Since the time they lived with simple human thought in the highly complex ultra-modern society today, rituals have been cohesive with the human life as an inseparable entity. It is seen as a pseudoscience, for they are used to make some expectations a reality and as a pseudo-art for they are subservient to superstition when represent a particular purpose. In any society a man because of fear that he is not receiving expected result in various special occasion of human society. Thus, the purpose of this research, which was conducted on the basis of rituals seen in every social community, was based on the fact "How are the leaning of rituals of the urban community?". For the task conducted as qualitative research, subsequently used the functional method and the case study method. When collecting data through the above mentioned methods, mainly used observational methods such as interviews. This research conducted most of its data gathering from places such as the Gampaha district, which is one of the highly urbanized area of the Western province that proved to be a worthy field to research. Here, ten cases pre-selected were analyzed through qualitative methods of analysis. There I was able to be familiar with a bundle of modern drifts of rituals practiced in the urban society. Fenshui rituals, the worship of Ganadevi, rituals regarding walampuri, a precious conch, rituals based on numerology were found to be the most popular. In addition, various types of sacraments were being performed as panacea for some issues such as deferment of marriage, visual and verbal curse, domestic safety, and for those who live in abroad. In religious spheres, Buddhists, Catholics, Christians, and Muslims gave priority to these functions. Furthermore, it can be said that even as of today, the same rituals performed for various purposes and its performers are named differently in different regions and also a huge difference can be seen in its setting. Moreover, it further became obvious that they had been commercialized. The interference of the media and the politics were significantly responsible. The symbols traditionally used for such rituals had been fully refined so as to go with the modern society. The process of these rituals had been made easy, efficient with the progression of modern Technology. It can be said that the means of communication have been the main cause of its popularity.


We propose a new nonlinear optical architecture based on a focus tunable lens and an iterative phase retrieval algorithm. It constitutes a compact encryption system that uses a single-random phase key to simultaneously encrypt (decrypt) amplitude and phase data. Summarily, the information encoded in a transmittance object (phase and amplitude) is randomly modulated by a diffuser when a laser beam illuminates it; once the beam reaches a focus tunable lens, different subjective speckle distributions are registered at some image plane as the focal length is tuned to different values. This set of speckle patterns constitutes a delocalized ciphertext, which is used in an iterative phase retrieval algorithm to reconstruct a complex ciphertext. The original data are decrypted propagating this ciphertext through a virtual optical system. In this system, amplitude data are straightforwardly decrypted while phase data can only be restored if the random modulation produced in the encryption process is compensated. Thus, an encryption–decryption process and authentication protocol can simultaneously be performed. We validate the feasibility of our proposal with simulated and experimental results.


