We studied the roosting ecology of the long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) during the spring- autumn months from 1998-2002 at Hanging Rock in the highly fragmented landscape of South Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand. We compared the structural characteristics and microclimates of roost sites used by communally and solitary roosting bats with those of randomly available sites, and roosts of C. tuberculatus occupying unmodified Nothofagus forest in the Eglinton Valley, Fiordland. Roosting group sizes and roost residency times were also compared. We followed forty radio-tagged bats to 94 roosts (20% in limestone crevices, 80% in trees) at Hanging Rock. Roosts were occupied for an average of 1 day and 86% were only used once during the study period. Colony size averaged 9.8 ± 1.1 bats (range 2-38) and colonies were dominated by breeding females and young. Indigenous forest, shrubland remnants and riparian zones were preferred roosting habitats. Communally roosting bats selected roosts in split trunks of some of the largest trees available. Selection of the largest available trees as roost sites is similar to behaviour of bat species occupying unmodified forested habitats. Temperatures inside 12 maternity roosts measured during the lactation period were variable. Five roosts were well insulated from ambient conditions and internal temperatures were stable, whereas the temperatures inside seven roosts fluctuated in parallel with ambient temperature. Tree cavities used by bats at Hanging Rock were significantly nearer ground level, had larger entrance dimensions, were less well insulated, and were occupied by fewer bats than roosts in the Eglinton Valley. These characteristics appear to expose their occupants to unstable microclimates and to a higher risk of threats such as predation. We suggest that roosts at Hanging Rock are of a lower quality than those in the Eglinton Valley, and that roost quality may be one of the contributory factors in the differential reproductive fitness observed in the two bat populations. The value of introduced willows (especially Salix fragilis) as bat roosts should be acknowledged. We recommend six conservation measures to mitigate negative effects of deterioration of roosting habitat: protection and enhancement of the quality of existing roosts, replanting within roosting habitat, provision of high quality artificial roosts, predator control, and education of landowners and statutory bodies.


The word 'acousmatic' has a strange and complicated history. Recent Schaefferian accounts have replicated François Bayle's sketch of the 'histoire du mot' from his Musique acousmatique – in particular, the assumed synonymy between 'acousmatique' and 'acousmate'. However, this synonymy is mistaken. The word 'acousmate' was first coined in an article from 1730 to describe a strange noise heard one evening in the small French village of Ansacq. A discussion of the article follows, which shows how the word is unrelated to the Pythagorean acousmatics, and how its author understood his 'acousmate' in the context of contemporary natural science. Additionally, a sketch of the term's changing signification in three discourses – scientific, psychological and literary – is presented. The goal of this article is to articulate a set of problems concerning the historiography of acousmatic listening in the Schaefferian tradition. These problems include: 1) the need to authorise a practice of musique acousmatique, which has limited historical investigation to moments where the word 'acousmate' or 'acousmatique' appear in the archive; 2) a mistaken assumption that 'acousmate' and 'acousmatique' are synonymous, which has forced together historical moments that are not in fact affiliated; 3) an adherence to this affiliation, which has foreclosed the opportunity to consider acousmatic listening as a set of culturally and historically specific practices concerning the relationship of seeing and hearing.


To test the hypothesis that the osteogenic response to fluoride can increase the skeletal requirement for calcium, resulting in a general state of calcium deficiency and secondary hyperparathyroidism, we assessed calcium deficiency, spinal bone density, by quantitative computed tomography, and serum PTH in three groups of osteoporotic subjects. Two of the three groups had been treated with fluoride and calcium (at least 1500 mg/day) for 32 +/- 19 months. Group 1 consisted of 16 fluoride-treated subjects who had shown rapid increases in spinal bone density (+ 3.8 +/- 2.6 mg/cm2 month), group II consisted of 10 fluoride-treated subjects who had shown decreases or only slow increases in spinal bone density (-0.05 +/- 0.6 mg/cm3 month), and group III consisted of 10 age-matched untreated osteoporotic controls. Calcium deficiency was assessed by measurement of calcium retention after calcium infusion. The results of our studies showed that 1) 94% of the subjects in Group I were calcium deficient compared with only 30% in groups II and III (P < 0.01 for each); 2) the subjects in group I retained more calcium (79%) than the subjects in group II (60%, P < 0.001) or the subjects in group III (64%, P < 0.005); 3) calcium retention was proportional to serum PTH (r = 0.37, n = 36, P < 0.03); and 4) calcium retention was proportional to the (previous) fluoride-dependent increase in quantitative computed tomography spinal bone density (in groups I and II, r = 0.48, n = 26, P < 0.02). To test the hypothesis that the calcium deficiency and the secondary hyperparathyroidism that were associated with the positive response to fluoride would respond to concomitant calcitriol treatment, a subgroup of 7 calcium-deficient subjects were selected from group I and treated with calcitriol (plus fluoride and calcium) for an average of 7 months. The calcitriol therapy reduced the calcium deficit in all 7 subjects, decreasing calcium retention from 80% to 62% (P < 0.02), and decreasing PTH from 50 to 28 pg/mL (P < 0.02). Together, these data indicate that fluoride-treated osteoporotic subjects may develop calcium deficiency in proportion to the effect of fluoride to increase bone formation, and this calcium deficit is responsive to calcitriol therapy.


This paper is a discussion of a 2020 multiple case study research involving five female owners of retail small and medium enterprise (SME) companies in Lagos State, Nigeria. Multiple data collection methods employed included semistructured interviews, direct observations, review of company documents, and keeping a reflective journal. We established reliability, validity, and data saturation through triangulation. One major finding was that by deploying innovative ideas, business owners were able to overcome challenges and grow sales. The implications for positive social change include the potential to provide both existing and emerging women owned SMEs with the strategies to increase patronage to grow their businesses, thereby contributing to the economic growth of their business, employees, local communities, and the Nigerian national economy.


Brownfield redevelopment is a relatively new idea of redevelopment in our country. The main factor Brownfield development is a priority for Brownfield development is a solution to the problem of shortage of land in the city center. Brownfield redevelopment will also create many job opportunities to the unemployed. The main factor Brownfield redevelopment should be encouraged because of the development will reduce the explore of the new forest because there are still Brownfield sites can be developed. There are three key actor in the development of Brownfield sites, they consist of property developers, Local Authorities and the purchaser. Brownfield redevelopment more popular now is because there is high demand for land in major cities such as Kuala Lumpur. The developer is not interested in developing Brownfield sites because they often faced with the problem of uncertainty in the implementation of the redevelopment of this area. In this research , there was a special government agency should be established to manage the development of potential Brownfield. Another important point in the research of the redevelopment of Brownfield sites are special guide lines should be established for the reference of all parties involved. To achieve the objectives of this study, researchers used data on primary and secondary data to make a referral-based, primary obtained through interviews with those involved in the development and use of a questionnaire to those who are directly involved in the development of Brownfield sites. The researcher found that the redevelopment of Brownfield sites have many advantages which should be promoted. The proposed research is a comprehensive guideline for the management of all party involved should be established. If there is a government agency that can assist in this development and there are comprehensive guidelines, the interests of developers and government departments to develop Brownfield sites will increase. Brownfield areas are areas that need to be developed for these the benefits to all segments of society.


An extensive test campaign has been conducted to characterise the different failure modes observed in heavy tow (24k) carbon and glass braided composites. The Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique was used to obtain complete strain field measurement of large strains to failure. Failure in the fibre direction, under tension and compression loading were investigated; in the tension direction relatively large strains to failure were measured due to tow straightening damage mechanisms. Another important test is tensile shear loading which can undergo very large strains to failure due to fibre re-orientations in the loading direction. This latter, so-called 'scissoring' mechanism, has been quantified through changes of fibre angle during the complete loading history. Data gathered from coupon testing was used to characterise a material damage, with failure, model for the heavy tow braids, using a general composite damage model available in the explicit Finite Element (FE) code PAM-CRASHTM. Finally, four-point bending tests on braided carbon and glass composite beams with full field strain measurements to failure was carried out and used to validate the numerical model. A good agreement between simulation and experimental results was obtained.


We investigated the temporal pattern of oral irritation elicited by sequential application of mustard oil (allyl-isothiocyanate), and whether it exhibits self-desensitization and cross-desensitization with capsaicin. Mustard oil (0.125%, 40 micro l) was sequentially applied to one side of the tongue at 1 min intervals, and subjects rated the intensity of the irritant sensation elicited by each stimulus. Ratings successively declined across trials, indicating desensitization. In contrast, sequential application of capsaicin (10 ppm) elicited irritation that increased in intensity across trials (sensitization). To test for self-desensitization by mustard oil, a 10 min hiatus was imposed following the series of unilateral mustard oil stimuli, after which mustard oil was applied to both sides of the tongue. In a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm, subjects chose which side had stronger irritation and also independently rated the irritant intensity on each side. A significant majority of subjects chose the side not previously receiving mustard oil as more intense, and assigned significantly higher intensity ratings to that side, indicating self-desensitization. In two additional sessions, the same paradigm was used to show mustard oil cross-desensitization of irritation elicited by capsaicin, and capsaicin cross-desensitization of irritation from mustard oil. In a final session, sequential application of mustard oil at faster (20 s) intervals initially evoked a sensitizing pattern followed by desensitization. The temporal patterns of oral irritation exhibited by mustard oil, and its reciprocal cross-desensitization with capsaicin, are similar to those of menthol and nicotine.


Microcapsules were prepared by in situ polymerization of melamine-formaldehyde resin to form shell over oxygen resin droplets. Stirring rate, temperature, pH value as well as mass ratio of shell and core are the main parameters affecting the stability of microcapsules. High stirring rate leads to small size of microcapsules. The temperature influences the speed of the reaction and the morphology. The pH value decides whether the condensation reaction can take place. The size of microcapsules is about 15-61um.


