Introduction  NPO or absence of oral feeding in long term for hospitalized patients and insufficient attention to correct diet of them in hospitals can be seen. Regard to the impact of this issue on nutritional status and growth of children, this study with the aim of identifying the limitations about the nutritional supports of NPO children was done in Mashhad Dr Sheikh children hospital. Materials and Methods This cross-sectional study was carried out in all wards of the Dr Sheikh children hospital with a questionnaire which included the items of nutritional cares for NPO children. Results Results of the present study showed that the total NPO patients during the study were 31.7 percent of the all patients of the hospital. Reasons of NPO in these patients included esophageal atresia, diaphragmatic hernia, abdominal distention, intestinal obstruction, intestinal mal-rotation, imperforated anus, ileus, other surgery procedures, respiratory distress and loss of consciousness level, unclear reasons and carelessness of staff and biopsy. Nearly 88 percent of patients had total parenteral nutrition (TPN) during the NPO time. A total of 88.23 percent of patients received intravenous dextrose water serums during the NPO time and 52 percent of them received less than 10 percent of their energy needs during the NPO time. Conclusion The present study showed that the most important reason of the NPO was surgery in Dr Sheikh children hospital and majority of the NPO patients did not receive sufficient energy during the NPO time. More future researches are needed on the nutrition of NPO children. Â


Mapping snow cover (SC) on glaciers at the end of the ablation period provides a possibility to rapidly obtain a proxy for their equilibrium line altitude (ELA) which in turn is a metric for the mass balance. Satellite determination of glacier snow cover, derived over large regions, can reveal its spatial variability and temporal trends. Accordingly, snow mapping on glaciers has been widely applied using several satellite sensors. However, as glacier ice originates from compressed snow, both have very similar spectral properties and standard methods to map snow struggle to distinguish snow on glaciers. Hence, most studies applied manual delineation of snow extent on glaciers. Here we present an automated tool, named 'ASMAG' (automated snow mapping on glaciers), to map SC on glaciers and derive the related snow line altitude (SLA) for individual glaciers using multi-temporal Landsat satellite imagery and a digital elevation model (DEM). The method has been developed using the example of the Ötztal Alps, where an evaluation of the method is possible using field-based observations of the annual equilibrium line altitude (ELA) and the accumulation area ratio (AAR) measured for three glaciers for more than 30 years. The tool automatically selects a threshold to map snow on glaciers and robustly calculates the SLA based on the frequency distribution of elevation bins with more than 50% SC. The accuracy of the SC mapping was about 90% and the SLA was determined successfully in 80% of all cases with a mean uncertainty of ±19 m. When cloud-free scenes close to the date of the highest snowline are available, a good to very good agreement of SC ratios (SCR)/SLA with field data of AAR/ELA are obtained, otherwise values are systematically higher/lower as useful images were often acquired too early in the summer season. However, glacier specific differences are still well captured. Snow mapping on glaciers is impeded by clouds and their shadows or when fresh snow is covering the glaciers, so that more frequent image acquisitions (as now provided by Sentinel-2) would improve results.


An analysis of beef supply chains revealed that a strategic focus on beef quality was critical to that part of the chain involving producers. Moreover, beef quality was directly related to customer relationship management. Across the industry, there are a diverse set of customers each with different needs. This means that it is difficult for individual producers to develop a successful approach to customer relationship management without developing a product focus on one or two of these customer segments.


Mobile technology has been seen as a major asset in on-site education for a decade, but until recently, many practi- cal issues have reduced the functionality and usability of applications. Different applications use varying approaches and platforms from mobile phones to larger tablet and laptop computers. The paper discusses the present evolution version of the Pulu application developed in LAMB project and how the pedagogic premises of the project have been realised in the technical development process. The client has new functionalities for designing routes and implemen- tation of a system question answering by moving in the environment. The system has also a new web based repository for sharing route data and other information.


Abstract Tetradenia riparia (Hochst.) Codd (Lamiaceae) species is native of South Africa, and in Brazil it was introduced as an exotic ornamental plant and is already well-adapted to the climatic conditions. Its oil presents a complex structure of monoterpenes, sesquiterpepnes and deterpepnes with antimicrobial, antimicrobiana, antinociceptive and acaricide activity against Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. The essential oil from fresh leaves of T. riparia cultivated in the southern region of Brazil, was obtained by hydrodistilation in different seasons of the year (spring, summer, autumn and winter), from september 2011 to august 2012 and was analyzed by GC-MS. The oils were utilized at the concentrations of 2.500, 1.000, 400, 300, 200, 100, 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125 µg/mL and tested on larvae of the third development stage of Aedes aegypti L. (Diptera, Culicidae) mosquito, utilizing the larval immersion test (LIT) for 24 h. The chemical composition showed that inside the class oxygenated sesquiterpenes, the major constituents were 14-Hydroxy-9-epi-caryophyllene and cis-Muurolol-5-en-4-α-ol (19.62; 13.33 % spring); (17.96; 12.07 % summer); (17.60;11.80 % autumn) and (11.73; 4.46% winter), respectively. The fenchone (oxygenated monoterpenes) increased in the summer (13.52 %) and autumn season (10.37 %). Calyculone ( oxygenated diterpene) increased in winter (25.42 %), autumn (19.84 %); summer (11.68 %) and spring (11.61 %). The larvicidal activity was mesure by calculating LD50 using the Probit test. The results showed the seasonality influence on the larvicidal action mainly for the DL50 in autumn, spring and summer which had the greatest activity (78.72; 83.29 and 123.02 µg/mL), respectively; and lowest larvicidal action in the winter (2619.79 µg/mL). Thus, this study confirmed that seasonality interfered in the larvicidal action, making important the season of oil extraction for biological purposes.


OBJECTIVE
Ascorbic acid represents one of the most important antioxidants and neuromodulators, and plays an important role in the cerebral system. In the present study, we investigated the central effect of ascorbic acid on fluid regulation and electrolyte homeostasis.

METHODS
Male Wistar rats were implanted with stainless steel cannulas into the lateral ventricle, and sodiun excretion and urinary volume were measured after intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection of ascorbic acid (200 or 600 nmol/rat). In another set of experiments, vasopressin and oxytocin plasma levels were evaluated 10, 20 and 30 minutes after ascorbic acid i.c.v. injection.

RESULTS
The administration of ascorbic acid to conscious rats resulted in a significant decrease in urinary volume and an increase in the renal excretion of sodium, with a concomitant increase in the plasma levels of vasopressin and oxytocin.

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that ascorbic acid may play a significant role in the central regulation of fluid and electrolyte homeostasis.


A new type of charge restoration is described for use particularly in Ge gamma-ray spectrometers for accelerator and space physics applications. A bipolar pulsed reset technique is applied to these applications for the first time. This technique overcomes the problems introduced by the need to AC couple detectors and the fact that very large energy depositions occur due to charged particles present in substantial fluxes, particularly in space. The circuit is described and experimental results are presented and discussed.


The present study aimed to explore poor people's perceptions of poverty and their own experience of poverty, as well as its definition, causes and possible methods to reduce it. To achieve the study objectives, the researcher used a qualitative methodology. The study consisted of 150 poor people. Purposive sampling was used to select participants from a variety of poor situations (e.g., working poor, cash assistance recipients, unemployed). The researcher used semi-structured individual interviews, content analysis and observation as methods of collecting data and information. This was done in order to give policymakers a deeper, richer and ultimately better understanding of poverty phenomena. The results indicate that the majority of poor people said that they are very poor and that they face a lot of problems, such as socioeconomic and family problems. From the perspective of respondents, government and NGOs are largely ineffective. Poor-quality services seemed to be the norm, whether in assistance or health care. Based on the results of the study, the researcher submitted some recommendations to support the efforts of poverty reduction. More research and study in the area of poverty, especially qualitative, is recommended.


Introduction: Demirjian's dental maturity scores are widely used to assess dental maturity and estimate age. Various authors revised Demirjian's method by adapting Demirjian's stages and proposed new data for age estimation. The present study aimed to assess the age using original and modified Demirjian methods from the reference data and also to correlate dental age with chronological age. Materials and methods: In the target sample of 660 dental radiographs of age 6-16.99 years, seven mandibular permanent teeth (Central incisor I1 to Second molar M2) were assessed and dental age was calculated using four maturity scales and ten methods that use data for individual teeth. The mean difference between dental age (DA) and chronological age (CA) was calculated as well as other measures of accuracy such as mean obsolute difference (MAD), percentage aged to within six months and to within 10% of age. Results: The method that performed best was the dental maturity scale of Willems I et al .(highest percentage of individual aged to within 0.5 years of real age) with MAD of 1 year, followed by Original Demirjian method with MAD of 1.06 years and Willems II method with MAD of 1.1 years. Conclusion: The present study showed that original Demirjian's method was found to be highly accurate followed by Willems I method. Thirdly, Willems II method was better followed by Chaillet et al. method. All the fourteen methods assessed were found to reliable for age estimation in South Indians.