My thesis contains essays on voting theory, market structures and fiscal federalism: (i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation, (ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser, (iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics, and (iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance. (i) One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation (joint with Micael Castanheira) In elections, majority divisions pave the way to focal manipulations and coordination failures, which can lead to the victory of the wrong candidate. This paper shows how this flaw can be addressed if voter preferences over candidates are sensitive to information. We consider two potential sources of divisions: majority voters may have similar preferences but opposite information about the candidates, or opposite preferences. We show that when information is the source of majority divisions, Approval Voting features a unique equilibrium with full information and coordination equivalence. That is, it produces the same outcome as if both information and coordination problems could be resolved. Other electoral systems, such as Plurality and Two-Round elections, do not satisfy this equivalence. The second source of division is opposite preferences. Whenever the fraction of voters with such preferences is not too large, Approval Voting still satisfies full information and coordination equivalence. (ii) Runoff Elections and the Condorcet Loser A crucial component of Runoff electoral systems is the threshold fraction of votes above which a candidate wins outright in the first round. I analyze the influence of this threshold on the voting equilibria in three-candidate Runoff elections. I demonstrate the existence of an Ortega Effect which may unduly favor dominated candidates and thus lead to the election of the Condorcet Loser in equilibrium. The reason is that, contrarily to commonly held beliefs, lowering the threshold for first-round victory may actually induce voters to express their preferences excessively. I also extend Duverger's Law to Runoff elections with any threshold below, equal or above 50%. Therefore, Runoff elections are plagued with inferior equilibria that induce either too high or too low expression of preferences. (iii) On the Influence of Rankings when Product Quality Depends on Buyer Characteristics Information on product quality is crucial for buyers to make sound choices. For "experience products", this information is not available at the time of the purchase: it is only acquired through consumption. For much experience products, there exist institutions that provide buyers with information about quality. It is commonly believed that such institutions help consumers to make better choices and are thus welfare improving. The quality of various experience products depends on the characteristics of buyers. For instance, conversely to the quality of cars, business school quality depends on buyers (i.e. students) characteristics. Indeed, one of the main inputs of a business school is enrolled students. The choice of buyers for such products has then some features of a coordination problem: ceteris paribus, a buyer prefers to buy a product consumed by buyers with "good" characteristics. This coordination dimension leads to inefficiencies when buyers coordinate on products of lower "intrinsic" quality. When the quality of products depends on buyer characteristics, information about product quality can reinforce such a coordination problem. Indeed, even though information of high quality need not mean high intrinsic quality, rational buyers pay attention to this information because they prefer high quality products, no matter the reason of the high quality. Information about product quality may then induce buyers to coordinate on products of low intrinsic quality. In this paper, I show that, for experience products which quality depends on the characteristics of buyers, more information is not necessarily better. More precisely, I prove that more information about product quality may lead to a Pareto deterioration, i.e. all buyers may be worse off due. (iv) Redistributing Income under Fiscal Vertical Imbalance (joint with Marjorie Gassner and Vincenzo Verardi) From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance (i.e. the dependence of subnational governments on national government revenues to support their expenditures) is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction of the extent of redistributive fiscal policies if the maximal size of government has been reached. To test for this empirically, we use some high quality data from the LIS dataset on individual incomes. The results are highly significant and point in the direction of our theoretical predictions.


: Purpose: This paper is devoted to the standardisation of customer service in the logistics services market. Its first part focuses on various aspects of defining and optimising buyer service. Next, the focus turns to the benefits and barriers of service standardisation, and at the end of the text, the focus turns to logistics buyer service, understood as the ability of a company's logistics system to meet customer expectations in such categories as lead time, certainty and security of transactions, communication with the customer, and efficiency and convenience of service. The authors have made a comprehensive analysis of customer service as a business process. They have focused on the ways in which customer service is perceived and the factors determining its level. They then evaluated the advantages of standardising logistics service, without ignoring the limitations of implementing this process. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper uses the method of descriptive characteristics of market phenomena and processes. The professional literature on customer service standardisation was comprehensively searched. Findings: The results of the analyses are of both cognitive and pragmatic value, especially in the context of undertaking work towards the development and implementation of a standardised logistics strategy for customer service. Originality/Value: Standardisation of the customer service process allows for a quicker response to customer preferences, and also makes it possible to design the process in such a way that it has a positive impact on the company's operations and becomes a source of its competitive advantage. Among the many benefits of standardising logistics customer service are increased customer satisfaction, lower staff management costs and a systematic drive to improve the quality of customer service.


It has been demonstrated that the AIS initially set for security purposes, suffers from errors, falsifications and spoofing cases ([1] and [2]) A system for alert triggering based on AIS messages treatment and behavioural analysis has been set. This system is made of several modules [3], one for data storage, one for data analysis (with archived data or on-the-fly) and another one for scenario assessment leading to risk evaluation and alert triggering. We propose a method taking into consideration the complex structure of AIS messages[4], in which each message data quality and integrity is assessed with respect to AIS specifications, other messages (either sent by the same vessel or not) and some environmental data (such as fleet registers). A set of selected scenarios have been implemented (such as identity theft, whereabouts spoofing, vessel disappearance) and are assessed subsequently. Those scenarios are linked to risks of maritime navigation such as collisions, illegal trade or terrorism, the analysis of which, in conjunction with the vessel environment, leading to the assignment of levels of alert corresponding to the risks defined, suitable to be handed to relevant authorities as decision support information. References: [1] Ray C., Iphar C., Napoli A., Gallen R. and Bouju A.,DeAIS project: Detection of AIS Spoofing and Resulting Risks. In: proceedings of OCEANS 2015, 18-21 May 2015; [2] Balduzzi M., Pasta A. and Wilhoit K., A security evaluation of AIS automated identification system. In: proceedings of ACSAC 2014, 7-12 December 2014; [3] Iphar C., Napoli A. and Ray C., Integrity Assessment of a Worldwide Maritime Tracking System for a Geospatial Risk Analysis at Sea. In: proceedings of the 20th AGILE Conference, 9-12 May 2017; [4] Tunaley J.K.E., Utility of Various AIS Messages for Maritime Awareness. In: Proceedings of the 9th Advanced SAR Workshop. 15-18 October 2013.