The A/J mouse has been used to study the teratogenic affects of phenytoin. The developmental abnormalities produced in offspring of this model are similar to some of the malformations observed in cases of human "fetal hydantoin syndrome." Placing pregnant A/J mice in a hyperoxic chamber after phenytoin injection greatly reduces the incidence of phenytoin-induced cleft lip and palate. These results suggest that phenytoin may affect embryonic development indirectly by altering maternal physiology. This maternally mediated mechanism, and the protection against it afforded by hyperoxia, has general implications for the effects of maternal toxicity on teratogenesis.


The aim of the paper was to define the geographical scope of the sugar market using the Elzinga−Hogarty method. For practical use of this method the authors made three assumptions: 1) sugar market was studied integrally, independently from type of sugar, its origin and kind of customer, 2) the European Union market treated en bloc was the starting point for the analysis, 3) LOFI and LIFO tests were established at the level of 90% ("strong" market). The authors used secondary data on sugar production, consumption, imports and exports on country and the EU level gathered for 2013 by the International Sugar Organization. Sugar market was defined by "adding" to each other subsequent national markets characterised by the highest trade exchange.The markets were added until the requirements for LOFI and LIFO tests were met at the level of 90%. The results of the research allow the authors to define the sugar market as a global market which consists of the EU area and 30 other countries in the world. Such market has production of 114 million tonnes, consumption of 110 million tonnes and small share of import and export at the level of 10.7 million tonnes and 11.4 million tonnes, respectively. The geographical definition of the sugar market determined in the paper is much broader than the ones used by the European Union and the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. The controversy about the geographical scope of the sugar market suggests the need for further research in the area.


Cofnas (2018b) has critiqued Dutton's (2018) proposition that Jewish involvement in Leftist, Western-tradition/nationalism critiquing movements may partly be attributed to relatively high Jewish ethnocentrism, rather than exclusively to relatively high Jewish intelligence. Here, I present the background to what has become a heated debate, and proceed to show that (1) there is compelling evidence that humans act, even in mundane tasks, in their genetic (and specifically ethnic) interests, and (2) Jews are relatively high in ethnocentrism and high levels of Jewish exogamous marriage do not undermine this because (a) marriage is an isolated measure of ethnocentrism; (b) Jewish-Gentile marriages are relatively unstable, implying a low level of bonding and so not implying low Jewish ethnocentrism; and (c) high exogamous marriage would be consistent with the kind of majority-embracing group strategy proposed in MacDonald's (1998) Culture of Critique model. Given these empirical observations, I conclude that (3) MacDonald's model makes testable predictions and is potentially falsifiable. It should now be tested more extensively and systematically.


A 7-week-old white boy presented to the emergency department (ED) with vomiting and weight loss. His parents brought him to the ED 3 weeks earlier after he had vomited for several days. Possible milk protein allergy was diagnosed at that visit, and a change from cow milk formula to an elemental formula was recommended. Vomiting subsequently increased in frequency. Nonbilious but forceful vomiting occurred with each feeding. The patient lost nearly 2 lb during the 3 weeks that followed the first ED visit.


The effects of pre-and postharvest lighting on quality and shelf life of fresh-cut lettuce was investigated. Lettuce was grown under different light intensities (120 and 250 μmol m -2 s -1 PAR from fluorescent tubes) and quality at harvest and subsequent postharvest performance of intact leaves and fresh-cut product was monitored. Cultivation under high light prolonged the shelf life (dark storage) of both intact leaves and fresh-cut product (butterhead and iceberg lettuce). The improved shelf life was reflected in improved chlorophyll fluorescence values. Postharvest lighting of the fresh-cut product, at low intensities (7 and 30 μmol m -2 s -1 PAR from fluorescent tubes) considerably prolonged the shelf life of fresh-cut product (butterhead lettuce) compared to storage in darkness. This was reflected in higher overall visual quality values and delayed cut-edge browning. The applied light levels caused an 8 to 10 times increase in carbohydrate levels (sugars and starch) whereas carbohydrates decreased when the fresh-cut product was stored in the dark. Storage in light caused an increase in dark respiration leading to increasingly negative photosynthetic values. The prolonged shelf life of low light-treated samples is presumably related to the higher levels of sugar, counteracting starvation processes. Currently, it is not clear which processes are responsible for the sugar accumulation in lit samples. We hypothesize that, under low light conditions, sugars may be produced through the processing of chloroplast degradation products in the glyoxysome, subsequent production of malate and oxaloacetate and production of glucose through reversal of the glycolysis pathway (gluconeogenesis).


Although the concept that dendritic cells (DCs) recognize pathogens through the engagement of Toll-like receptors is widely accepted, we recently suggested that immature DCs might sense kinin-releasing strains of Trypanosoma cruzi through the triggering of G-protein-coupled bradykinin B2 receptors (B2R). Here we report that C57BL/6.B2R−/− mice infected intraperitoneally with T. cruzi display higher parasitemia and mortality rates as compared to B2R+/+ mice. qRT-PCR revealed a 5-fold increase in T. cruzi DNA (14 d post-infection [p.i.]) in B2R−/− heart, while spleen parasitism was negligible in both mice strains. Analysis of recall responses (14 d p.i.) showed high and comparable frequencies of IFN-γ-producing CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the spleen of B2R−/− and wild-type mice. However, production of IFN-γ by effector T cells isolated from B2R−/− heart was significantly reduced as compared with wild-type mice. As the infection continued, wild-type mice presented IFN-γ-producing (CD4+CD44+ and CD8+CD44+) T cells both in the spleen and heart while B2R−/− mice showed negligible frequencies of such activated T cells. Furthermore, the collapse of type-1 immune responses in B2R−/− mice was linked to upregulated secretion of IL-17 and TNF-α by antigen-responsive CD4+ T cells. In vitro analysis of tissue culture trypomastigote interaction with splenic CD11c+ DCs indicated that DC maturation (IL-12, CD40, and CD86) is controlled by the kinin/B2R pathway. Further, systemic injection of trypomastigotes induced IL-12 production by CD11c+ DCs isolated from B2R+/+ spleen, but not by DCs from B2R−/− mice. Notably, adoptive transfer of B2R+/+ CD11c+ DCs (intravenously) into B2R−/− mice rendered them resistant to acute challenge, rescued development of type-1 immunity, and repressed TH17 responses. Collectively, our results demonstrate that activation of B2R, a DC sensor of endogenous maturation signals, is critically required for development of acquired resistance to T. cruzi infection.


The identity of an unknown environmental pollutant is reflected by the mass and dissociation chemistry of its (quasi)molecular ion. Gas chromatography-atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry (GC-APCI-MS) increases the yield of molecular ions (compared to conventional electron ionization) by collisional cooling. Scanning quadrupole data-independent acquisition (SQDIA) permits unbiased, unattended selection of (quasi)molecular ions and acquisition of structure-diagnostic collision-induced dissociation mass spectra, while minimizing interferences, by sequentially cycling a quadrupole isolation window through the m/z range. This study reports on the development of a suspect screening method based on industrial compounds with bioaccumulation potential. A comparison of false and correct identifications in a mixed standard containing 30 analytes suggests that SQDIA results in a markedly lower false-positive rate than standard DIA: 5 for SQDIA and 82 for DIA. Electronic waste dust was analyzed using GC and quadrupole time-of-flight MS with APCI and SQDIA acquisition. A total of 52 brominated, chlorinated, and organophosphorus compounds were identified by suspect screening; 15 unique elemental compositions were identified using nontargeted screening; 17 compounds were confirmed using standards and others identified to confidence levels 2, 3, or 4. SQDIA reduced false-positive identifications, compared to experiments without quadrupole isolation. False positives also varied by class: 20% for Br, 37% for Cl, 75% for P, and >99% for all other classes. The structure proposal of a previously reported halogenated compound was revisited. The results underline the utility of GC-SQDIA experiments that provide information on both the (quasi)molecular ions and its dissociation products for a more confident structural assignment.


In this paper, we present a new digit-serial hybrid adder. The adder can be pipelined to the bit-level and is, therefore, well suited for high-speed applications. The main advantage of the proposed adder is that it can be implemented with few pipelining stages. We compare speed, area, and power consumption for the proposed adder with a digit-serial carry-look-ahead adder and a digit-serial Ladner-Fisher adder. The results show that the delay of the digit-serial hybrid adder is lower than the others studied in this paper for digit-sizes up to d=12. For these digit-sizes the digit-serial hybrid adder has on average 17% smaller critical path than the digit-serial carry-look-ahead adder and a 21% smaller critical path that the digit-serial Ladner-Fisher adder.


Mapping information collected at the level of individual base stations onto the geographical space is a required operation for many works relying on mobile network metadata. The common practice is to represent base station coverage as Voronoi cells, and assume that users are uniformly distributed therein. In this paper, we leverage a large-scale dataset of realistic spatial association probabilities to over 5,000 operational base stations, and quantify the substantial problems of such a simplistic mapping approach. To address the limitations of legacy Voronoi representations, we develop VoronoiBoost, a data-driven model that scales Voronoi cells to match the probabilistic distribution of users associated to each base station. VoronoiBoost relies on the same input as traditional Voronoi decompositions, but provides a richer and more accurate rendering of where users are located: hence, it can be readily used by researchers to substantially improve the spatial representation of mobile network metadata. Our experiments demonstrate that VoronoiBoost improves the quality of mapping by 44% on average over standard Voronoi cells. We also showcase the utility of our model in a practical Edge network planning use case, where the information produced by VoronoiBoost drives a deployment up to 28% more accurate than that obtained with Voronoi cells.