Background: Leprosy is a chronic granulomatous condition mainly affects cooler parts of the body; skin, upper respiratory tract, anterior segment of the eye, superficial portion of peripheral nerves and testes. Redley and Joplin have classified it into five types; Tuberculoid (TT), Borderline Tuberculoid (BT), Mid Borderline (BB), Lepromatous Borderlilne (BL) and Lepromatous (LL). FNAC is simple, rapid and cost effective method over the biopsy to diagnose, classify and monitor leprosy in a patient. The present study was undertaken to evaluate and compare FNAC smears findings with histopathological findings and to classify lesions on RJ scale. Methods: This prospective and descriptive study was done in department of pathology in Sri Venkateshwara institute of medical science, pondicherry, India between June 2007 to June 2010. The patients were examined by the investigator with dermatologist later on slit smear was done. FNAC perform and comparison with biopsy and clinical history was done using SPSS software version 16.0. Results: Total 82 cases were included with age from 8 years to 79 years with mean age 38.16. Male to female ratio was 1.0: 0.7. FNAC shows parity 71.42% for tuberculoid and 58.33% for lepromatous leprosy and histopathology shows parity 100% for tuberculoid and 75% for lepromatous leprosy that indicate FNAC is useful usually for polar or stable group than the unstable or borderline cases. Conclusion: FNAC is a quick and safe for early diagnosis and classify cases into paucibacilary and multibacillary. Exact RJ Scale categorization on FNAC should not be used in isolation but FNAC should be supplemented to the histopathological diagnosis.


Each department at the Polytechnic of Semarang has a Strategic Plan (Plan) and the Operational Plan (RENOP) to manage and monitor the progress of each department. One department is the Department of Electrical Engineering. In pengeleloaan strategic planning and RENOP done through an information system that is equipped with a Dashboard. Dashboard is intended to help the Department of Electrical Engineering in order to more easily in monitoring targets and achievements in strategic planning and RENOP. Dashboard development is done using the waterfall method (waterfall), starting from analysis, design, writing code, testing and maintenance. This application uses a client-server architecture. The system comes with features designed to simplify the user in seeing how the development of each unit. Users will be facilitated in terms of readability of data and given an attractive appearance so that they can easily understand what is in the data. Testing the system using the method of testing each unit function of each feature. The results of this research is an information system that can help the department head, the department secretary, and the chairman of the study program in monitoring the Strategic Plan and RENOP. Meanwhile, user satisfaction test Dashboard Monitoring and Strategic Planning Department of Electrical Engineering RENOP conducted by filling the questionnaire obtained results of 81.2%, which means that the users were satisfied with the application of Strategic Planning and Monitoring Dashboard RENOP Department of Electrical Engineering. Keywords: client-server, dashboard, waterfall


The specialization Advanced Automotive Design, at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology, was launched In 2006. The educational structure of the specialization is such, that students may qualify within each of the faculty's three industrial design programs; Strategic Product Design, Design for Interaction and Integrated Product Design. The specialization provides the automotive context, specific understanding and skills while the programs shape student's in three respective profiles. The reason of existence lies in the automotive stylist's diminishing means to express a unique brand proposition through automotive form. Platforms and technologies, formerly brand owned and specific to its identity and styling, have to be shared among the many. As do car segments and geographical domains, that are invaded by all in order to maximize return on investment. A decrease of true form drivers increases the responsibility of, and the pressure on, styling. In order to substantially contribute to strategy formulation and the implementation thereof in automotive form, styling must reposition itself in the value chain.

To build on this momentum, an elective course 'Strategic Automotive' has been designed to educate the application of management models that embed, aid and facilitate the, by tacit knowledge driven, styling process in corporate business structures. The foundation lies in a research program in which, next to automotive form research, business models are being developed for strategic analysis and design. These models frame and explain automotive styling, i.e. the meaning of form, in terms of brand identity, image and brand portfolio management. The educational challenge lies in the wideness of the topic for an equally diverse range of student profiles. The topic links business thinking, technology understanding, contexts and the meaning of form to one another. It spreads across disciplines as well as across cultures. Student profiles cover the whole product planning and development process as do their respective programs. Furthermore, management models are not merely educated. Course results are expected to inspire redesign and fine-tuning of the models in return. The education result, in the course's fifth edition, is consolidated in a course structure that combines lectures, drawing exercises and student contributions. The lectures comprise the aforementioned topics by placing them in appropriate historical contexts. It is therein that the relationships between mission statements, technology, design processes, politics, economics, tools and form become visible and meaningful. The drawing exercises help to identify and understand a leitmotiv as an expression of product character, its meaning and coherent application. Students present their findings on turn and throughout the course, rather than concurrently at the end. Each presentation is than representative for both the course progress as the student's progress. The research result, with around 60 papers written so far, is a vast collection of case studies in which the models have been applied and tested. The models have been redesigned and applied in the course's next edition each time. A review of the papers suggests both the value of the models as well as the potential of learning environments as a development arena.


This paper describes a lab project in computer communications and networks for senior undergraduate students in computer science and engineering. Given detailed specifications, students are asked to implement a data link layer (DLL) that integrates correctly with other provided layers to obtain a complete working network stack. This lab gives the students the opportunity to learn how to read formal specifications for a network project and write a complete piece of source code. It provides a comprehensive environment for students to write software for a network protocol, test and debug it, and observe its working behavior. In this paper, the authors present a technical description of the project and a discussion of related educational issues.


Ketamine is usually used for murine anesthesia in animal experiments with other anesthetics for its sedation and analgesic effects. However, ketamine was categorized as a narcotic drug in Japan on January 1, 2007. After this act came into effect, a narcotic handling license became necessary for using and possessing ketamine. Pentobarbital sodium, which is also used for laboratory animal experiments as Nembutal, is no longer being manufactured. For these reasons, other anesthetic agents that can be used without a license are needed. In this paper, we examined the use of anesthetics other than ketamine and pentobarbital sodium. A combination anesthetic (M/M/B: 0.3/4/5) was prepared with 0.3 mg/kg of medetomidine, 4.0 mg/kg of midazolam, and 5.0 mg/kg of butorphanol. The anesthetics were administered to male ICR mice by intraperitoneal injection. In order to assess anesthetic depth and duration, we stimulated the mice directly after loss of righting reflexes to recovery of these same reflexes and then recorded four parameters--a tail pinch reflex, a pedal withdrawal reflex in the forelimbs, a pedal withdrawal reflex in the hindlimbs, and corneal reflex. Each parameter was scored, and the anesthetic depth, expressed by the total score, was summed. The surgical anesthesia duration of M/M/B: 0.3/4/5 mg/kg was almost identical to the surgical anesthetic duration with a ketamine and xylazine mixture (80-8 mg/kg). These data suggested that mice can be anesthetized by M/M/B: 0.3/4/5 as an alternate to ketamine. We thus can recommend M/M/B: 0.3/4/5 for murine surgical anesthesia.


This study aims to present and discuss part of the findings of a research carried out at a teaching hospital. It is a qualitative descriptive-exploratory and interventionist study with nine lay caregiver women accompanying hospitalized children with cancer. Data were collected through the focal group technique, organized in the QSR Nvivo software and analyzed through thematic analysis. Results originated during the discussion on participants' health conceptions indicate the need to (re)think the rights of patients' companions and provide instruments to several social, political and institutional stakeholders in order to (re)plan health actions that can be developed during professionals' education and qualification in the context of health care, which can be the focus of discussion within diverse contexts of society.


Makespan minimization in permutation flow-shop scheduling is a well-known hard combinatorial optimization problem. Among the 120 standard benchmark instances proposed by E. Taillard in 1993, 23 have remained unsolved for almost three decades. In this paper, we present our attempts to solve these instances to optimality using parallel Branch-and-Bound tree search on the GPU-accelerated Jean Zay supercomputer. We report the exact solution of 11 previously unsolved problem instances and improved upper bounds for 8 instances. The solution of these problems requires both algorithmic improvements and leveraging the computing power of peta-scale high-performance computing platforms. The challenge consists in efficiently performing parallel depth-first traversal of a highly irregular, fine-grained search tree on distributed systems composed of hundreds of massively parallel accelerator devices and multi-core processors. We present and discuss the design and implementation of our permutation-based B&B and experimentally evaluate its parallel performance on up to 384 V100 GPUs (2 million CUDA cores) and 3840 CPU cores. The optimality proof for the largest solved instance requires about 64 CPU-years of computation -- using 256 GPUs and over 4 million parallel search agents, the traversal of the search tree is completed in 13 hours, exploring 339$\times 10^{12}$ nodes.


This chapter will cover the history and progression of online and blended learning in K-12 education in the United States. Program categories covered include state virtual schools, fully online schools, and blended learning. Key policy issues affecting the development of online and blended learning are also addressed, including online learning requirements, student achievement, and funding.


BACKGROUND
Adherence to a Mediterranean diet may improve longevity, but relevant data are limited.

METHODS
We conducted a population-based, prospective investigation involving 22,043 adults in Greece who completed an extensive, validated, food-frequency questionnaire at base line. Adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet was assessed by a 10-point Mediterranean-diet scale that incorporated the salient characteristics of this diet (range of scores, 0 to 9, with higher scores indicating greater adherence). We used proportional-hazards regression to assess the relation between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and total mortality, as well as mortality due to coronary heart disease and mortality due to cancer, with adjustment for age, sex, body-mass index, physical-activity level, and other potential confounders.

RESULTS
During a median of 44 months of follow-up, there were 275 deaths. A higher degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a reduction in total mortality (adjusted hazard ratio for death associated with a two-point increment in the Mediterranean-diet score, 0.75 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.64 to 0.87]). An inverse association with greater adherence to this diet was evident for both death due to coronary heart disease (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.67 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.47 to 0.94]) and death due to cancer (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.76 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.59 to 0.98]). Associations between individual food groups contributing to the Mediterranean-diet score and total mortality were generally not significant.

CONCLUSIONS
Greater adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet is associated with a significant reduction in total mortality.