Ketosis-prone type 2 diabetes mellitus also known as atypical or flatbush diabetes is being increasingly recognised worldwide. These patients are typically obese, middle-aged men with a strong family history of type 2 diabetes. The aetiology and pathophysiological mechanism is still unclear but some initial research suggests that patients with ketosis-prone type 2 diabetes have a unique predisposition to glucose desensitisation. These patients have negative autoantibodies typically associated with type 1 diabetes but have shown to have human leucocyte antigen (HLA) positivity. At initial presentation, there is an impairment of both insulin secretion and action. β Cell function and insulin sensitivity can be markedly improved by initiating aggressive diabetes management to allow for discontinuation of insulin therapy within a few months of treatment. These patients can be maintained on oral hypoglycaemic agents and insulin therapy can be safely discontinued after few months depending on their β cell function.


The development of an anatomically realistic model of intestinal tissue is essential for the progress of several clinical applications of medical robotics. A hyperelastic theory of the layered structure of the intestine is proposed in this paper to reproduce its purely elastic passive response from the structural organization of its main constituents. The hyperelastic strain energy function is decoupled into an isotropic term, describing the ground biological matrix, and an anisotropic term, describing the single contributions of the directional fiber-reinforcements. The response of the muscular coat layer has been modeled as a stiffening effect due to two longitudinal and circular muscular reinforcements. The contribution of the submucosa has been described from a uniform distribution of fibrillar collagen in a cross-ply arrangement. An experimental procedure has been proposed in order to characterize the passive response of porcine intestinal samples from planar uniaxial traction and shear tests. The experimental data have been non-linearly fitted in the least square sense with the results of the theoretical predictions. The mechanical parameters have been fitted with high accuracy (R min =0.9329, RMSE max =0.01167), demonstrating the ability of the model to reproduce the mechanical coupling due to the presence of multiple directional reinforcements. The fundamental mechanical role of collagen morphology in the passive biomechanical behavior of intestinal wall is demonstrated. These results may drive a better understanding of the key factors in growth and remodeling of healthy and diseased tissue, together with numerous applications in robotic endoscopy, minimally invasive surgery, and biomedical research.


Measures such as the arithmetic mean error and standard deviation of error are commonly used to assess the magnitude of errors between the tracked parameter and a target value when evaluating pilot performance. Although these measures have strong validity when associated with a well-prescribed flight task that demands a high level of performance, there can be a certain dissociation between the control input behavior of the pilot and the flight path response of the aircraft, particularly in large transport types with relatively high inertia and stability. This study uses frequency-based metrics based on pilot control inputs as an adjunct to these commonly used measures to evaluate performance. Using both types of measures, findings demonstrate how the performance of 12 cadet pilots changed while undertaking a 40-hour jet orientation course on a flight training device. The results show that variation in the flight path is reduced as the cadet pilots progress through the course. At the later stages of the course, the control strategy used is characterized by more frequent but smaller amplitude control inputs. These findings suggest that frequency-based measures can provide a sensitive measure of pilot performance when directly applied to control input data, and can be a useful adjunct to more traditional measures.