Aptamers are promising in cancer diagnosis and therapy, but their poor affinity under physiological conditions is a challenge. In view of the acidic microenvironment of solid tumors, we herein developed an extracellular pH-manipulated multivalent approach to exclusively improve the affinity to target cells at physiological temperature. Specifically, an aptamer based DNA monomer (AptDM) with split i-motif fragments overhanging was rationally designed, it possessed pH-responsiveness and doxorubicin loading capacity. At neutral pH, AptDMs existed as well dispersed small units, showing weakly undesired binding and internalization. In acidic extracellular conditions, AptDMs tended to crosslink of each other into multivalent DNA assemblies (MDAs) via formation of an intermolecular i-motif structure. Due to the multivalent effect, the resulting MDAs showed greatly enhanced affinity (Kd = 9.96 ± 1.06 nM) and stable binding ability at 37 °C, thus allowing highly sensitive diagnosis, efficient drug delivery, and improved inhibition to target tumor cells, but decreased cytotoxicity to nontarget cells. It is believed that this multivalent approach may boost the development of novel aptamer functionalized nanodevices for clinical validation.


End-user computing is part of many occupations. The most requested end-user computing skills are experience with word-processing and spreadsheet applications. Often an employee's skill level may not be good enough to be deemed effective. Frequently this occurs because employers expect that employees will have the requisite skill level without formally assessing this. This paper presents a study involving the testing of people who, in their jobs, use word-processing and spreadsheet software. Two instruments were created to assess skill in common work place computing tasks. The results showed that the majority of participants could only manage very basic spreadsheet tasks, even though the use of spreadsheets was part of their employment. Results for word-processing skill was more positive, with most participants completing all of the basic and some moderately advanced tasks. These results confirm that end-user computer skill, while required, is not at a level that could be deemed proficient.


Data poisoning attacks aim at manipulating model behaviors through distorting training data. Previously, an aggregation-based certified defense, Deep Partition Aggregation (DPA), was proposed to mitigate this threat. DPA predicts through an aggregation of base classifiers trained on disjoint subsets of data, thus restricting its sensitivity to dataset distortions. In this work, we propose an improved certified defense against general poisoning attacks, namely Finite Aggregation. In contrast to DPA, which directly splits the training set into disjoint subsets, our method first splits the training set into smaller disjoint subsets and then combines duplicates of them to build larger (but not disjoint) subsets for training base classifiers. This reduces the worst-case impacts of poison samples and thus improves certified robustness bounds. In addition, we offer an alternative view of our method, bridging the designs of deterministic and stochastic aggregation-based certified defenses. Empirically, our proposed Finite Aggregation consistently improves certificates on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and GTSRB, boosting certified fractions by up to 3.05%, 3.87% and 4.77%, respectively, while keeping the same clean accuracies as DPA's, effectively establishing a new state of the art in (pointwise) certified robustness against data poisoning.


Abstract: By measuring the physical dimensions of wounds, clinicians receive feedback about the success of a selected treatment approach. This chapter reviews existing wound measurement techniques and highlights underlying principles and difficulties. As an example the performance of a new hand-held, non-contact, wound measurement device is analysed. The colour of a wound provides important clues about its status to the clinician. It can be used to assess the distribution of tissue types and potentially detect the onset of infection at an early stage. The underlying fundamentals of colour measurements by digital cameras are outlined and an example classification system is presented.


Traditional Wheelchairs though have certain limitations with the flexibility, heavy weight of the chair and limited functions. Tremendous developments have been made in the field of wheelchair technology. However, even these significant developments couldn"t aid the quadriplegics to navigate wheelchair independently. Medical devices designed to help the Paraplegic and Quadriplegic patients are very complicated, rarely available and expensive. We aim at designing a simple cost effective automatic wheelchair using MEMS technology for quadriplegics with head and neck mobility. The control system translates the position of the user"s head into speed and directional control of the wheelchair. The system is divided into two main units: MEMS Sensor and programmed PIC Controller. The MEMS sensor senses the change in direction of head and accordingly the signal is given to microcontroller. Depending on the direction of the Acceleration, microcontroller controls the wheel chair directions like LEFT, RIGHT, FRONT, and BACK with the aid of DC motors.


Decreasing takt times and frequently changing customer demands and customized products are the challenges of modern companies. To achieve these targets topics like increasing flexibility, decreasing the lead time and decreasing the lot size are just some of the measures companies work on to meet the customer demand. To be able to realize these topics, it is compulsory to have lean and working manufacturing processes. But the value stream is not ending in the manufacturing area. In the last step before the delivery, all the manufactured and bought components have to be assembled together.Due to the Toyota Production System and further methods, which came from Japan, the main focus of a lot of companies and research has been to make the production as lean as possible, generate a continuous flow of products and eliminate waste. Very often the optimi-zations, which were performed in the previous stages, caused a bottleneck transfer to the assembly department, which has not been focused on that much. But especially this sector is important to finally grant the demanded customer quality.Due to this fact, this master thesis will mainly focus on finding an appropriate assembly sys-tem; analyze the value streams during assembling, eliminate waste and decouple the sub-assembly stock from the assembly line to have a clear separation between assembly and logistics. The main target is to generate a lean assembly line, which can feed the high prod-uct variability and increasing customer demands for the future. Therefore topics like One-Piece-Flow, Kanban, decreasing Work in Progress (WIP) and Chaku-Chaku lines are just starting points to generate a future oriented assembly system.


The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) of ARPANET is one of the most popular transport level communication protocols in use today. Originally designed to handle unreliable and hostile subnets in a long-haul network TCP has been adopted by many local area networks (LAN) as well. It is, for example, available in 4.2 BSD UNIX for interface to Ethernet and several other LAN technologies. This is convenient but not desirable from a performance standpoint since the control structure is far more complex than is necessary for LANs. This paper describes what we learned in measuring and tuning the performance of TCP in transferring large files between two hosts of different speeds over the Ethernet. Models are presented which allow the optimal buffer size and the flow control parameter to be determined. Based on observed traffic patterns and those reported elsewhere, we formulated guidelines for the design of transport protocols for a single LAN environment. We then present a new, much simpler LAN transport level protocol which replaces TCP with significant improvement in network throughput. Internet packets will use the full TCP. This is done at the gateway. Since the majority of the packets in a LAN are for local usage, this scheme improves the overall network throughput rate as well as the mean packet delay time.


An abnormally odd and rare occurrence of a basaltic body has been discovered in the middle of the Gercus Formation within the large, double-plunging NW-SE trending Bekhair Anticline to the north of Duhok city, northern Iraq. This is the first discovery of such a volcanic body within the widely exposed Gercus Formation in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and western Iran. This volcanic body, named by the authors the Gercus Basalt, has a long tabular/lenticular shape with a total length of ~4.5 km and a thickness ranging between 1 to 16 m. It is exposed on both limbs of the anticline and has a conformable relation with the terrigenous beds of the Gercus Formation. The basalt is greenish to grayish black in color, vesicular, amygdaloidal and porphyritic in texture, and consists of feldspar (Ab 85 An 2 Or 13 ), pyroxene (Wo 49 En 40 Fs 11 ), olivine (Fo 87.2 -Fa 12.6 -Tp 0.2 ), and their alteration products. Postemplacement hydrothermal fluids resulted in pervasive alteration of the Gercus Basalt and introduction of copper mineralization filling joints, fractures, and adjacent vesicles. The alteration processes are dominated by calcitization, zeolitization, serpentinization, chloritization, silicification, iddingsitization, and copper mineralization. Seventeen basalts have been analyzed for 63 major and trace elements including REEs and PGEs. The Gercus Basalt has very similar geochemical compositions to that of OIB. Excluding Cr, Co, Ni, and PGEs, it is enriched in all other analyzed major and trace elements relative to primitive mantle. The chondrite-normalized distribution of REEs shows a smooth pattern, high La/Yb (N) ratio of 23, and LREE enrichment relative to HREE, indicating alkaline magmatic origin. The studied rocks are basanites, alkaline basalts, melanephelinites, and picrites with an OIB-like anorogenic geochemical signature. The Gercus Basalt was derived from amphibole-bearing garnet-lherzolite subcontinental asthenospheric mantle, enriched with silicate metasomatism.