Abstract This study investigated the social behaviors of blind cave-adapted crayfish and compared them to the behaviors of sighted crayfish. Because blind cave crayfish display phototactic behavior, presumably mediated by the caudal photoreceptors in the sixth abdominal ganglion, we tested whether light, a disturbance in the crayfish's normal cave environment, altered their normal social behaviors. Observations were made in infrared or dim-white light to quantify social interactions. Exposure to white light reduced the amount of interaction time as compared to infrared light. The results revealed that blind crayfish did not exhibit behaviors usually associated with visual displays and posturing (i.e., the raised meral spread was absent). Same-sized individuals, previously housed in isolated conditions for two weeks, were paired. Both individuals tended to tail flip or move apart immediately after initial antennae contact. This is the same behavior observed within the natural cave environment. After repeated interactions between them, the rapid tail flip behavior became less frequent, while avoidance became an automatic reaction. Ethograms were constructed to determine the differences in the observed behaviors between the aggressive and submissive cave crayfish.


Two barbituric acid derivatives CB-Ph and CB-Me were synthesized, both of which show a strong aggregation induced emission (AIE) effect. It was found that these two compounds show almost the same absorption and emission spectra. As a result, they show the same yellow color in daylight and the same yellow-green color under UV at 365 nm. Upon grinding, CB-Ph exhibits superior mechanochromic fluorescence (MCF) properties, with its fluorescence color from yellow-green (555 nm) to brown (580 nm) and its emission intensity decreases by 93%. However, neither the fluorescence peak wavelength nor the intensity of CB-Me shows observable changes after being ground, indicating no MCF effect. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) data indicate that the CB-Ph powder changes from the crystalline to amorphous state after being ground, whereas CB-Me remains in its crystalline state. Molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) shows that CB-Ph takes a 3D conformation due to three phenyl groups on the periphery of the molecule, which hinders the molecules from aggregating closely and results in the change of the microstructure by external force stimuli. However, CB-Me aggregated more closely due to its better planarity and hydrophobic n-hexane group, which make it difficult to change the microstructure upon being ground. Based on the unique optical properties of CB-Ph and CB-Me, a new data encryption-decryption technology is developed. CB-Ph is used as cryptographic ink due to its excellent MCF effect upon grinding. CB-Me is used as a camouflage material as it shows the same color as CB-Ph in the daylight and under UV-365 nm; furthermore, its colors remain unchanged after being ground.


Background: In the management of cystic fibrosis (CF), rhDNase-I inhalation is widely used to facilitate the removal of the highly viscous and elastic mucus (often called sputum) from the lungs. However, an important group of CF patients does not benefit from rhDNase-I treatment. A study was undertaken to elucidate the reason for the failure of rhDNase-I in these patients and to evaluate strategies to overcome this. Methods: The biochemical properties, physical properties, and degradation by rhDNase-I of sputum obtained from clinical responders and non-responders to rhDNase-I were compared, and the ability of magnesium to reactivate rhDNase-I in DNA solutions and in sputum was investigated. The effect of oral magnesium supplements on magnesium levels in the sputum of patients with CF was also examined. Results: Sputum from clinical responders was extensively degraded in vitro on incubation with rhDNase-I, while sputum from clinical non-responders was not degraded: the median decrease in sputum elasticity in the two groups was 32% and 5%, respectively. Sputum from clinical responders contained significantly higher concentrations of magnesium than sputum from non-responders (2.0 mM v 1.3 mM; p = 0.020). Sputum that could not be degraded by rhDNase-I became degradable after preincubation with magnesium. The effect of magnesium on rhDNase-I activity was mediated through actin. Oral intake of magnesium enhanced the magnesium concentration in the sputum of CF patients. Conclusion: Increasing the magnesium concentration in sputum by, for example, oral magnesium supplements may be a promising new strategy to overcome the failure of rhDNase-I in patients with CF.


Intervention studies This dissertation describes three trials in which the effectiveness of three preventive interventions for youth were tested in the Netherlands. The interventions aim to improve the social and emotional development of children in elementary school (PATHS), reduce alcohol use and mental health problems in students in secondary education (Preventure), and empower adolescent second generation migrants (POWER). The results revealed no effectiveness of the PATHS intervention, which was probably due to the implementation strategy that was tested in this study. Intervention effects of Preventure were also not found regarding the (secondary) mental health outcomes that were examined in this dissertation. The intervention effects of POWER were limited, but greater in groups in which the intervention was implemented with more fidelity. These studies teach us that replication studies are needed within the field of prevention; it cannot be assumed that what works within one context or specific situation will also works in other contexts or situations. Measuring the implementation during a trial has to be seen as equally important as to measuring the actual intervention outcomes. It is the product of these two factors that ultimately produces the intervention effects. The author additionally argues that more effort is needed to search for interventions that not only work in ideal settings, but also still work when implemented on a large scale in real life settings. Conflict of interest This dissertation also searches for an answer to the question how common conflicts of interests in intervention trials are. To what extent are intervention researchers also the developers of the intervention or working for the licensee, and how does this relates to trial outcomes? It was tested whether this effect was mediated either by the cynical view or the high fidelity view. The cynical view implies that researchers with a conflict of interest manipulate the research results, or (un)consciously make choices during the study that increase the chance of finding positive intervention effects. The high fidelity view holds that licensees and program developers, who are also the researchers, implement the intervention in the most faithful manner during the trial, and thereby achieve better trial outcomes. The results reveal that having a conflict of interest is very common in Dutch intervention trials of youth interventions; in 84 percent of the articles at least one of the authors had a conflict of interest. Analyses regarding an international dataset of intervention trials of school-based substance use prevention programs revealed that a conflict of interest was prevalent in 75 percent of the cases. Using meta-regression analyses, it was demonstrated that having a conflict of interest does indeed affect the study outcomes significantly. It could, however, not be confirmed whether the high fidelity or the cynical view moderated this effect. Based on these studies, the author argues that more independent intervention research is needed, as well as more transparency about conflicts of interest in intervention research.


INTRODUCTION
The association of open and endovascular procedures in patients with obstructive disease of the lower limbs gives the opportunity to treat in a single step multi-segmental lesions which were currently treated in the past by more demanding open procedures.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
From January 2003 to May 2009, 52 patients with peripheral occlusive chronic arterial disease of the lower limbs were submitted to combined open and endovascular procedures. In 37 patients (71.2%) a femoro-popliteal/pedidial bypass was carried out after Percutaneous Transublimal Arterio (PTA)/stenting of the iliac/femoral arteries, while in the remaining 15 patients (28.8%) the endovascular procedures were performed following open approach, that consisted in a femoro-popliteal bypass. Iliac stenting interested the common iliac artery in 19 patients (51.3%), the common and external iliac artery in 11 patients (29.7%) and the external artery in 7 (19%). In this same group a fem-pop bypass below knee was carried out in 28 (75.6), a fem-pop above knee in 6 (16.2%), a fem-pop and jump on the posterior tibial in 2 (5.4%) and a superficial femoral-pedal in the last one (2.8%). In the other group the fem-pop bypass below knee was followed by a PTA of the tibial vessel in 12 cases (80%) and by a stenting in only 3 cases (20%).

RESULTS
Three patient was lost to follow-up. Three (8.1%) iliac stents became occluded and the sudden onset of an acute ischemia of the limb required in all cases an aorto-femoral bypass. The occlusion of tibial stent in 2 patient (13.3%) was no clinical relevant, and the failure of the PTA procedure in other 4 patients with the reocclusion of the tibial arteries was followed by thight amputation. Occlusion of the femoro-popliteal bypass occurred in 9 of 37 patients (24.3%) submitted to iliac stenting and in 4 of 15 (26.6%) patients with PTA of the tibial vessels. The overall patency rate was 69.2%. Limb salvage was 77.5%

CONCLUSIONS
Combination of the open and endovascular procedures to treat lesions of the lower limbs is effective and durable in terms of patency and complication rate. For validation this new approach needs the recruitment of much more patients and prospective protocol studies.


Purpose
This paper aims to present how to use the difference equations for analysis of flyback converter circuit.

Design/methodology/approach
Switching circuits have variable structural topologies. In every switched-mode, they have different dynamics and different equations. First, the exact equivalent circuit of flyback converter, then, set of difference equations are obtained. The flyback converter has a nonlinear structure; however, the presented technique allows the circuit equations to be linear. The transient-state and steady-state analysis of flyback converter, one of popular switching circuits, are carried out by using difference-equations.

Findings
The proposed analysis method does not contain any numerical approximation and the results are in the form of exact solution. Another superiority of the method is that the desired instantaneous values can be obtained directly, the simulation does not need to be started from the beginning. Numerical results agree well with the theoretical results of flyback converter. The simulation results obtained by using the proposed method and Matlab-based results are compared.

Originality/value
This paper contributes a different mathematical background for analysis of switching converters to the literature.


This thesis is based on studies of movements of livestock, on-farm biosecurity and disease awareness among farmers in Sweden; factors which can affect the spread of contagious livestock diseases. The structure of the cattle and pig movements were analysed using data obtained from the Swedish Board of Agriculture. Most movements were within 100 km, however, there were also long distance movements up to 1200 km for cattle and 1000 km for pigs. This supports an initial total standstill in case of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Network analysis was used to investigate the contact patterns. Many of the farms did not sell or buy animals or had only limited trade, whereas some farms had many contacts. The measure 'ingoing infection chain' was constructed to capture indirect movements, some farms with few direct contacts had many indirect contacts and this measure can potentially be very useful for disease control and risk based surveillance. On-farm biosecurity was investigated through a posted questionnaire study to 1498 farmers and response was retrieved from 34% of them. Among farmers declining participation, the major reason was not having livestock. There was large variation in biosecurity routines among farmers. In general farmers with pigs had higher biosecurity compared to farmers with cattle, sheep/goats or mixed species or hobby farmers. Many farmers and visitors did not have sufficient routines to prevent spread of disease and some reported inconsistent routines, indicating a lack of knowledge of how to prevent spread of disease. A need for improvement of onfarm biosecurity was identified. Disease awareness and information retrieval among pig farmers in relation to an outbreak of PRRS in 2007 was investigated using posted questionnaires to 153 farmers. Farmers with large herds were in general aware of the outbreak and how to protect their farm. However, hobby farmers were identified as a group difficult to reach with information in case of an outbreak. Active search for information was associated with distance from the outbreak. The Swedish Animal Health Service, followed by the veterinary authorities, were considered the most important and reliable source of information.