Background : Maternity waiting homes have been promoted to improve pregnant women's access to quality obstetric care. The main aim of this study was to assess the situation of maternity waiting homes and the experiences and challenges of mothers using waiting homes. Methods : A cross-sectional study was conducted in 134 health centers in Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations Nationalities and People (SNNP) and Tigray regions of Ethiopia. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods. Data were collected by interviewing the head of the health centers and women staying at the waiting homes during the time of the survey. Results : Ninety-four (70%) health centers had maternity waiting homes at the time of the survey. Typologies of the waiting homes and their capability of holding clients varied from region to region. Protocols for managing the waiting homes and admission and discharge criteria were not available elsewhere. Mothers who used waiting homes faced several challenges: No one was available to care for children at home, mothers were considered as being lazy, food problems and lengthy prenatal stay were among the challenges mothers mentioned of staying at the waiting homes. Conclusions : It is necessary to prepare guidelines for the establishment and management of waiting homes as well as set up admission and discharge criteria and to initiate quality control mechanisms.  Keywords : Maternity waiting homes, waiting homes, prenatal care, intention to stay postpartum, postpartum care, Ethiopia, health center, obstetric complications


Recommender systems aim to provide personalized services to users and are playing an increasingly important role in our daily lives. The key of recommender systems is to predict how likely users will interact with items based on their historical online behaviors, e.g., clicks, add-to-cart, purchases, etc. To exploit these user-item interactions, there are increasing efforts on considering the user-item interactions as a user-item bipartite graph and then performing information propagation in the graph via Graph Neural Networks (GNNs). Given the power of GNNs in graph representation learning, these GNNs-based recommendation methods have remarkably boosted the recommendation performance. Despite their success, most existing GNNs-based recommender systems overlook the existence of interactions caused by unreliable behaviors (e.g., random/bait clicks) and uniformly treat all the interactions, which can lead to sub-optimal and unstable performance. In this paper, we investigate the drawbacks (e.g., non-adaptive propagation and non-robustness) of existing GNN-based recommendation methods. To address these drawbacks, we introduce a principled graph trend collaborative filtering method and propose the Graph Trend Filtering Networks for recommendations (GTN) that can capture the adaptive reliability of the interactions. Comprehensive experiments and ablation studies are presented to verify and understand the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Our implementation based on PyTorch is available: https://github.com/wenqifan03/GTN-SIGIR2022.


Russia and Pakistan have rarely enjoyed cordial relations in the past. However, in the recent years, the two countries have undertaken some important initiatives to normalise their relations that encompass economic, political as well as military dimensions. The article analyses this developing thaw in Russia-Pakistan relations and assesses its future trajectory in the context of what can be arguably termed as an evolving post-9/11 regional scenario.


Recognizing and tracking weak reflections, which are characterized by low amplitude, low signal-to-noise ratio, and low degree of lateral continuity, is a long-time issue in 3D seismic interpretation and reservoir characterization. The problem is particularly acute with unconventional, fractured shale reservoirs, in which the impedance contrast is low and/or reservoir beds are below the tuning thickness. To improve the performance of interpreting weak reflections associated with shale reservoirs, we have developed a new workflow for weak-reflection tracking guided by a robust structural-orientation vector (SOV) estimation algorithm. The new SOV-guided auto-tracking workflow first uses the reflection orientation at the seed location as a constraint to project the most-likely locations in the neighboring traces, and then locally adjust them to maximally match the target reflection. We verify our workflow through application to a test seismic data set that is typical of routine 3D seismic surveys over shale oil and gas fields. The results demonstrate the improved quality of the resulting horizons compared with the traditional autotracking algorithms. We conclude that this new SOV-guided autotracking workflow can be used to enhance the performance and effectiveness of weak reflection mapping, which should have important implications for improved shale reservoirs visualization and characterization.