In this paper I address the question: Is social science a science for the purposes of determining admissibility of expert witness testimony? Under the Supreme Court's interpretation of Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the trial court judge can exclude the testimony of an expert witness if it is not the product of valid scientific methodology. The following four "Daubert factors," articulated by the Supreme Court, aid in determining the validity of scientific methodology: (1) testability of the testimony; (2) publication and peer review of the testimony; (3) error rates underlying the testimony; and (4) general acceptance of the method used to derive the testimony. My question of whether social science is a science is equivalent to asking whether social science conforms to the requirements of Daubert. My answer is that social science is a science under Rule 702, but that the "Daubert factors," rooted in natural science principles, are too limiting to apply to social science. As a result, lower courts have been confused and inconsistent in applying the factors to the testimony of social scientists, and especially economists. Some courts have treated the factors as independent; some have attempted to balance; and some have openly ignored the factors. The result is an incoherent set of evidentiary rulings that have affected the substantive law in such areas as Antitrust, Title VII, Intellectual Property, Contract and Torts, and Remedies (especially hedonic damages). Commentators, such as Professors Faigman and Wilson, have added to the confusion by recommending that lower courts be more aggressive in excluding social science testimony for lacking scientific validity. Such commentators, motivated by a desire to exclude syndrome testimony in criminal cases, ignore the implications of such an aggressive reading of Daubert for other substantive areas of the law. Courts and commentators have failed to recognize the natural law context in which the "Daubert factors" were developed. Lower courts and commentators in their application of the four factors have been too methodologically rigid in scrutinizing social science. Although the Court in Daubert did not specifically address social science testimony, the Court did mandate an appeal to the relevant scientific community for clarity on standards of methodological validity. Lower courts have not pursued this mandate and commentators have ignored it in their policy recommendations. After surveying the case law and dissecting the Daubert opinion and the discussion of many commentators, I conclude that an approach that considers the factual and logical foundations for the testimony allows for both flexibility in application and rigorous scrutiny by the trial court judge. This more flexible approach, adopted from the amici brief of the Historians of Science, would apply equally to the natural and social sciences. I demonstrate how this approach would be applied to testimony in the area of Antitrust, Contracts, Intellectual Property, Title VII, and hedonic damages. Although in many instances the results do not change, my approach has the advantage of being consistent and promoting predictable results. My approach is less draconian in the exclusion of experts than perhaps many commentators would find desirable. However, my more flexible approach is less likely to open the courtroom to "junk science" than the Daubert approach as currently applied. I conclude the paper by directly addressing commentators who recommend using Daubert to exclude social science testimony, particularly testimony pertaining to syndromes. I argue that using evidentiary rules to reach such substantive ends, while arguably efficient, is politically illegitimate in the case of syndrome evidence. Furthermore, such a recommendation is not a valid reading of Daubert, which requires scrutiny of method but appeal to the scientific community to understand valid method. Commentators have dubbed the prevalence of "junk science" in the courtroom "Galileo's Revenge." I propose that attempts to use law to redefine science to reach certain substantive ends should candidly be called "Bellarmine Syndrome."


Identifying change-prone modules can enable software developers to take focused preventive actions that can reduce maintenance costs and improve quality. Some researchers observed a correlation between change proneness and structural measures, such as size, coupling, cohesion, and inheritance measures. However, the modules with the highest measurement values were not found to be the most troublesome modules by some of our colleagues in industry, which was confirmed by our previous study of six large-scale industrial products. To obtain additional evidence, we identified and compared high-change modules and modules with the highest measurement values in two large-scale open-source products, Mozilla and OpenOffice, and we characterized the relationship between them. Contrary to common intuition, we found through formal hypothesis testing that the top modules in change-count rankings and the modules with the highest measurement values were different. In addition, we observed that high-change modules had fairly high places in measurement rankings, but not the highest places. The accumulated findings from these two open-source products, together with our previous similar findings for six closed-source products, should provide practitioners with additional guidance in identifying the change-prone modules.


ABSTRACT Dodd–Frank, the financial reform law passed in the United States in response to the 2008 financial crisis, established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal regulator with the sole responsibility of protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. This decision marked the end of a highly politicized reform debate in the US Congress, in which proponents of the new bureau would normally have been considered to be much weaker than its opponents. Paradoxically, an emerging civil society coalition successfully lobbied decision-makers and countered industry attempts to prevent industry capture. What explains the fact that rather weak and peripheral actors prevailed over more resourceful and dominant actors? The goal of this study is to examine and challenge questions of regulatory capture by concentrated industry interests in the reform debates in response to the credit crisis which originated in the US in 2007. The analysis suggests that for weak actors to prevail in policy conflicts over established, resource-rich opponents, they must undertake broad coalition building among themselves and with influential elite allies outside and inside of Congress who share the same policy goals.


by Hagar Salamon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 157 pp. $17.95.The discovery of co-religionists in Ethiopia aroused latent racial tensions in world Jewry and sparked a major discourse regarding the identity of Ethiopian Jews. Significantly, the proclamation of the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel that the group was descended from the lost tribe of Dan linked the Beta Israel to the Jewish people in a way that did not challenge the underlying presumption of Jewish common descent. When Jewish religious authorities were debating the issue of admitting the Falashas to Israel, they asked, Are the Falashas real Jews? But the real question according to Hagar Salamon should be: What did it mean to be a Jew in Christian Ethiopia, and particularly, what were the cultural manifestations and organizing principles that governed Beta Israel's experience? The drama of their position as a marginal group in Christian Ethiopia was altered into an internal Jewish drama when they encountered the Jewish world outside Ethiopia. However, for the Beta Israel, who were for a long period cut off from other Jewish communities, the question of Jewish identity was governed by the dynamic concept of transformation and was, as this book demonstrates, profoundly related to Christianity.Salamon, a lecturer in Jewish Studies and Folklore at the Hebrew University, conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 members of the group who migrated to Israel from various regions of Ethiopia. In presenting their perspective she proffers a system of opposing categories claiming they are fundamental to the economic and ideological relationships of Jews and Christians in Ethiopia. Underlying her interpretation is the theorem of "the constancy of real objects." Salamon explains, "The notion that a person could be an ordinary man by day and a hyena by night is a concept foreign to the most fundamental categories of modern western thought." On this note she begins her intriguing exploration of the Ethiopian meanings of transformations in the relations between Jews and Christians.The belief in the transformations of people, material, and forms characterized intergroup relations in Ethiopia. Transformation was ubiquitous and emerged as the central idiom in Jewish-Christian relations. Beta Israel were not distinguished from their Christian neighbors by any physical, visual, or linguistic differences and would seem to have belonged to a single group. However, it was precisely on the physical level that contact between Jews and Christians was forbidden, on the grounds that it led to contamination and transferred impurity. Christians also refrained from close contact with Beta Israel out of fear of magical curses. Both groups developed different mechanisms designed to enable routine daily ties between them.Economic ties were based on a hierarchical structure in which firm cooperation existed in agriculture and livestock tending as well as in crafts in which Jews specialized. To explain the nature of work relations between the groups, Salamon's informants resorted to a language replete with contrasts and transformations. The land, the main source of livelihood for both groups, belonged to the Christians, and Beta Israel worked it as tenants. The inequality and unfairness of the situation was apparent also in the appellations Christians gave to Jews. Jewish claims to ancient roots in Ethiopia were incompatible with the Christian denial of their right to own land. Christian attempts to justify their ownership indicated awareness that the Jews once owned lands in Ethiopia and potentially might do so again.The specialized crafts practiced by Beta Israel were highly charged with transformative tensions. Men worked as smiths and weavers, while women made pottery; both crafts involved the mutation of material forms through the use of fire. Christians were ambivalent towards these occupations. They considered the craftsmen inferior but had great need for their products: clay utensils, plows, knives and weapons. …


The observation that convergence of real sequences may be defined in terms of limits inferior and limits superior as by means of neighbourhoods in the Euclidean topology leads to the question: for which lattices does order convergence coincide with convergence in the order topology? This problem has been attacked by D. C. Kent [10], A. Gingras [7] and others. We hope to present a satisfactory solution in this paper. Although there are known several characterizations of lattices, with topological order convergence (cf. Propositions 1, 2), an evaluation of these criteria already requires some knowledge of the order topology of the given lattice. In the present paper, we establish a purely lattice-theoretical description of those lattices for which order convergence is not only topological, but moreover, the lattice operations are continuous. Henceforth, such lattices will be referred to as order-topological lattices. All convergence statements will be formulated in terms of filters rather than nets. For an introduction to convergence functions, the reader may consult D. C. Kents's paper [9].


Plant growth regulators like naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) positively affect the growth and yield of crop plants. An experiment was conducted to check the foliar application of NAA on growth and yield components of cotton variety Bt.121 under field condition at research area of agriculture farm near Cholistan Institute of Desert Studies (CIDS), The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The experiment was comprised of foliar application of NAA (1%) viz. T0 (control), T1 (One spray of NAA), T2 (Two sprays of NAA), T3 (Three sprays of NAA), T4 (Four sprays of NAA). The first foliar spray was applied at 45 days after sowing (DAS) and later on it was continued with 15 days interval with skilled labour by hand pump sprayer. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design and each treatment was replicated three times. Data recorded on growth, chlorophyll contents, yield and yield components showed a significant increase with the application of NAA. Furthermore, earliness index, mean maturity date and production rate index were also influenced with foliar application of NAA. On the basis of growth and yield parameters it can be concluded that four spray of NAA (1%) can be applied commercially under field conditions.


The case study of United States shows that global economic processes significantly influence the location of manufacturing. Analysis of multidimensional data covering 1860-2010 shows several stylized facts. Intensity of U.S. involvement in global economy by set of indicators is characterized by peaks in gold standard era (1870-1914) and under floating exchange rates (1970-2000s). Complex calculations show that spatial polarization of U.S. manufacturing declined in 1860-1890, rocketed by 1914, stabilized until 1940, then began to decline rapidly, and since 1980s has slightly grown again. Comparison of two datasets shows that increasing intensity of U.S. involvement in global economy leads with a certain time lag to the growth of spatial polarization. The less is interregional inequality in U.S. and the more integrated are national markets for goods and factors of production, the smaller are interregional shifts of manufacturing under changing global economic conditions. Growing opportunities of location decisions for U.S. companies in other countries leads to spatial polarization due to uneven efficiency in different industries and regions. The second group of stylized facts is the shift of U.S. manufacturing in last 50 years from cores of largest cities to small and medium MSAs. However, high-tech industries face the opposite trend. Simultaneously, level of agglomeration has been growing since mid-1980s. Rising international competition enhances selection of enterprises as TNCs optimize their operations globally and, because of strong link between productivity of an individual firm and concentration around its location, promotes agglomeration. Among components of agglomeration effect in industry, exchange of knowledge is the most important at county and postcode level, common pool of labor ? at MSA level, common pool of suppliers ? at the level of regions. Growing importance of innovations and their high concentration lead to the increasing level of agglomeration of U.S. manufacturing, reinforcing importance of local clusters and MSAs in comparison with industrial regions. Highly localized agglomeration effect in fast-growing sector of business services and high global demand for them lead to displacement of manufacturing from cores of large MSAs. Probably, in other large countries relationship of location of manufacturing and country's participation in global economy is close to American trends, taking into account level of economic development.