Anti-vaccination views pervade online social media, fueling distrust in scientific expertise and increasing vaccine-hesitant individuals. While previous studies focused on specific countries, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the vaccination discourse worldwide, underpinning the need to tackle low-credible information flows on a global scale to design effective countermeasures. Here, we leverage 316 million vaccine-related Twitter messages in 18 languages, from October 2019 to March 2021, to quantify misinformation flows between users exposed to anti-vaccination (no-vax) content. We find that, during the pandemic, no-vax communities became more central in the country-specific debates and their cross-border connections strengthened, revealing a global Twitter anti-vaccination network. U.S. users are central in this network, while Russian users also become net exporters of misinformation during vaccination roll-out. Interestingly, we find that Twitter's content moderation efforts, and in particular the suspension of users following the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack, had a worldwide impact in reducing misinformation spread about vaccines. These findings may help public health institutions and social media platforms to mitigate the spread of health-related, low-credible information by revealing vulnerable online communities.


Batch-Normalization (BN) layers have become fundamental components in the evermore complex deep neural network architectures. Such models require acceleration processes for deployment on edge devices. However, BN layers add computation bottlenecks due to the sequential operation processing: thus, a key, yet often overlooked component of the acceleration process is BN layers folding. In this paper, we demonstrate that the current BN folding approaches are suboptimal in terms of how many layers can be removed. We therefore provide a necessary and sufficient condition for BN folding and a corresponding optimal algorithm. The proposed approach systematically outperforms existing baselines and allows to dramatically reduce the inference time of deep neural networks.


A new potent, blood–brain barrier permeable γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) uptake blocker, 1-[2-[bis[4-(trifluoromethyl)-phenyl]methoxy]ethyl]-1,2,5,6-tetrahydro-3-pyridinecarboxylic acid (CI-966) was administered systemically by i.p. injection (5 mg/kg) in Sprague–Dawley rats under urethane anaesthesia. Twenty to thirty minutes after injection there was a highly variable, but overall significant, enhancement of the inhibition of hippocampal population spikes by GABA applied by microiontophoresis in the CA1 region. Like the effect of nipecotic acid (applied locally by iontophoresis), the potentiation by CI-966 was clearest when GABA was applied in or near the stratum pyramidale where its action normally is weakest and shows the most pronounced fading. This change in GABA potency is most simply explained by a reduction in GABA uptake.Key words: GABA, muscimol, nipecotic acid, GABA-uptake blocker, epilepsy.


OBJECTIVES
Our objective was to report the baseline characteristics of participants in the Canadian HIV and Aging Cohort Study (CHACS) and present amendments to the initial protocol.

METHODS
CHACS is a multi-centred prospective cohort study that was initially set from 2011 to 2016 and will now continue recruitment until 2024. Four additional years of follow-up have been added, and additional outcomes and covariates will be prospectively collected. Frailty will be assessed using a modified version of the Fried's frailty phenotype. The four interrelated aspects of gender-gender roles, gender identity, gender relationships, and institutionalized gender-will be measured using the GENESIS-PRAXY questionnaire. Diet will be assessed using a validated, web-based, self-administered food frequency questionnaire.

RESULTS
A total of 1049 participants (77% people living with HIV) were recruited between September 2011 and September 2019. Median age at baseline was 54 years (interquartile range 50-61). Most participants were male (84%) and white (83%). Compared with participants without HIV, those with HIV were more likely to be male; to report lower education levels and incomes; to be more sedentary; to use tobacco, recreational, and prescription drugs; to report a personal history of cardiovascular diseases; and to be frail.

CONCLUSIONS
The new assessments added to the CHACS protocol will allow for an even more detailed portrait of the pathways leading to accentuated aging for people living with HIV. Participants in the CHACS cohort display important differences in socio-economic and cardiovascular risk factors according to HIV serostatus. These imbalances must be taken into account for all further inferential analyses.


The purpose of the work is to investigate the problems associated with utilization of purified fly ash (PFA) as filler in polymer. The goal is to expand the application field of fly ash. The wet-collected fly ash used in this study was sampled from Huaneng Dezhou Power Plant. Preparation of PFA and composite fly ash (CFA) with nano-structured surface was described in detail. Experimental results show that CFA with rough surface and high whiteness-value had successfully been prepared in Ca(OH)2-H2O-CO2 system. The specific surface area of CFA was thrice or above higher than that of PFA with 2.86 m2·g-1. The whiteness-value of CFA was increased to the range from 63.67 to 73.13 which is more double than that of PFA with 33.54. Filling tests show that the mechanical properties of CFA/PE(polyethylene) composites are superior to these of PFA/PE composites at the same filling ratio of 30/100. This means that change of CFA surface morphology increases contacting opportunities between CFA and polymer matrix and improve the matching state between them when CFA is blended with PE. The results show that CFA as filler appears to have good application, and yet, little serious research has been conducted in the field.


Poor childhood family conditions have a long-term effect on adult mental health, but the mechanisms behind this association are unclear. Our aim was to study the pathways from problematic family relationships in adolescence to midlife psychological distress via disadvantages in early adulthood. Participants of a Finnish cohort study at the age of 16 years old in 1983 were followed up at ages 22, 32 and 42 years old (N = 1334). Problems in family relationships were measured with poor relationship with mother and father, lack of parental support in adolescent's individuation process and poor home atmosphere, and mental health was assessed using Kessler's Psychological Distress Scale (K10). We analyzed the indirect effects of adolescent family relations on mental health at age 42 years old via various disadvantages (somatic and psychological symptoms, relationship/marital status, low education/unemployment and heavy drinking) at ages 22 and 32 years old. Problematic adolescent family relationships were associated with midlife psychological distress in women (0.19; 95% CI 0.11, 0.26) and men (0.13; 95% CI 0.04, 0.21). However, after adjustment for adolescent psychological symptoms, the association was only significant for women (0.12; 95% CI 0.04, 0.20). Poor family relationships were associated with various disadvantages in early adulthood. The association from poor family relationships (16 years old) to psychological distress (42 years old) was in part mediated via psychological symptoms in women (0.03; 95% CI 0.01, 0.04) and men (0.02; 95% CI 0.00, 0.04) and in women also via heavy drinking in early adulthood (0.02; 95% CI 0.00, 0.03). Adolescent family relationships have a role in determining adult mental health. Targeted support addressing psychological well-being and hazardous drinking for adolescents with problematic family relationships might prevent disadvantages in early adulthood, and further prevent poor midlife mental health.


The coexistent phenomenon of deformed and transformed adiabatic shear bands (ASBs) is analyzed using Johnson-Cook model and gradient-dependent plasticity for heterogeneous ductile metal material. The size of deformed ASB is described by the internal length reflecting the heterogeneity of material. Microstructural effect leads to a nonuniform distribution of temperature rise in deformed ASB. When the peak temperature in deformed ASB exceeds the transformation temperature, a transformed ASB appears at the center of deformed ASB. With a decrease of flow shear stress, the width of transformed ASB increases until its upper bound, i.e., the size of deformed ASB, is reached. The effects of initial temperature and strain rate on the occurrence of transformation, evolution of the thickness of transformed ASB, distributions of local temperature and plastic shear deformation in ASB are investigated. Lower initial temperature results in higher peak shear stress, later occurrence of shear strain localization, lower shear stress when transformation occurs, later occurrence of transformation, thinner transformed ASB, lower peak temperature in ASB, and lower value of local plastic shear deformation in the boundaries of transformed ASB. At higher strain rates, the transformed ASB is wider; the peak temperature in ASB is higher; the value of local plastic shear deformation in the boundaries of transformed ASB is higher; the flow shear stress that corresponds to transformation is higher; earlier occurrence of transformation and higher peak shear stress will be expected.


This works aims to analyze and control one of the more complex elements in the brewing process: a vessel called Lauter Tun. The objective of this stage is to separate the spent grain from the wort. The use of neural networks is described to implement a control system for this important stage in brewing. This process presents a great interrelation of variables and it is defined by nonlinear and time variant differential equations. A neural network model was used to represent the real plant. This model was used to test the performance of the neural network controller developed. The controller was trained using the information obtained from correct function controlled by an expert operator and the response of a digital PID controller tuned for this application. The paper shows the results obtained for this process using neural networks to model identification and plant control.