Combined input-output queueing switches (CIOQ) have better scaling properties than output queueing (OQ) switches. However, a CIOQ switch may have lower switch throughput and, more importantly, it is difficult to control delay in a CIOQ switch due to the existence of multiple queueing points. In this paper, we study the following problem: can a CIOQ switch be designed to behave identically to an OQ switch? B. Prabhakar and N. McKeown (1997) proposed an algorithm such that a CIOQ switch with an internal speedup of 4 can behave identically to an OQ switch with FIFO as the output queueing discipline. In this paper, we propose a new switch scheduling algorithm called joined preferred matching (JPM) that improves Prahhakar and McKeown's results in two aspects. First, with JPM, the internal speedup needed for a CIOQ switch to achieve exact emulation of an OQ switch is only 2 instead of 4. Second, the result applies to OQ switches that employ a general class of output service disciplines, including FIFO and various fair queueing algorithms. This result lays the theoretical foundation for designing scalable high-speed CIOQ switches that can provide same throughput and QoS as OQ switches, but require lower-speed internal memory.


In estimation theory, the Fisher information matrix (FIM) is a fundamental concept from which we can infer the well-known Cramér-Rao bound. A closed-form expression of the FIM is often intractable due to the lack or sophistication of statistical models. In this paper, we propose a Fisher Information Neural Estimator (FINE) based on neural networks and a relation between the f-divergence and the Fisher information. The proposed method produces an estimate of the FIM directly from observed data. It does not require knowledge or an estimate of the probability density function (pdf), and is therefore universally applicable. The proposed FINE is applicable for not only deterministic parameters but also random parameters. We show via numerical results that the proposed FINE can provide a highly-accurate FIM estimate with a low-computational complexity. Furthermore, we also propose an accelerated FINE version which can be used for scenarios with a high parameter dimension. Finally, we develop an algorithm to choose an appropriate size of the employed neural networks.


To explore spectral opportunities in wideband regime for cognitive radio we need a wideband spectrum sensing receiver. Current wideband receiver architectures need wideband analog to digital converter (ADC) to sample wideband signal. As current state-of-art ADC has limitation in terms of power and sampling rate, we need to explore some alternative solutions. Compressive sampling (CS) data acquisition method is one of the solutions. Cognitive Radio signal, which is sparse in frequency domain can be sampled at Sub-Nyquist rate using low rate ADC. To relax the receiver complexity in terms of performance requirement we can use Modulated Wideband Converter (MWC) architecture, a Sub-Nyquist sampling method. In this thesis circuit design of this architecture covers signal within a frequency range of 500 MHz to 2.1 GHz, with a channel bandwidth of 1600 MHz. By using 8 parallel lines with channel trading factor of 11, effective sampling rate of 550 MHz is achieved for successful support recovery of multi-band input signal of size N=12.


In the world's leading countries the problem of appearing of schools with bad learning outcomes where mostly children from families with a low socio-economic status go is regarded nowadays as one of the key problems in educational policy. In order to solve it, laws are passed and national strategies are adopted. This survey is intended to describe main approaches and problem solution tools that are used as part of national strategies. Its relevancy is determined by the fact that support of schools working in the challenging social context and performing poorly appeared on the agenda of the Russian educational policy. World experience of researches and practical interventions in the area under question may be useful for the national education.


Hyoscyamine, anisodamine
and scopolamine are tropane alkaloids present
in some Solanaceae species and used in modern medicine. L-Hyoscyamine is hydroxylated
to 6β-hydroxyhyoscyamine
(anisodamine) and then epoxidated to scopolamine
by the dual action of hyoscyamine 6β-hydroxylase
(H6H), a 2-oxoglutarate dependent dioxygenase.
A natural mutation in the Gly-220 residue to Cys was previously shown to be associated
with the loss of function of H6H in Mandragora officinarum, preventing
the accumulation of anisodamine and scopolamine in these plants. We show here
that a deliberate Gly220Cys mutation in the Datura innoxia DiH6H protein caused a loss of both its enzymatic abilities
and rendered it unable to hydroxylate L-hyoscyamine into anisodamine and to epoxidate anisodamine into scopolamine. By using protein modeling
based on an available crystal structure of H6H from Datura metel, we show how the Cys220 residue causes
a steric interference in the active site cavity impairing the interaction of both
substrates, hyoscyamine and anisodamine with the active site of the protein. We also address the enantiomeric
preference of DiH6H based on molecular modeling.