This chapter recounts the collaborative response of four cultural heritage institutions located in two cities flooded by two different rivers – the Iowa River, which divides the University of Iowa and the Cedar River, which runs through the city of Cedar Rapids. The author sets the stage by providing extracts from a blog written at the time of the flooding events and reflects on the differences between the floods and the responses. She details the way in which four institutions— the University of Iowa Libraries, the Johnson County Historical Society, the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, and the African American Museum of Iowa—collaborated to share political clout, supplies, disaster recovery services, and expertise. Inter-institutional cooperation minimized damage to collections and reduced the time needed to become operational again. The chapter concludes with observations on managing disasters, salvaging collections, working with a conservation lab and disaster recovery company, managing volunteers and the press, and maintaining continuity of operation.


Affect is often expressed via non-verbal body language such as actions/gestures, which are vital indicators for human behaviors. Recent studies on recognition of fine-grained actions/gestures in monocular images have mainly focused on modeling spatial configuration of body parts representing body pose, human-objects interactions and variations in local appearance. The results show that this is a brittle approach since it relies on accurate body parts/objects detection. In this work, we argue that there exist local discriminative semantic regions, whose "informativeness" can be evaluated by the attention mechanism for inferring fine-grained gestures/actions. To this end, we propose a novel end-to-end regional attention network (RAN), which is a fully convolutional neural network (CNN) to combine multiple contextual regions through attention mechanism, focusing on parts of the images that are most relevant to a given task. Our regions consist of one or more consecutive cells and are adapted from the strategies used in computing HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradient) descriptor. The model is extensively evaluated on ten datasets belonging to 3 different scenarios: 1) head pose recognition, 2) drivers state recognition, and 3) human action and facial expression recognition. The proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art by a considerable margin in different metrics.


Demographic change will be one of the major challenges for economic policy in the developed world in the next decades. In this article, we analyze the relationship between age structure and the number of startups. We argue that an individual's decision to start a business is determined by his or her age and, therefore, that a change in a region's age distribution affects the expected number of startups in the region. Using German regional data, we estimate a count-data model and find that the expected number of startups is positively influenced by the fraction of individuals of working age—20–64 years old. A more detailed analysis of the working-age distribution suggests that startups in knowledge-based (high-tech) manufacturing industries are affected by changes in this distribution whereas firms in other industries are not. In particular, increases in the fraction of individuals in the 20–30 age range and individuals in the 40–50 age range have a positive effect on the number of high-tech startups.


With the Paris Agreement and most of its detailed rulebook now finalized, countries and subnational actors face the challenge of translating climate targets and strategies into action and determining how to finance these actions. Through the Pilot Auction Facility for Methane and Climate Change Mitigation (PAF), the World Bank developed an innovative financial mechanism – climate auctions – which stimulates private investment in projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Climate auctions offer price guarantees to companies that can deliver eligible climate results in the future. These price guarantees are allocated through a transparent, efficient auctioning process, which maximizes the climate impact of scarce public funds. In the near-term, countries can utilize climate auctions to spur significant investments in low-carbon activities and mobilize finance at the scale and pace necessary to achieve their national climate targets, laying the groundwork for longer-term carbon pricing and greater climate ambition. This policy brief is intended to inform policymakers and public funders about why climate auctions are an effective tool for achieving climate outcomes, focusing on how policymakers can utilize auctions to accelerate NDC implementation and raise climate ambition. It also outlines how climate auctions work and where they are most effective. The policy brief was produced by staff of the World Bank with external contributions from the Rocky Mountain Institute.


ABSTRACT Cancer therapy is undergoing a revolution fueled by clinical data demonstrating that the immune system has significant anti-tumor capability. Although the main focus of this revolution currently rests upon immune checkpoint inhibitors in diseases such as melanoma, lung and bladder cancer, it was actually a therapeutic cancer vaccine in prostate cancer that provided the first data demonstrating that a modern immunotherapy, beyond cytokines, could enhance clinical outcomes. As immunotherapy is poised to take center stage among cancer therapies, the role of cancer vaccines remains somewhat undefined in prostate cancer, though emerging data suggest that vaccines could play a crucial therapeutic role.


The effects of electrodes geometry and temperature on high frequency transmission characteristics are deeply investigated against semiconductor material based electro-optic modulator devices such as aluminum gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) and optical waveguide parameters. Optimization of the electro-optic modulator parameters, where the effective index plays an essential role in the evaluation of the bandwidth structure, is also performed. Therefore, a theoretical analysis of the capacitance, the characteristic impedance and the effective index determined how to increase the bandwidth. The effects of design parameters on the modulating voltage and optical bandwidth are also investigated for different materials based electro-optic modulators by using rigorous transmission modeling techniques.

 Key words: Electro-optic modulator, semiconductor material, optical bandwidth, and high transmission performance


Background Since 1977 a literature has grown describing examples of factitious illness by proxy (FIP). Method The literature in English was searched using MEDLINE and supplemented by a manual search. Extracted data focused on terminology of a spectrum of behaviours, clinical features and psychopathology of perpetrators. Results There has been difficulty with the use of terminology and classification of psychiatric disorders. Conclusions The spectrum of FIP is wide. Suggestions are made for the use of terminology and classification when FIP is identified.


The co-creation of educational services that promote youth resilience and mental health is still scarce. UPRIGHT (Universal Preventive Resilience Intervention Globally implemented in schools to improve and promote mental Health for Teenagers) is a research and intervention program in the Basque Country (Spain), Trentino (Italy), Low Silesia (Poland), Denmark and Reykjavik (Iceland). UPRIGHT implemented a co-creation research process whose results, outcomes and policy implications are presented here. The co-creation had a mixed-methods participatory research design with nine specific objectives linked to paired strategies of inquiry for adolescents, families, teachers and school staff. The overarching objective was to generate a valid and feasible regional adaptation strategy for UPRIGHT intervention model. Participants answered surveys (n = 794) or attended 16 group sessions (n = 217). The results integrate quantitative and qualitative information to propose a regional adaptation strategy that prioritizes resilience skills, adolescents' concerns, and preferred methods for implementation across countries and in each school community. In conclusion, a whole-school resilience program must innovate, include and connect different actors, services and communities, and must incorporate new technologies and activities outside the classroom. A participatory co-creation process is an indispensable step to co-design locally relevant resilience interventions with the involvement of the whole-school community.


The evolutionary significance of protein polymorphisms has long been debated. Exponents of the balanced theory advocate that selection operates to maintain polymorphisms, whereas the neoclassical school argues that most genetic variation is neutral. Some studies have suggested that protein polymorphisms are not neutral, but their significance has been questioned because one cannot eliminate the possibility that linked loci were responsible for the observed differences. Evidence is presented that an enzymatic phenotype can affect carbon flow through a metabolic pathway. Glucose flux differences between lactate dehydrogenase-B phenotypes of Fundulus heteroclitus were reversed by substituting the Ldh-B gene product of one homozygous genotype with that of another.


We assessed impacts on classroom quality and on 5 child language and behavioral outcomes of a 2-year teacher professional-development program for publicly funded prekindergarten and kindergarten in Chile. This cluster-randomized trial included 64 schools (child N = 1,876). The program incorporated workshops and in-classroom coaching. We found moderate to large positive impacts on observed emotional and instructional support as well as classroom organization in prekindergarten classrooms after 1 year of the program. After 2 years of the program, moderate positive impacts were observed on emotional support and classroom organization. No significant program impacts on child outcomes were detected at posttest (1 marginal effect, an increase in a composite of self-regulation and low problem behaviors, was observed). Professional development for preschool teachers in Chile can improve classroom quality. More intensive curricular approaches are needed for these improvements to translate into effects on children.


Modern wake word detection systems usually rely on neural networks for acoustic modeling. Transformers has recently shown superior performance over LSTM and convolutional networks in various sequence modeling tasks with their better temporal modeling power. However it is not clear whether this advantage still holds for short-range temporal modeling like wake word detection. Besides, the vanilla Transformer is not directly applicable to the task due to its non-streaming nature and the quadratic time and space complexity. In this paper we explore the performance of several variants of chunk-wise streaming Transformers tailored for wake word detection in a recently proposed LF-MMI system, including looking-ahead to the next chunk, gradient stopping, different positional embedding methods and adding same-layer dependency between chunks. Our experiments on the Mobvoi wake word dataset demonstrate that our proposed Transformer model outperforms the baseline convolution network by 25% on average in false rejection rate at the same false alarm rate with a comparable model size, while still maintaining linear complexity w.r.t. the sequence length.