SUMMARY: The purpose of this study was to study, observe, and clarify the dynamics of physical growth, as well as changes of some morphometrical and physiological variables of Kosovo population. 17,894 males from Kosovo between 6 and 51 years of age and older, were measured:. body height, body weight, BMI, systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, heart rate, and VO max were recorded. The measurement data were processed through these descriptive statistical parameters: Mean, Standard-Deviation and the Coefficient of Variation, SD shows the similar dispersion of results between one age and another. CV signifies the reliability of the measurements that were carried out. The curve of body height for individuals between 6 and 17 years of age shows increases, for individuals between 18 and 40 years of age shows stable values, while for indiividuals above 40 years of age indicate a decrease. Body height difference between adults shows that adults between 18 and 30 years old have the higher body height values, compared with the other two groups of tested adults. Body weight for individuals between 6 and 50 years old shows consistent increase of value. In individuals above 51 years of age, body weight decreases rapidly. According to BMI values individuals between 6 and 13 years of age were underweight. Those between 14 and 35 years of age, as well as those above 51 years of age showed normal weight. On the other hand, those between 36 and 50 years of age were slightly overweight. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure values were higher as age increased, however were not above normal values. The best results of HR and VO 2 max were reported in adults between 19 and 27 years of age.


The word "pain" is ambiguous, symbolic and it is understood differently by the patient and by the doctor or physiologist. It describes a kind of sensation evoked by harmful stimuli which is a physiological phenomenon indispensable for protection and also suffering caused by injury or disease. The second component of the phenomenon is usually not recognized--this is the reaction to pain. The primary component is centripetal and ascending to brain centers, the second is centrifugal, descending and they both form the reflex arc. This is the pain or nociceptive reflex. Commonly, when we speak of pain we mean only the centripetal part of the reflex which cannot be objectively assessed in medical practise. This part is blocked by anaesthesia before surgical procedures. The second part is the subject of a separate consideration which begins with psychic reaction to pain and pain tolerance, and suffering depend on it. The motor reaction to pain is more spectacular and possible for recording. Three types of this reaction are discerned: flight, defense and suffering expression. Nociceptive sensation is a physiological receptor-mediated sensation, while pathological pain can derive from receptors as well as from nerves /conduction pain, neuropathic differentiation pain/ or from centres/central pain. The pathological pain has clinical features making possible the recognition of its origin, its mechanism for undertaking of appropriate measures. Neuropathic pain is the one most difficult to treat. The receptor-mediated pain continues as long as the stimulus is active, the neuropathic pain is longer lasting.


Background: hemolysis is a rare finding in patients with Aluminum phosphide (AlP) poisoning. In this report a patient with the AlP poisoning and intravascular hemolysis will be presented. Case Report: The patient was a 25 years old man who ingested three tablets (9gr) of AlP for suicide attempt one hour before admission to poisoning emergency ward of Baharloo hospital in Tehran. He had nausea, vomiting, heartburn, and mild metabolic acidosis on the arrival to the hospital. The patient had no fever, loss of consciousness and respiratory distress. History of specific disease and concomitant use of other drugs was not mentioned. Supportive care was done for the patient. He was icteric and his serum bilirubin was increased and hemoglobin was decreased 24 hour after admission during hospitalization. Laboratory tests were negative for hepatitis and liver, gall bladder and bile duct ultrasound was normal. G6PD (glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase) deficiency was confirmed. The patient was discharged with the good condition after a week. Conclusion: Due to lack of other drug use and the underlying causes for hemolysis in this case, it seems ALP should be added to the etiologies of hemolysis in patients with glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency.


Nowadays, microcontrollers used in critical real-time embedded systems use mostly one core, but are being replaced with more powerful hardware platforms that implement multicore systems. Among the latter, it is possible to identify in the space domain, for instance, the Cobham Gaisler NGMP developed for the European Space Agency (ESA), which is built with a SPARC quad-core processor that has a two-level cache hierarchy. For what concerns automotive and avionics environments, very flexible platforms like the Zynq UltraScale+ EG one has been regarded as a very powerful platform for these high-performance safety-critical systems. In fact, the aforementioned Zynq board implements two multicore clusters, namely an ARM dual-core Cortex R5 and an ARM quad-core Cortex A53, as well as a GPU and an FPGA. Due to the industrial trend towards the deployment of autonomous driving in the automotive domain and unmanned vehicles in the avionics domain, boards with such multicore systems are very promising. The use of multicores brings a concern related to contention (interference) in the access to shared hardware resources, which challenges timing verification needed to prove that all critical real-time tasks will execute by their respective deadlines. In particular, Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) estimates for tasks need to account for the impact in execution time that contention in shared resources may have. While such analysis has been performed on relatively-simple multicores, like the NGMP, it needs to be carried out on the more powerful and complex Zynq UltraScale+ EG platform. In particular, it is required to analyze the different sources of interference for the multicore clusters and how tasks need to be consolidated so that resource sharing is performed efficiently across tasks, thus minimizing the impact on execution time for the most critical real-time tasks. In this Master thesis work, the measurement-based methodology developed at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) to quantify the interference that arises across cores due to contention in shared hardware resources, is ported from the (simple) NGMP platform to each of the computing clusters of the Zynq UltraScale+ EG platform. Such methodology consists in the use of small microbenchmarks that aim at stressing specific shared hardware resources to create very high contention. Hence, this thesis investigates how to produce high contention in the shared hardware resources of the Zynq UltraScale+ EG platform, thus integrating those concepts working on the SPARC V8 instruction set of the NGMP to the ARM v7 and ARM v8 instruction sets of the Zynq platform. This requires porting and adapting microbenchmarks written partly in assembly code, verifying the Performance Monitoring Unit, and analyzing the sources of contention. As final step, guidelines are devised to properly consolidate software to be implemented on the target platform in order to contain as much as possible interference on critical tasks.


ABSTRACT This thesis examines the contemporary aspects of professionalism in teaching in the light of growing central government control over the conditions under which teachers carry out their work in England and Greece. In both countries, major and recent legislation, have brought about fundamental revision in the context in which educational provision evolves. Such changes have resulted in the increase of government control over teachers and questioned whether teachers can exercise any control over their own work. The key to the analysis of the issue of teachers' occupational control is the concept of professionalism. It is the main contention of the study that the conceptualisation of professionalism can be best explained by an examination of the context within which it is embedded. Thus, the primary concern of the study involves the development of a multi-dimensional model which may serve to gain additional understanding of the dynamics involved in the functioning of "professionalism". Subsequently, the model is tested in two different settings: England and Greece, so that common factors may be identified and differences revealed. Chapter I examines the characteristics of professions and the nature of professionalism. Chapter II describes the historically dominant elements that shape professionalism. Chapter III deals with the significance of the evolving nature of the relationship between teachers and the State. Chapter IV is an analysis of factors which set the context within which professionalism functions. It is primarily concerned with the construction of a model representing the ways in which these factors act and interact. Chapter V and VI furnish the contextual information as a means of applying the model to England and Greece respectively. Chapter VII analyses the issues raised in the two case studies and against the rather broader context of the development of education in the European Community, identifies some of their implications. Chapter VIII concludes with the assessment of the major framework conditions which have been used in the study to conceptualise professionalism. Professionalism in teaching is not a monolithic concept, but a dynamic one, changing meaning over time. Its conceptualisation within the context of its interrelated contemporary elements is essential to an understanding of control exercised over teachers' conditions of work.


BACKGROUND
Every health policy jurisdiction is endeavoring to enhance its ability to evaluate drug effectiveness, safety and cost in the real world (pharmacosurveillance).

METHODS
A nominal group consensus conference of stakeholders finalized data items deemed necessary for pharmacosurveillance. Large administrative datasets (LADs), electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic patient registries (PRs), were investigated as sources of this information and for their vulnerability to methodologic bias. Health data privacy legislation and research guidelines were systematically reviewed for their constraint to linked data resource analyses.

RESULTS
More than 129 data items were strongly recommended for routine pharmacosurveillance. LADs had very complete information, but restricted to a small number of required data items. EHRs, especially with e-pharmacy links, offer by far the most complete set of health information domains but data entry completeness is highly variable. Adjustment methods for channeling bias are inadequate to mimic randomized trials. Anonymized, linked data held within a secure academic research environment, poses the least privacy concerns.

CONCLUSIONS
Notwithstanding major technical, methodologic and privacy challenges, individual-level linkage of health data resources poses the best option for pharmacosurveillance today. In future, drug regulators and reimbursement agencies should consider mandatory post-marketing randomized trials.


An in vitro preparation of rabbit cornea was used to compare anatomical specialization and electrophysiological responses of A delta and C fiber sensory afferents which terminate as free nerve endings. Living nerve endings were visualized using epifluorescence microscopy and the vital dye 4-di2-ASP, and response properties were determined using microstimulation and recording of fiber discharge activity. Fiber type was determined based on conduction velocity measurement and preferred stimulus energy (modality) of each fiber. Four modality-specific fiber populations were identified: (1) slowly adapting C fiber cold receptors (conduction velocity of 0.25–1.6 m/sec), (2) C fiber chemosensitive units with mixed phasic and tonic activity (1.1–1.8 m/sec), (3) rapidly adapting mechanosensitive A delta fibers (1.5–2.8 m/sec), and (4) high- threshold mechano/heat (> 350 dyne or > 40 degrees C) phasic A delta afferents (3.5–4.4 m/sec). In addition to these physiological differences, anatomical specialization was also noted. A delta fiber nerve endings were distinguished from those of C fibers by thin, elongated sensory endings that ran parallel to the corneal surface; C fiber endings formed short, branching clusters that ran mostly perpendicular to the surface. The elongated structure of A delta nerve endings was associated with directional selectivity for mechanical stimuli. These results substantiate previous suggestions that free nerve endings can exhibit both structural and functional specialization.


