach may adduce some independent probability of the soundness or unsoundness of Darwin's point of view. In the first place, sexual selection with reference to color of coat or plumage or of song is dependent upon the existence of a particular group of sense organs capable of perceiving objects at a distance-the distance receptors as Sherrington 1 calls them. These are the eye and the ear and the olfactory organ. The perception of color and voice depends therefore upon the development of the eye and the ear. Sexual selection with reference to these two characters can not be operative, therefore, in forms not able to see or hear. It is evident that any other process of selection that is dependent upon coloration, even including protective coloration under certain conditions, must be considered from the same point of view. We may, therefore, discuss the subjects of colors of flowers as a means of attracting bees, warning coloration, protection by mimicry, and certain phases