The fungus Piriformospora indica promotes growth and seed production of Arabidopsis thaliana plants, very similar to what has been observed for other plant species. Using molecular tools and mutant screens, two leucine-rich repeat proteins, LRR1 and LRR2, were identified which are involved in the recognition of the two symbiotic partners. The mRNA for LRR1 is transiently upregulated in A. thaliana roots co-cultivated with P. indica. Mutants which do not respond to P. indica do not show this upregulation. LRR1 is an atypical receptor kinase located in the plasma membrane. The protein is present in Triton X-100 insoluble plasma membrane microdomains. A mutant with a lesion in another leucine-rich repeat protein, LRR2, also fails to accumulate LRR1 in Triton X-100 insoluble plasma membrane microdomains. The requirement of LRR1 for the symbiotic interaction is unclear, because no functional knock out line is available. Two mutants with lesions in LRR2 were characterized. Both of them fail to respond to P. indica with regard to growth promotion and enhanced seed production. LRR2 appears to be loosely associated with Triton X-100 insoluble plasma membrane microdomains and might be located in the endoplasmatic reticulum. Triton X-100 insoluble plasma membrane microdomains were isolated from A. thaliana and the protein composition of this fraction was determined by mass spectrometry. 34 proteins mainly related to signalling processes are present in this preparation, including seven leucine-rich repeat proteins. Two of them are LRR1 and LRR2. DMI1 is an essential protein for mycorrhiza formation in legumes. Inactivation of the only homologous gene in A. thaliana, a gene that is exclusively expressed in roots does not affect growth promotion and enhanced seed production in A. thaliana in response to P. indica. Thus, the endophytic interaction between P. indica and A. thaliana appears to differ from mycorrhiza in Legumes. The interaction between A. thaliana and P. indica is accompanied by the modification of a plasma membrane-localized MATH protein (Peskan-Berghofer et al. 2004). This protein modification does not occur in an Arabidopsis mutant, which does not respond to P. indica. At present the function of MATH proteins is still unclear; however, the modular organization and domain structure of MATH proteins suggest that they may be involved in protein degradation or protein/peptide cleavage. This homeodomain transcription factor BHL1 responds to the fungus and binds to promoter regions of the P. indica responsive Nia2, SEX1 and 2-nitropropane dioxygenase genes in tobacco (Sherameti et al. 2005). Inactivation of the BHL1 gene in A. thaliana completely abolished the growth promotion and enhanced seed production.


When a pandemic occurs, it can cost fatal damages to human life. Therefore, it is important to understand the dynamics of a global pandemic in order to find a way of prevention. This paper contains an empirical study regarding the dynamics of the current COVID-19 pandemic. We have formulated a dynamic model of COVID-19 pandemic by subdividing the total population into six different classes namely susceptible, asymptomatic, infected, recovered, quarantined, and vaccinated. The basic reproduction number corresponding to our model has been determined. Moreover, sensitivity analysis has been conducted to find the most important parameters which can be crucial in preventing the outbreak. Numerical simulations have been made to visualize the movement of population in different classes and specifically to see the effect of quarantine and vaccination processes. The findings from our model reveal that both vaccination and quarantine are important to curtail the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The present study can be effective in public health sectors for minimizing the burden of any pandemic.


Critics have long debated the place of Daniel Defoe's The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) in the emerging tradition of the English novel, but they have paid considerably less attention to a work Defoe wrote and published immediately afterwards, The Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720). This essay shows how Defoe recasts the opening opposition between Crusoe and his elder brother, a soldier fighting in the confessional conflicts of Europe, by reinventing Crusoe's brother as a royalist Cavalier. The result is an ambitious, intertextual rewriting of seventeenth century history that attacks the twin premises of aristocratic status and Stuart kingship.


The impact of culture on consumer behaviour has been an important research area for decades. The rise of e-commerce prompted the importance of culturally bound differences between websites. Web designers are compelled to adjust website development to the cultural characteristics of the target audience and to reflect local perspectives. The actual target users are often invited to provide valuable feedback on e-commerce applications. However, user tests are extremely costly and time consuming. Tools for automated web design assessment have only recently been introduced and have provoked debate regarding their ability to simulate human interaction. In this article, 40 leading beer-brand-related websites from four different groups (countries) are analysed. The aim of this study is to discover if automated tools predicting user eye activity are able to distinguish between websites from different cultures. The findings indicate that automated tools provide quick and inexpensive results for initial assessment of the website interface, clearly differentiating between websites from different cultural backgrounds, resonating with the current literature.


A supply-regulated phase-locked loop (PLL) employs a split-tuned architecture to decouple the tradeoff between supply-noise rejection performance and power consumption. By placing the regulator in the low-bandwidth coarse loop, the proposed PLL architecture allows us to maximize its bandwidth to suppress the oscillator phase noise with neither the power supply-noise rejection nor the power dissipation of the regulator being affected. A replica-based regulator introduces a low-frequency pole in its supply-noise transfer function and avoids degradation of supply-noise rejection beyond the regulator-loop's dominant pole frequency. The prototype PLL fabricated in a 0.18 mum digital CMOS process operates from 0.5 to 2.5 GHz. At 1.5 GHz, the proposed PLL achieves 1.9 ps long-term rms jitter and a worst case supply-noise sensitivity of -28 dB (0.5 rad/V), an improvement of 20 dB over conventional solutions, while consuming 2.2 mA from a 1.8 V supply.


Indian Aircraft Industry has emerged as one of the rapid growing industrial endeavors in the world, with automation in most of its production and manufacturing areas. Technological advancements have led to this growth and, over the years, competitiveness has made the industry to effi ciently look for avenues and other strategic alliances. In this direction, 3D printing technology has opened many opportunities. This study is focused on explaining the 3D printing technology utilization for production and servicing apart from developing a methodology to outsource various automated technologies to the tier-2/tier-3 companies basing themselves on specifi ed parameters and capabilities by using the 3D printing. 3D printing in manufacturing industry, particularly in aircraft manufacture, has brought in novel prospective along with new challenges posturing new methodologies and innovative approaches to meet the global standards. In this line, the Indian Aircraft Industry has started redistributing its sourcing by outsourcing of certain non-strategic facilities and parts that can be manufactured with the use of 3D printing/ additive manufacturing, computerization and automation to outsiders, aiming at development of capabilities in the partnership industry, to provide the scope for generating high volume at the affi liated industries to pave way for a win-win ground. Already playing a good role in aircraft engine manufacture at Indian aircraft industry, 3D printing is going to play a more vital role in the total aircraft manufacture and avionics in the next few years, if the present scenario is pragmatic in line with the industrial needs. With the advantage of "low or zero" waste, less impact on environment, apart from possibility of local manufacture and just-in-time delivery, with greater specifi cation of the fi nal product, outsourcing of the parts and products for the entire aircraft manufacture will be a reality as per the current research, thriving on improved production volumes of similar parts for various end users. Research further suggests that outsourcing confi guration is looking to invest in the new methods and "timely production" would become an assurance with 3D printing.


We combine a thermoacoustic experiment with a thermoacoustic reduced order model using Bayesian inference to accurately learn the parameters of the model, rendering it predictive. The experiment is a vertical Rijke tube containing an electric heater. The heater drives a base flow via natural convection, and thermoacoustic oscillations via velocity-driven heat release fluctuations. The decay rates and frequencies of these oscillations are measured every few seconds by acoustically forcing the system via a loudspeaker placed at the bottom of the tube. More than 320,000 temperature measurements are used to compute state and parameters of the base flow model using the Ensemble Kalman Filter. A wave-based network model is then used to describe the acoustics inside the tube. We balance momentum and energy at the boundary between two adjacent elements, and model the viscous and thermal dissipation mechanisms in the boundary layer and at the heater and thermocouple locations. Finally, we tune the parameters of two different thermoacoustic models on an experimental dataset that comprises more than 40,000 experiments. This study shows that, with thorough Bayesian inference, a qualitative model can become quantitatively accurate, without overfitting, as long as it contains the most influential physical phenomena.


Money is an essential part of life that cannot be excluded. The importance of money has
become stressful to many people of all ages. The moment a person enters the working
environment, they have to take responsibility over their own finances. Students who are
about to graduate universities are aware of financial problems, but are still reluctant to
take action about their future. There are many financial strategies out there just waiting
for us to grab them. By creating a free online application about money management,
there may be a chance to attract these youngsters to start appreciating their money.
Using a rule based expert system, it is possible to construct an e-financial organizer that
can act as a user's personal financial diary. It may assist the user in financial decision
making, thus disciplining the user whilst unconsciously bringing up the appreciation for
money. This project focuses on the development of an e-Financial Organizer for Young
Adults based on the survey done on the need for this application. The commercialization
of this application may increase the interest of students and young adults to start
educating themselves deeply in the knowledge of personal finance management


Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA), the most common autosomal recessive ataxia, is characterised by progressive ataxia with dysarthria of speech, loss of deep-tendon reflexes, impaired vibratory and proprioceptive sensations and corticospinal weakness with a Babinski's sign. Patients eventually also develop kyphoscoliosis, cardiomyopathy and diabetes mellitus. The disease is a GAA repeat disorder resulting in severely reduced levels of frataxin, with secondary increased sensitivity to oxidative stress. The anti-oxidative drug, idebenone, is effective against FRDA-associated cardiomyopathy. We provide detailed clinical, electrophysiological and biochemical data from 20 genetically confirmed FRDA patients and have analysed the relationship between phenotype, genotype and malondialdehyde (MDA), which is a marker of superoxide formation. We assessed the effects of idebenone biochemically by measuring blood MDA and clinically by serial measurements of the International Cooperative Ataxia Rating Scale (ICARS). The GAA repeat length influenced the age at onset (p <0.001), the severity of ataxia (p = 0.02), the presence of cardiomyopathy (p = 0.04) and of low-frequency hearing loss (p = 0.009). Multilinear regression analysis showed (p = 0.006) that ICARS was dependent on the two variables of disease duration (p = 0.01) and size of the GAA expansion (p = 0.02). We found no correlation to bilateral palpebral ptosis, visual impairment, diabetes mellitus or skeletal deformities, all of which appear to be signs of disease progression rather than severity. We discuss more thoroughly two underrecognised clinical findings: palpebral ptosis and GAA length-dependent low-frequency hearing loss. The average ICARS remained unchanged in 10 patients for whom follow-up on treatment was available (mean 2.9 years), whereas most patients treated with idebenone reported an improvement in dysarthria (63%), hand dexterity (58%) and fatigue (47%) after taking the drug for several weeks or months. Oxidative stress analysis showed an unexpected increase in blood MDA levels in patients on idebenone (p = 0.04), and we discuss the putative underlying mechanism for this result, which could then explain the unique efficacy of idebenone in treating the FRDA-associated cardiomyopathy, as opposed to other antioxidative drugs. Indeed, idebenone is not only a powerful stimulator of complexes II and III of the respiratory chain, but also an inhibitor of complex I activity, then promoting superoxide formation. Our preliminary clinical observations are the first to date supporting an effect of idebenone in delaying neurological worsening. Our MDA results point to the dual effect of idebenone on oxidative stress and to the need for controlled studies to assess its potential toxicity at high doses on the one hand, and to revisit the exact mechanisms underlying the physiopathology of Friedreich's ataxia on the other hand, while recent reports suggest non-oxidative pathophysiology of the disease.