We present results from a model for magnetic flux generation and transport in cool stars and a qualitative comparison of models with observations. The method combines an �-type dynamo at the base of the convection zone, buoyant rise of magnetic flux tubes, and a surface flux transport model. Based on a reference model for the Sun, numerical simulations were carried out for model convection zones of G- and K-type main sequence and subgiant stars. We investigate magnetic cycle properties for stars with different rotation periods, convection zone depths, and dynamo strengths. For a Sun-like star with Prot=9 d, we find that a cyclic dynamo can underly an apparently non-cyclic, 'flat' surface activity, as observed in some stars. For a subgiant K1 star with Prot=2.8 d the long-term activity variations resemble the multi-periodic cycles observed in V711 Tau, owing to high-latitude flux emergence, weak transport effects and stochastic processes of flux emergence.


A field study conducted during the 2001 and 2002 growing seasons investigated the integration of fungicide applications and tillage methods for reducing root health problems in dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) plants by alleviating soil compaction and its potential exacerbation of root disease. Several cultural practices were combined with applications of the strobilurin fungicide azoxystrobin. Soil compaction was created artificially throughout the entire plot area. Six treatments, consisting of four tillage treatments and two combinations of tillage or applications of azoxystrobin, were tested to alleviate the compaction and enhance root health. Tillage treatments included a compacted control with no additional tillage, formation of beds approximately 10 cm above soil surface, zone tillage with an implement using in-row shanks, and both zone tillage and bedding combined. Fungicide treatments utilized the combination of both zone tillage and bedding with fungicide applications, and a fungicide treatment singly. Effects of compaction on plant vigor and disease development and severity were evaluated 67 and 83 days after planting in 2001 and 2002, respectively, by a visual estimation of plot vigor and by destructively sampling and making root and hypocotyl disease ratings on dry bean plants from nonharvest rows. Soil resistance and moisture were measured in plots 80 and 104 days after planting in 2001 and 2002, respectively, to estimate degree of compaction. In both years, Fusarium root rot, caused by Fusarium solani f. sp. phaseoli, was determined to be the main root disease impacting plant health in studies. All measured variables (root disease index, plant vigor ratings, total seed yield, seed size, and soil resistance) were significantly improved by any treatment that included zone tillage prior to planting. No added advantages were observed for decreasing disease or improving root health and plant performance with the use of azoxystrobin or by planting on raised beds. This is the first study to evaluate zone tillage as a method of reducing plant stress and root disease in dry bean plants.


Introduction Best practices exist at the individual and organisational levels to facilitate return to work (RTW) following long-term absence for various health reasons. Yet implementation remains a challenge because of the complex multi-stakeholder context involving different social systems. The question then becomes, 'How can we bridge the gap between research and practice?' Methods A collaborative research project based on a conceptual framework of sustainability science was used. The framework proposes phases and associated methods. Our study first sought to build a common vocabulary to help collaboratively frame a shared problem, using a group consensus technique. To ensure a common understanding of the problem among participants, we conducted a rapid literature review and held discussions with stakeholders on the effects of ethnocultural, gender and ageing factors on the RTW process in a work disability context where medical professionals have deemed workers ready to RTW following diverse health issues. We then used a consensus technique to enable participants to jointly construct possible solutions and establish research priorities regarding implementation of adapted best practices. Results A total of 8 multidisciplinary researchers, 2 postdoctoral students, and 12 stakeholders representing patients, employers, unions, healthcare professionals, and legal and insurance systems participated. A bipartite (researcher/stakeholder) governance structure was put in place to facilitate the process. A tool to promote a common vocabulary was developed collaboratively and comprised 79 terms and definitions. To ensure common understanding of the problem, a summary was developed with the advisory and knowledge transfer committee in the governance structure, and a Web-based capsule was produced. A series of consensus groups identified 8 research priorities. Discussion A collaboration between researchers and stakeholders that is structured by a conceptual framework allows them to jointly identify, in the short term, both the problem and possible activities to bridge the gap between research and practice.


ONE OF THE MOST significant phenomena of our time is the astonishing ballooning of our health effort, all over the world. This expansion was sparked by the success of physicians everywhere in the management and prevention of disease as a result of our increasing scientific knowledge. This has led to a terrifying "population explosion," and it has also aroused a keen desire of people everywhere for the benefits which optimum health may bring them. Another result of all this is the added numbers of nonmedical personnel associated with physicians for the purpose of meeting increased health demands. Among this personnel are scientists of all sorts, who obtain the verifiable information about ourselves and our environment. This basic scientific knowledge is necessary to help physicians meet the rising demands for good health. There are also increasing numbers of specially-trained personnel to aid physicians, both in offices and hospitals, such as clinical


This paper aims to prove that trans-racial adoption can provide a viable and positive alternative to prolonged stays in institutional care for children and young people. This title has been chosen in response to the fact that a black, or minority ethnic child will spend on average up to a year longer than a white child waiting within the care system for a family. "Every Child Matters…Or Do They", essentially asks the question does a white child matter more than a black child, and seeks to analyse local and national policy in relation to this matter. Chapter two of this paper looks at the methodologies used and the reason why I opted to do a literature review. Chapter three of this paper takes an auto-ethnographic focus in the form of a personal narrative and the reasons why this particular topic was of particular importance to me. As I have had two sisters adopted trans-racially from another country when I was younger, the idea of race being a barrier to adoption has always remained a passionate subject for me. Chapters four and five examine the history of trans-racial adoption within the United Kingdom and indeed other countries, whilst also examining the importance of issues such as culture, ethnicity and identity to the trans-racial adoption debate. Chapters six and seven examine the arguments that have been put forward both in support of and in opposition to the practice of placing a child for adoption with a family of different race and ethnicity. Chapter eight highlights the main findings and conclusions of my research.


Particulate organic matter (POM) discharged by rivers and deposited offshore their mouths is generally assumed to record an integrated signal from the watershed and therefore provides an archive of past environmental changes. Yet, in large river systems the riverine POM might be trapped in flood plains and the lower reaches resulting in an inefficient transport of POM particularly from the distal parts of the watershed. Further, the POM likely undergoes degradation during transport from source to sink. The Lena River is one of these large river systems stretching from 53°N to 71°N in central Siberia. The watershed can be broadly divided into two different biomes, taiga in the south and tundra in the northernmost part. The relative contribution of these biomes to the POM load of the river and its discharge to the ocean as well as the changes it is undergoing during transport are not well understood.

Here we present the lignin phenol composition of different grain size fractions (bulk, 2mm-63µm, <63µm) of soil samples taken along a latitudinal transect (63°N to 72°N) as well as in marine surface sediments and two short sediment cores covering the last 120 years offshore the main Lena discharge channels.

The lignin phenol composition of the soil samples (bulk, 2mm-63µm, <63µm) reflects the change in vegetation from south to north with increasing contribution of tundra vegetation. The degree of degradation between the soil sample locations as well as grain size fractions was very heterogeneous and did not show a clear trend. However, the POM seems to be slightly more degraded in the tundra, which is unexpected as the summer period when degradation in the upper thawed part of the soil can take place is shorter in the tundra compared to the southern taiga region.

The marine surface sediments were dominated by gymnosperm-derived POM, particularly close to the river mouth and in the <63µm fraction. Because of the large heterogeneity of organic matter degradation in the soil samples and their grain size fractions, it is not quite clear to which degree the POM gets mineralized within the soils and during transport in the river compared to degradation occurring during cross shelf transport.


ABSTRACT Stalter, R. and Lonard, R.I., 2023. Biological flora of coastal freshwater and brackish marshes: Cladium jamaicense Crantz. Journal of Coastal Research, 39(4), 763–776. Charlotte (North Carolina), ISSN 0749-0208. Cladium jamaicense Crantz, also known as sawgrass, has a broad distributional range from the Atlantic coast of Virginia to Florida, to southern Texas, the Caribbean, and along the Atlantic coast of Mexico to Central America, and to Brazil. Cladium jamaicense typically occurs in oligotrophic sloughs and fresh and brackish marshes where optimal salinity values range from 0 to 3.5 ppt. This species is a long-lived perennial with a highly developed rhizome system with rhizomes up to 20 cm long and 2.5 to 10 mm in diameter. Asexual reproduction is common. Its fibrous root system comprises short dauciform roots characterized by a dense number of long root hairs. Culms are 1.0 to 3.0 m tall. Leaf blades are coarse, flat, or broadly involute; leaf margins and the abaxial midvein have sharp, hacksaw-like teeth. Typha domingensis (cattail) is C. jamaicense's most important competitor, especially in sites that have been enhanced with phosphorus. Restoration of sawgrass marshes requires managing long-term changes in ecosystem functions and hydrological management strategies.


This guide presents resources and tips useful for students in Nursing classes. There is also basic information about places to find statistics, images, and maps.


In this paper, we focus on energy-aware devices able to reduce their energy requirements by adapting their performance. We consider the device to be able to save energy through two main energy-aware primitives, namely, low power idle and power scaling. In such an environment, we propose a novel and original model for accurately representing how the joint usage of the previously cited primitives can impact on both energy consumption and network performance. As shown by the results achieved, the proposed model can be effectively applied in order to design and control energy-aware hardware of next-generation network devices.


Bush's accession to the presidency was in violation to the constitution. In the end he was not elected, but was selected in the supreme court. That was the beginning of the violation of the constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances. Since then the Bush administration has carried these violations farther than any previous one in US history.