HISTORY
A 72-year-old man sought care for a cognitive deterioration over the past 5 years. There was a documented decline in his performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (30 of 30 in 2016, 23 of 30 in 2021), with mainly episodic memory impairment. A more detailed history revealed a gait problem, paresthesia in both feet, and nocturnal urinary frequency. Clinical examination findings were suggestive of a length-dependent polyneuropathy. In addition, a right-sided Babinski sign was noted. Electromyography and a nerve conduction study corroborated a peripheral axonal sensorimotor neuropathy. MRI of the brain was performed.


A math formula present inside a scientific document is often preceded by its textual description, which is commonly referred to as the context of formula. Annotating context to the formula enriches its semantics, and consequently impacts the retrieval of mathematical contents from scientific documents. Also, with a considerable surety, a context can be assumed to be one of the Noun Phrases (NPs) of the sentence in which formula occurs. However, the presence of several different misleading NPs in the sentence necessitates extraction of an NP, which is more precise to the formula than the rest. Although a fair number of methods are developed for precise context extraction, it can be fascinating to prospect other competent techniques which can further their performances. To this end, this paper discusses implementation of an automated context extraction system, which follows certain heuristics in assigning weights to different candidate NPs, and tune those weights using a development set comprising annotated formulae. The implemented system significantly outperforms nearest noun and sentence–pattern based methods on the ground of F–score.


on closed subspaces F of the Sobolev space W'{G), G an open subset of R, n ^ l . This existence theorem is based upon an extension of the theory of the generalized topological degree for A -proper mappings of Banach spaces introduced in Browder-Petryshyn [8], [9], and, in particular, on an extension of the Borsuk-Ulam theorem to pseudomonotone mappings 2" from a reflexive separable Banach space V to its conjugate space V*. To make a precise statement of our general existence theorem possible, we introduce the following notation: For a given m ^ l , we let £ be the ra-jet of a function u from R to R for some given s â l , i.e. £ = {£«'. \oi\ ^m}y and set


Abstract SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-sense RNA virus responsible for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which continues to cause significant morbidity, mortality and economic strain. SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe respiratory disease and death in humans, highlighting the need for effective antiviral therapies. The RNA synthesis machinery of SARS-CoV-2 is an ideal drug target and consists of non-structural protein 12 (nsp12), which is directly responsible for RNA synthesis, and numerous co-factors involved in RNA proofreading and 5′ capping of viral RNAs. The formation of the 5′ 7-methylguanosine (m7G) cap structure is known to require a guanylyltransferase (GTase) as well as a 5′ triphosphatase and methyltransferases; however, the mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 RNA capping remains poorly understood. Here we find that SARS-CoV-2 nsp12 is involved in viral RNA capping as a GTase, carrying out the addition of a GTP nucleotide to the 5′ end of viral RNA via a 5′ to 5′ triphosphate linkage. We further show that the nsp12 NiRAN (nidovirus RdRp-associated nucleotidyltransferase) domain performs this reaction, and can be inhibited by remdesivir triphosphate, the active form of the antiviral drug remdesivir. These findings improve understanding of coronavirus RNA synthesis and highlight a new target for novel or repurposed antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2.


Flexural wave dispersion in finitely pre-stretched (or pre-compressed) solid and hollow, circular cylinders is investigated with the use of the threedimensional linearized theory of elastic waves in initially stressed bodies. It is assumed that the initial strains in the cylinders are homogeneous and correspond to the uniaxial tension, or compression, along their central axes. The elasticity relations of the cylinders' materials are described by the harmonic potential. The analytical solution of the corresponding field equations is presented and, using these solutions, the dispersion equations for the cases under consideration are obtained. The dispersion equations are solved numerically and based on these solutions, dispersion curves and dispersion diagrams are constructed for various values of the elongation parameter through which the magnitude of the initial strains is determined. The numerical results are obtained for the first and second lowest modes of the solid cylinder and for the first three lowest modes of the hollow cylinder. According to the analyses, in particular, it is established that the finite initial uniaxial stretching, as well the finite initial uniaxial compressing, change the dispersion of the flexural waves in the solid and hollow cylinders not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively.


In most previous work on personalized search algorithms, the results for all queries are personalized in the same manner. However, as we show in this paper, there is a lot of variation across queries in the benefits that can be achieved through personalization. For some queries, everyone who issues the query is looking for the same thing. For other queries, different people want very different results even though they express their need in the same way. We examine variability in user intent using both explicit relevance judgments and large-scale log analysis of user behavior patterns. While variation in user behavior is correlated with variation in explicit relevance judgments the same query, there are many other factors, such as result entropy, result quality, and task that can also affect the variation in behavior. We characterize queries using a variety of features of the query, the results returned for the query, and people's interaction history with the query. Using these features we build predictive models to identify queries that can benefit from personalization.


ABSTRACT In this paper we apply consumer goal theories to an educational context by examining how completion of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) may motivate enrolment in a university course. We contend that individuals who finish a MOOC are more likely to establish a new goal intention for university than those who do not finish. This new goal intention is likely to be prompted by the individual's satisfaction with their MOOC experience as well as a sense of discontent in not having fulfilled their broader educational goals. For those who do set a new goal for university study, we contend that the institute hosting the MOOC is likely to form part of the consideration set used by individuals to narrow down their choice of tertiary provider. Moreover, we argue that this same host institute is likely to be chosen from the consideration set where the MOOC experience is a satisfying one and where a strong link can be established between the pedagogical and delivery approaches used in both the MOOC and university settings. This research has implications for how tertiary institutes create and use MOOCs, and offers insights into how providers can more effectively market higher education courses to those progressing through a MOOC pathway.


From ca. 50 to 20 ka, Summer Lake, Oregon, rose and fell in tune with North Atlantic interstadial and stadial climatic oscillations, respectively. This record exhibits the complete morphology of the North Atlantic millennial-scale climate-change signal including Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations, Heinrich events, and Bond cycles. The phase relationship of these climate change records (high Summer Lake during warm North Atlantic; low during cold) is demonstrated at millennial-scale resolution by the relative positions of the Mono Lake and Laschamp paleomagnetic excursions in these records. These results, in conjunction with comparisons of historical climate records, also presented here, imply a direct temporal connection at the subcentury scale between the North Atlantic and the northwestern Great Basin via an atmospheric teleconnection.


Manufacturing green products is an important way for sustainable development of enterprises. In view of power shortage of green product innovation caused by the income uncertainty, combined with currently domestic conditions, the development of green products is divided into three stages: the innovation stage, the promotion stage and the popularization stage. Based on the game theory and related optimization approaches, how to make decision by manufactures at every stage are analyzed. The results show that, under the certain internal and external conditions, the innovator of the green product has the first-mover advantage, and the competition among peer manufactures is the important force and effective channel to spread the green products, and thus the consumer welfare is also increasing. The conclusions are helpful to guide the formulation and implementation of manufactures' green-product development strategy, as well as the cultivation and development of the consumer market.


My tenure as Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist began relatively recently, but I have already been surprised by the amount of second-guessing I have encountered regarding how manuscripts are accepted for publication. I am taken aback by how many anthropologists mystify the editorial process, worrying that an editor will only accept manuscripts from a certain methodological or theoretical perspective. Of course, I cannot speak for all editors everywhere, but my work as Editor-in-Chief thus far leads me to believe that the key to getting manuscripts accepted for publication does not lie in debates over scientific versus humanistic approaches, the four fields, or academic versus applied work. I have found that the weaknesses in manuscripts that lead reviewers and me to recommend revision or rejection have little to do with ideology or approach. Instead, in my experience, it has everything to do with the basics of analysis and evidence. On the basis of my work thus far as Editor-in-Chief, I can provide five simple tips for getting an article accepted at American Anthropologist (or anywhere). These may seem obvious, but I continue to be astounded by the number of authors who fail to take the issues discussed below into consideration before submitting a manuscript. If you follow these five simple tips, I can assure you that you will greatly increase your chance of a favorable decision at American Anthropologist or any journal—whatever your methodological approaches, theoretical perspectives, or political commitments.


The vertical slice method is generally adopted for calculation of slope stability safety factor. The algebraic expression of the slope stability safety factor Fs is deducted based on the idea of the calculation via the inclined slice method and according to the inclined slice force limit equilibrium conditions. This expression is implicit so that the result can be obtained quickly only through simple iteratives, guaranteeing the convergence. Calculation examples show that the slope stability safety factor Fs derived from this method is very similar with that from conventional methods. which proves that this method is feasible and brings convenience to technical personnel of slope engineering.