SUMMARY: Although previous studies have noted the presence of the bivalve Pinna nobilis Linnaeus, 1758 in Mljet National Park, there is a lack of basic knowledge of this endangered species. The present study was initiated as part of a long-term investigation of P. nobilis density and growth with the aim of gaining a better understanding of this species' population dynamics, as well as evaluating the efficiency of protection measures of P. nobilis in Mljet National Park. Density, population structure, growth of tagged individuals and epibionts on P. nobilis were studied using SCUBA diving in 1998 and 2000 along four transects in Mljet inlets, Adriatic Sea. The density of P. nobilis ranged from 0.20 ind/m 2 on transect MLJ-9 in Malo Jezero in 1998 to 0.02 ind/m2 on transect MLJ-5 in Veliko Jezero in 2000. Individuals measured in 1998 were significantly smaller than those measured in 2000. Growth curves were constructed from data collected by tagging and re-measuring 47 individuals. A decrease in density along some of the transects and the disappearance of 24 tagged individuals in 2000 is suggestive of poaching. The results of the present study indicate recovery of the P. nobilis population in Mljet lakes, but also provide evidence for the illegal removal of this protected species.


Cells nonproductively transformed by a variant of the Snyder-Theilen strain of feline sarcoma virus (FeSV) expressed an 85,000-dalton polyprotein (P85) with associated tyrosine-specific protein kinase activity. We identified within this polyprotein a single tyrosine acceptor site for its enzyme activity. This acceptor site, as well as two serine phosphorylation sites localized with the p12 structural component of Snyder-Theilen FeSv P85, was phosphorylated in cells nonproductively transformed by Snyder-Theilen FeSv. In contrast, infection by Snyder-Theilen FeSV transformation-defective mutants resulted in phosphorylation only of the two serine acceptor sites, indicating phosphorylation of the tyrosine acceptor site to be transformation specific. In addition, we describe in vitro labeling conditions, using unfractionated cell extracts, which resulted in preferential phosphorylation of the single Snyder-Theilen FeSV tyrosine-specific acceptor site.


Children with Smith‐Lemli‐Opitz syndrome (SLOS) are typically reported to have moderate to severe intellectual disability. This study aims to determine whether normal cognitive function is possible in this population and to describe clinical, biochemical and molecular characteristics of children with SLOS and normal intelligent quotient (IQ). The study included children with SLOS who underwent cognitive testing in four centers. All children with at least one IQ composite score above 80 were included in the study. Six girls, three boys with SLOS were found to have normal or low‐normal IQ in a cohort of 145 children with SLOS. Major/multiple organ anomalies and low serum cholesterol levels were uncommon. No correlation with IQ and genotype was evident and no specific developmental profile were observed. Thus, normal or low‐normal cognitive function is possible in SLOS. Further studies are needed to elucidate factors contributing to normal or low‐normal cognitive function in children with SLOS.


Summary

1
The many thousands of potential invasive species pose one of the greatest threats to global biodiversity world-wide. In this study we propose that assemblages of well-known global invasive pest species, irrespective of whether they arise by anthropogenic means, are non-random species groupings that contain hidden predictive information. Such information can assist the identification and prioritization of species that have the potential to pose an invasive threat in regions where they are not normally found.

2
Data comprising the presence and absence of 844 insect pest species recorded over 459 geographical regions world-wide were analysed using a self-organizing map (SOM), a well-known artificial neural network algorithm. The SOM analysis classified the high dimensional data into two-dimensional space such that geographical areas that had similar pest species assemblages were organized as neighbours on a map or grid.

3
The SOM analysis allowed each species to be ranked in terms of its risk of invasion in each area based on the strength of its association with the assemblage that was characteristic for each geographical region. A risk map for example species was produced to illustrate how such a map can be compared with the species' actual distribution and used with other information, such as the species' biotic characteristics and interactions with the abiotic environment, to improve pest risk assessments further.

4
Synthesis and applications. This study presents a new approach to the identification of potentially high-risk invasive pest species based on the hypothesis that global insect pest assemblages are non-random species groupings that can be subjected to traditional community analysis. A well-known data mining and knowledge discovery method for high dimensional data, SOM, was used to determine pest species assemblages for global regions. Species were ranked according to their potential for establishment based on their strength of association with the species assemblage that characterizes a particular region. Such an analysis can then be used to support additional risk assessment of potential invasive species, giving invasive species researchers, conservation managers, quarantine and biosecurity scientists a means for prioritizing species as candidates for further research.


To help the human mind in its process of selecting and filtering information, several recommendation systems have been developed in multiple application domains, such as e-commerce and e-tourism. Recommender systems are built to guide end users to easily find the most proper items on huge amount of data. In other words, this type of system tries to suggest items that best meet the preferences and needs of a user. It can be represented as a unit for predicting the behavior of a user by anticipating his next actions. In this article, we develop a courses recommender system dedicated to online learning environment. It aims to discover relationships between student's courses activities using association rules method in order to help the student to choose the more appropriate learning materials. We also focus on the analysis of past historical data of the courses enrollments or log data. The article discusses particularly the frequent itemsets concept to determine the interesting rules in the transaction database. Then, we use the extracted rules to find the catalog of more suitable courses according to the learner's behaviors and preferences. Next, we implement our system using the FP-growth algorithm and R programming language. Finally, the experimental results prove the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed system to increase the quality of student's decision and orientate them during the learning process by providing most relevant pedagogical resources.


To compare findings in a hospital trial of hypotensive drugs with those in a general practice trial several patients with mild hypertension were studied at the same time in hospital and in general practice. They received bendrofluazide and potassium chloride or bendrofluazide, potassium chloride, and reserpine according to a double-blind crossover protocol, and blood biochemical values were studied over eight weeks and six months. When reserpine was withdrawn from nine women they followed a modified protocol comparing bendrofluazide and potassium chloride with potassium chloride alone. The blood pressure values measured by the general practitioners were similar to those measured in hospital. Both the diuretic alone and the diuretic with reserpine produced significant falls in blood pressures. Although plasma renin activity increased on diuretic treatment, continued treatment did not produce a further increase, and levels gradually declined towards normal.


Quantifying the environmental impact of production systems has become a milestone for agricultural commodity chains. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a unique ISO standardized methodology for estimating the environmental impact of human activities along a commodity chain. In the last decade, LCA has become the worldwide standard for environmental product declarations and the baseline model behind various GHG calculators and certifications (e.g. European Directive 2009; RSPO PalmGHG 2012). Various LCA on palm oil products have shown that the agricultural stage is a major contributor to most of the potential environmental impacts, including global warming, eutrophication and acidification for instance. This large contribution is due to combined important nitrogen (N) input levels in the field and low input levels at the mill and refinery stages. The agricultural stage remains a critical contributor even when the system boundary is extended to palm-based biofuel production. Focusing on global warming impact, main contributors are N-related GHG emissions in the plantation and methane emissions from palm oil mill effluent treatment. The impact from the plantation becomes overwhelming when forests or peatland areas are converted to palm plantations. Meanwhile, impact from palm oil mill effluent can be drastically reduced if the biogas is captured with electricity recovery. While nitrogen inputs are critical, LCA models still mostly rely on global emission factor. A better modeling of the nitrogen balance including a better accounting for soil processes would allow for a more accurate diagnosis of environmental impacts and control levers in plantation management.


This research aims to provide a complete solution for reservoir properties determination, including estimation and uncertainty analysis. The strengths of this reservoir characterization methodology is: i) uncertainty analysis and ii) integration of multiple geophysical data-sets, rock physics analysis and prior information in a straightforward way provided by the Bayesian framework. The inference problem reported on this paper is formulated to solve the problem of porosity estimation. The sources of information are pre-stack seismic data; well log data and core samples. The reservoir is considered a volume composed of cells. The final solution is a probability density function (pdf) for porosity for each cell of the reservoir volume. These pdfs, call posterior pdfs, represent deductions about porosity and incorporate all related uncertainties. The waveform elastic inversion is incorporated in this methodology to access the porous medium physical property information from pre-stack seismic data. Geostatistical modelling is incorporated to access the porous medium spatial variability information from well-log data. The methodology is implemented to consider a reservoir composed for block cells. One posterior pdf is computed for each reservoir cell. Two cell volumes present the final result. One is constructed with the modes of the posterior pdfs related to each cell and represents the estimated porosity model, and the other is constructed with the confidence interval of the posteriors pdfs and represents a measure of the related uncertainties.


The term 'subclinical hypothyroidism' describes the state of slightly elevated serum TSH and normal serum free T4 and T3 levels, usually without any other clinical findings characteristic of hypothyroidism. The state is quite common in the elderly, especially in women. Subclinical hypothyroidism is most commonly an early stage of overt hypothyroidism. Progression to overt hypothyroidism ranges from 5 to 20 percent per year in patients with slightly elevated serum TSH and high thyroid antibody levels. Patients with subclinical hypothyroidism may have increased levels of are total and HDL cholesterol, which are less pronounced than in overt disease but predispose these patients to the development of severe cardiac disease. For this reason, it is necessary to consider levothyroxine therapy in some of these patients, in order to improve their quality of life and to prevent development of full-blown disease with all its sequels. Because subclinical hypothyroidism is common in the elderly (4% 8% of people older than 60), it is necessary to establish a screening policy based on serum TSH level measurement.


To avoid slag sticking onto the ladle snorkel during the CAS-OB refining and alloying process, CaO-B2O3 and CaO-CaF2 were respectively employed as modifiers added into the ladle slag. The desulfurization capability of modified slag was investigated. The results of experiments on sulphur partition equilibrium between metal and slag indicate that the sulphur content of metal can be further decreased by the modified slag. When CaO-B2O3 is used as additive and the mass ratio of CaO to B2O3 is 1:1, the desulfurization ratio of slag to liquid steel is 50%, the final sulphur content can be controlled at 0.002%. The efficiency of desulfurization is fine. When CaO- CaF2 is employed as additive and the mass ratio of CaF2 to CaO is 2:8, the final sulphur content of metal can be controlled lower than 0.004%, the efficiency of desulfurization is also acceptable.


Two authors who have been leaders of the "social quality approach" that emerged in European social policy circles in the 1990s, and two authors who have worked with the "human development" and "human security" approaches that emerged in international development policy circles in the 1980s and 90s, collaborate in this paper in order to outline and compare the two traditions. The "human development" tradition has focused on the quality of individual human lives, understood as influenced by interconnections that transcend conventional disciplinary boundaries; its "human security" branch goes deeper into study of human vulnerability and the textures of daily life. The "social quality" tradition tries to understand individual lives as lived within a societal fabric, to identify and measure key elements of that fabric, and to develop a correspondingly grounded public policy approach. The paper is a first step in a project to assess the possible complementarity, in theorising and practical application, of these two streams of work.


Recursive procedures which are based on iterating on the best response mapping have difficulties converging to all equilibria in multi-player games. We illustrate these difficulties by revisiting the asymptotic properties of the iterative nested pseudo maximum likelihood method for estimating dynamic games introduced by Aguirregabiria and Mira (2007). An example shows that the iterative method may not be consistent.


ABSTRACTSignificant amounts of ammonia, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid as ammonium particle precursors have been found in urban polluted air. In order to advance understanding the formation and dissociation of ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride, an on-line analyzer for monitoring aerosols and gases in the ambient air was employed to measure the concentrations of sulfate, nitrate and chloride in aerosols as well as related gaseous precursors at one hour resolution. The highest levels of summed hourly-averaged sulfate, nitrate, chloride and ammonium reached up to 177.7 μg/m3 in PM10 from 12 to 14 June, and 101.2 μg/m3 in PM2.5 from 1 to 3 July, 2009 in Shanghai. Ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride were popular in aerosols with a strong linear correlation between non-sulfate ammonium (ns-NH4+) and nitrate (or nitrate plus chloride). Ammonium equivalent concentration was always less than the sum of sulfate, nitrate and chloride due to ammonium-poor aerosols, whereas the atmosphere was ammonia-rich in gas phase. The ratio of gaseous nitric acid to total nitrate less than that of hydrochloric acid to total chloride both in PM10 and PM2.5 indicated that ammonium nitrate was more favored to be formed than ammonium chloride.


Background Oligomerization and aggregation of α-synuclein molecules play a major role in neuronal dysfunction and loss in Parkinson's disease [1]. However, α-synuclein oligomerization and aggregation have mostly been detected indirectly in cells using detergent extraction methods [2], [3], [4]. A number of in vitro studies showed that dopamine can modulate the aggregation of α-synuclein by inhibiting the formation of or by disaggregating amyloid fibrils [5], [6], [7]. Methodology/Principal Findings Here, we show that α-synuclein adopts a variety of conformations in primary neuronal cultures using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). Importantly, we found that dopamine, but not dopamine agonists, induced conformational changes in α-synuclein which could be prevented by blocking dopamine transport into the cell. Dopamine also induced conformational changes in α-synuclein expressed in neuronal cell lines, and these changes were also associated with alterations in oligomeric/aggregated species. Conclusion/Significance Our results show, for the first time, a direct effect of dopamine on the conformation of α-synuclein in neurons, which may help explain the increased vulnerability of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson's disease.


Fraud and abuse risks in subacute care concern three major areas: (1) inadequate treatment and quality of care; (2) underutilization of services; and (3) misrepresentation of service capabilities. Strategies on how to manage these risks and guide changes are given.


Market conditions fluctuate abruptly in today's competitive environment and leads to imprecise demand information. In particular, market demand data for freshly launched products is highly uncertain. Further, most of the products are generally manufactured through complex multi-stage production systems that may produce defective items once they enter the out-of-control state. Production management of a multi-stage production system in these circumstances requires robust production model to reduce system costs. In this context, this paper introduces an imperfect multi-stage production model with the consideration of defective proportion in the production process and uncertain product demand. Fuzzy theory is applied to handle the uncertainty in demand information and the center of gravity approach is utilized to defuzzify the objective function. This defuzzified cost objective is solved through the analytical optimization technique and closed form solution of optimal lot size and minimum cost function are obtained. Model analysis verifies that it has successfully achieved global optimal results. Numerical experiment comprising of three examples is conducted and optimal results are analyzed through sensitivity analysis. Results demonstrate that larger lot sizes are profitable as the system moves towards a higher number of stages. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the processing cost is the most influencing factor on the system cost function.


As the most significant cause of death worldwide, obesity has become one of the world's most important public health problems, but approved anti-obesity drugs are extremely limited. This article summarizes the feeding control circuits and regulators involved in obesity development, highlight the hypothalamus, melanocortin system and brain-gut peptide actions in this process, and the five US FDA approved anti-obesity medications in long term use, namely phentermine/topiramate, lorcaserin, naltrexone/bupropion, liraglutide and orlistat.


Most cancers in children are acute diseases. Therefore, the incidence of malnutrition, in general, is not different from the incidence in the referral population. Some specific tumors, such as neuroblastoma and those resulting in the diencephalic syndrome, can be exceptions. By contrast, malnutrition is a frequent problem during modern intensive cancer treatment as the result of the associated anorexia, altered taste sensations and catabolic effects of drugs. In addition, there are psychogenic factors and metabolic consequences associated with the tumor itself. Nutritional support does improve the feeling of well-being and performance status, while maintaining or improving the immune competence, thereby potentially affecting survival by limiting infectious episodes. There is no convincing evidence to date that nutritional support has an antineoplastic effect per se, but deficiency of a specific nutrient might be beneficial because of a differential requirement between tumor and normal cells. Theoretically, nutritional support might enhance tumor growth but also susceptibility to chemotherapy. In either case, nutrition is a support modality that must be given with appropriate tumor-directed therapy if curative intent is the goal of treatment. Nutrition remains a consideration after therapy is completed. This generates different challenges. If further tumor-directed therapy is futile, the decision to continue nutritional support is difficult, but if the child is well, nutritional rehabilitation must be pursued. Finally, the cured child continues to benefit from dietary advice. Nutrition should be viewed for what it is: supplying the most basic need of children. Int. J. Cancer Supplement 11:66–68, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


Covering approximately 8,000 km2, the River Rwizi catchment stretches across 10 districts in south-western Uganda. Common economic activities carried out include agriculture, fish farming, tourism and local industry. Water users include industries and a municipality. In recent years, the catchment has featured prominently in national news due to frequent water resource problems, especially during the dry season. A water risk and sustainability study was carried out to support water stewardship initiatives and the development of a catchment management plan. The study examined the hydrology and water use patterns in the catchment. Uneven rainfall distribution (both in time and space), topography and wetlands drive the catchment's hydrology. However, existing river flow data cannot be relied upon, due to existing hydraulic characteristics at gauging locations as well as inconsistency in the record lengths. Groundwater quantity and quality are highly variable, and generally poor due to the geology of the area. Meanwhile, projections for domestic, agricultural and industrial water demand to 2035 indicate a steady increase, largely as a result of population growth and urbanisation. Pollution loads are also projected to increase. The study identified and ranked the key water-related risks to users in the catchment, including the causal factors. Possible mitigation measures were examined and a programme of long and short-term actions identified.


Migration dynamics from Turkey have considerably changed over the last 60 years, which has produced a vast diaspora of around 5 million people. The diaspora's role in the early years of Turkish (labour) migration was characterized in economic terms (remittances and return migration), with the idea that the diaspora would contribute to the country's economic development and welfare. By the time Turkey witnessed economic liberalization in the 1980s, and a transition from temporary migration to permanent settlement of its migrant citizens abroad, the diaspora's obligations toward Turkey did not decline, but changed strategically in favour of the country's political objectives. Turkey now sees its diaspora as a lobbying power both for internal and external relations of the country, and more specifically as its representatives in Europe legitimizing Turkey's claim to EU citizenship. Accordingly, today the policies and Turkish institutions concerned with the diaspora focus not on financial engagement, but on the successful integration of the diaspora in the destination countries, which is expected to consequently benefit the country's image and political claims.


Introduction: Liver transplantation (LT) is burdened by the risk of post-operative morbidity. Identifying patients at higher risk of developing complications can help allocate resources in the perioperative phase. Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT) score, based on lymphocyte count, serum albumin, and cholesterol levels, has been applied to various surgical specialties, proving reliable in predicting complications and prognosis. Our study aims to investigate the role of the CONUT score in predicting the development of early complications (within 90 days) after LT. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of 209 patients with a calculable CONUT score within 2 months before LT. The ability of the CONUT score to predict severe complications, defined as a Comprehensive Complication Index (CCI) ≥42.1, was examined. Inverse Probability Treatment Weighting was used to balance the study population against potential confounders. Results: Patients with a CCI ≥42.1 had higher CONUT score values (median: 7 vs. 5, P-value < 0.0001). The CONUT score showed a good diagnostic ability regarding post-LT morbidity, with an AUC = 0.72 (95.0%CI = 0.64–0.79; P-value < 0.0001). The CONUT score was the only independent risk factor identified for a complicated post-LT course, with an odds ratio = 1.39 (P-value < 0.0001). The 90-day survival rate was 98.8% and 87.5% for patients with a CONUT score <8 and ≥8, respectively. Conclusions: Pre-operative CONUT score is a helpful tool to identify patients at increased post-LT morbidity risk. Further refinements in the score composition, specific to the LT population, could be obtained with prospective studies.