The paper presents results of stability analysis of optical modulator including injection laser diode affected by microwave modulating signals. The injection laser is considerably non-linear oscillating system. It was investigated different modes of the system with help of theoretical analysis technique, which is based on oscillation theory. The conversion of deterministic systems to chaotic mode was investigated with help of first recurrence map or Poincaré map. The numerical value of injection laser parameters were calculated. The rate equations of injection laser diode affected by microwave modulating signals are numerical calculated, when the system is close to chaotic mode. Theoretical and experimental results are compared with each other.


Bisphosphonates (BP) are drugs currently administered orally to treat diseases characterised by an excessive bone resorption. Alternative and more efficient delivery routes and more potent compounds are being investigated. Three implantable delivery systems, which allow the controlled release of therapeutic agents from the device core, are examined in this paper. (4- (aminomethyl) benzene) bisphosphonic acid (ABBP) was incorporated on Ca8.8Na0.8(PO4)4.8(CO3)1.2(OH)0.4F1.6 particles by refluxing the powder in a 60 mmol suspension in acetone at 60°C for 5 hours. 4-aminophenyl acetic bisphosphonate monosodium salt (APBP) and 1- H-indole-3-acetic bisphosphonate monosodium (IBP) were loaded on Ca10(PO4)6(OH)1F1 ceramic bodies by stirring the ceramic bodies in 0.04M BP solutions. Injectable acrylic cements based on self-curing formulations of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and vitamin E were loaded with APBP and IBP. The incorporation of ABBP was confirmed by MAS-NMR spectroscopy. Modified powder shows two different phosphorous environments, the first one at 2.91 ppm can be assigned to the apatite base and the second one at 18.0 ppm has to be attributed to the phosphonic group of the ABBP. The IBP addition on ceramic surfaces did not decrease the number of osteoclast colonies and appeared to improve the performance of the HA as a surface for osteoblast culture. A therapeutic dosage of APBP and IBP can be achieved from acrylic cements that showed lack of toxicity and an increased cellular activity and proliferation.


Children with disabilities have frequently participated in various interventions before the efficacy of those practices was scientifically validated. When subsequent scientific evidence failed to support particular practices, those that had already made inroads into the educational arena frequently continued to be used. Given the current emphasis on the use of empirically validated interventions, a review of research on the efficacy of educational interventions is consistent with guidelines from the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004). The research findings regarding three relatively common, yet controversial, practices failed to support the continued use of perceptual motor programs, sensory integration therapy, and tinted lenses. Educators are encouraged to become informed consumers of research and implement evidence-based practices.


This thesis examines a complete design framework for a real-time, autonomous system with specialized VLSI hardware for computing 3-D camera motion. In the proposed architecture, the first step is to determine point correspondences between two images. Two processors, a CCD array edge detector and a mixed analog/digital binary block correlator, are proposed for this task. The report is divided into three parts. Part I covers the algorithmic analysis; part II describes the design and test of a 32$\times$32 CCD edge detector fabricated through MOSIS; and part III compares the design of the mixed analog/digital correlator to a fully digital implementation.


In order to elucidate the significance of the adenoma-carcinoma sequence in gastric carcinogenesis from a genetic point of view, we examined microsatellite alterations (replication error and loss of heterozygosity) on chromosomes 2p (D2S123), 3p (D3S1317), 5q (D5S409), 9p (IFNA), and 13q (D13S153) as well as p53 gene mutations in 13 adenomas and 23 differentiated adenocarcinomas including 8 early carcinomas of the stomach. Replication error was detected in only one of the adenomas (8%, 1/13) at the D5S409 locus and in none at the other loci, and loss of heterozygosity was also an infrequent event found in one adenoma (14%, 1/7 informative cases) at D5S409 and in none at the other loci. A p53 gene mutation was detected in one (8%, 1/13) of the adenomas. Thus, microsatellite alterations and p53 gene mutations are rare events in adenomas. In differentiated adenocarcinomas, replication error was detected in 4 (17%, 4/23) at single or multiple loci, and loss of heterozygosity was observed frequently at D3S1317 (25%, 3/12), D5S409 (67%, 6/9), and IFNA (26%, 5/19). Mutations in the p53 gene were detected in 9 (39%, 9/23) of the differentiated adenocarcinomas. Microsatellite alterations on several chromosomes and mutations in the p53 gene were frequent in differentiated adenocarcinomas, even those at an early stage. These results suggest that the adenoma-carcinoma sequence is relatively rare in gastric carcinogenesis, and that the majority of differentiated adenocarcinomas of the stomach may develop through a de novo pathway.


Pentasomy of the x chromosome is a rare syndrome of unknown incidence and there are few reports in the scientific literature, especially in terms of dental care for patients with this syndrome. The aim of this study was to report the dental care given to an adolescent with pentasomy of the X chromosome. The patient presented a cleft palate, impacted teeth, malocclusion, high caries activity, gingivitis and multiple tooth loss due to caries. Despite the difficulties of carrying out the dental work due to involuntary movements and the initial lack of collaboration from the patient the overall dental care was completed on an outpatient basis. The therapeutic success of the treatment was strongly supported by the significant cooperation and relationship that grew up along the period of the treatment, as well as the desire to have the treatment done by both the patient and her parents.


Bolometers are ideal devices in the search for neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0ν DBD). Enlarging the mass of individual detectors would simplify the construction of a large experiment, but would also decrease the background per unit mass induced by α-emitters located close to the surfaces and background arising from external and internal γ's. We present the very promising results obtained with a 2.13 kg TeO2 crystal. This bolometer, cooled down to a temperature of 10.5 mK in a dilution refrigerator located deep underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratories, represents the largest thermal detector ever operated. The detector exhibited an energy resolution spanning a range from 3.9 keV (at 145 keV) to 7.8 keV (at the 2615 γ-line of 208Tl) FWHM. We discuss the decrease in the background per unit mass that can be achieved increasing the mass of a bolometer.


In Evil, Spirits, and Possession: An Emergentist Theology of the Demonic David Bradnick suggests that the demonic arises from evolutionary processes and manifests as non-personal emergent forces that influence humans to initiate and execute nefarious activities


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of jump training as a complement to weight training on jump performance and muscle strategy during the squat and countermovement jump.

METHOD
Twenty-two male handball players, between the ages of 17 and 24, and in good health, were randomly divided into three groups. Two were trained groups, weight training (WTG) and jump training combined with weight training (CTG), and one was a control group (CG). Maximal isometric force and maximal concentric power were assessed by a supine leg press, squat jump (SJ), counter movement jump (CMJ), and surface EMG was used to determine changes in muscle adaptation before and after the training period.

RESULTS
After 6-wk training programs, the two training groups increased maximal isometric force, maximal concentric power, and squat jump performance. However, only combined training presented a significant increase in height jump performance during the countermovement jump (P < 0.05). EMG analysis (as interpreted through the root mean square values) showed that the SJ was performed similarly before and after the training period for the two training groups. However, during the CMJ, only the CTG group adopted a new technique manifested by a short transition phase together with an increase in knee joint stiffness and knee extensor muscle activation and rectus femoris ratio.

CONCLUSION
It was suggested that the central activities in knee joint during the transition phase, in conjunction with intrinsic muscle contractile properties, play a major role in the regulation of performance during a CMJ. Furthermore, our study suggests that a change in maximal strength and/or explosive strength does not necessarily cause changes in combined movement such as the stretch shortening cycle.


We read the article by Sangiovanni et al 1 reporting that in patients with cirrhosis with a 1–2 cm nodule detected during surveillance, a single, typical contrast pattern imaging technique confidently permits diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), reducing the need for fine needle biopsy (FNB).

However, some concerns arise regarding the authors' conclusions. We report the case of a 70-year-old man with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related cirrhosis. The patient had a history of third hepatic segmental hepatectomy for HCC nodule, 12 years before. He also had undergone left hemicolectomy for colorectal cancer (CRC) and left lung lobectomy for lung metastasis, 6 years later. The patient was actually referred for the assessment of three focal hepatic lesions.

To characterise the focal lesions, contrast-enhanced (CE) spiral abdominal CT and ultrasound (US) scan plus CE-US were planned. All imaging techniques revealed three focal lesions in liver segments IV, VI …


The t(8;21) (q22;q22) chromosomal translocation is one of the most frequent genetic alterations in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which has a need for improved therapeutic strategies. We found PLC-γ1 as one of the highest phosphorylated peptides in t(8;21) AML samples compared to NBM or CN-AML in our previous peptide microarray. PLC-γ1 is known to play a role in cancer progression, however, the impact of PLC-γ1 in AML is currently unknown. Therefore, we aimed to study the functional role of PLC-γ1 by investigating the cellular growth, survival and its underlying mechanism in t(8;21) AML. In this study, PLC-γ1 expression was significantly higher in t(8;21) AML compared to other karyotypes. The PLC-γ1 protein expression was suppressed in AML1-ETO knock down cells indicating that it might induce kasumi-1 cell death. ShRNA-mediated PLC-γ1 knockdown in kasumi-1 cells significantly blocked cell growth, induced apoptosis and cell cycle arrest which was explained by the increased activation of apoptotic related and cell cycle regulatory protein expressions. Gene expression array analysis showed the up-regulation of apoptotic and DNA damage response genes together with the downregulation of cell growth, proliferation and differentiation genes in the PLC-γ1 suppressed kasumi-1 cells, consistent with the observed phenotypic effects. Importantly, PLC-γ1 suppressed kasumi-1 cells showed higher chemosensitivity to the chemotherapeutic drug treatments and lower cell proliferation upon hypoxic stress. Taken together, these in vitro finding strongly support an important role for PLC-γ1 in the survival of t(8;21) AML mimicking kasumi-1 cells and identify PLC-γ1 as a potential therapeutic target for t(8;21) AML treatment.