On a hot summer day, high levels of solar radiation are incident on concrete bridge decks, causing non-linear variations in temperature through the depths of the structures. The changes in temperature lead to axial expansion and curvature of decks. In addition, self-equilibrating stresses arise from the non-linearity of the temperature profiles. In continuous structures, where axial expansion and curvature may be restrained, secondary thermal stresses are induced also. Tests are described in which reinforced concrete beams were subjected to daily cycles of heating. Applied temperature profiles were similar to maximum positive profiles for the United Kingdom. It was found that a linear elastic analysis, based on the uncracked section, generally gave an adequate prediction of thermal strains of non-loaded and loaded single span beams during heating cycles. Changes in curvature, during heating, were substantially modified in the early stages of loading, due to the existence of creep curvatures. Two span beams were tested also, with special regard to changes in support reactions during heating. No evidence was found in any of the tests of increases in the extent of cracking as a result of heating. Daily heating cycles were imposed over several weeks and evidence was found of a steady increase in the coefficient of thermal expansion, attributed to drying. Changes in curvature resulting from non-uniform shrinkage were observed, these being greatest in non-heated beams. Creep curvatures were found to increase roughly in proportion to the time-averaged beam temperature. Creep results were compared with prediction methods, including an incremental rate of creep analysis. Additional tests are described in which variations in moisture content and in the coefficient of thermal expansion within members were identified, using a segmentation technique.


Additional index words. Malus domestica, genetic distance, chemiluminescent, biochemical markers, molecular markers Abstract. Information about a rare allele of phosphoglucomutase (PGM) that is shared by 'Braeburn' and 16% of cultivars in the New Zealand Cultivar Collection was combined with historical information about cultivar distribution to select a set of 15 cultivars for a more detailed genetic analysis of their relatedness to the key New Zealand apple ( Malus domestica Borkh.) 'Braeburn'. DNA from all 16 cultivars was examined by RFLP analysis using 41 probe-enzyme combinations and also by RAPD analysis with 39 selected primers. The RFLP and RAPD data excluded a proposal that 'Lady Hamilton' and 'Braeburn' are genetically identical. All cultivars except 'Lady Hamilton' were excluded as potential parents for 'Braeburn' based on incompatible RFLP banding. Assessment of genetic distances between 'Braeburn' and the other 15 cultivars from RFLP and RAPD data demonstrated that 'Lady Hamilton' was more closely related to 'Braeburn' than all others. We conclude that there is a high likelihood that 'Lady Hamilton' is one of the parents of 'Braeburn'.


In the last few years, there has been an increasing interest in the role of deep fascia mobility in musculoskeletal dynamics and chronic pain mechanisms. In a previous paper we presented an innovative semiautomatic approach to evaluate the 3D motion of the fascia using ultrasound (US) imaging, generating a sparse deformation vector field. This paper presents an improvement of our original method, focusing on the filtering of the sparse vector field and its validation. Moreover, in order to evaluate the performance of the algorithm, a method is proposed to generate synthetic deformation vector fields, including: expansion, rotation, horizontal shear, and oblique shear components. Preliminary tests on the final synthetic deformation vector fields showed promising results. Further experiments are required in order to optimize the tuning of the algorithm.


Interactions with conversational systems take diverse forms across applications and individual users. In order to develop intelligent systems that can accommodate these diverse conversational user experience (UX) needs and preferences, meanwhile balancing implementation costs, we propose a computationdriven approach to profile conversational interactions by measuring dialogue complexity of user inputs in multiple dimensions. To inform system adaption designs, we propose to conduct comparative conversation analysis and user experiments, in order to develop classified UX guidelines for conversational interactions with different complexity profiles.


The proportional navigation guidance law usually guides traditional aerodynamically controlled missiles in the terminal phase. Such design approaches possess little flexibility on the improvement of engagement performance robustness. The Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy logic theory and the gain scheduling technique are presented to design guidance and control (GC) parameters over coupled flight conditions. A genetic algorithm also serves as the computing device to determine the consequent function parameters of the fuzzy rules. The proposed design paradigm offers a way to implement simple but robust solutions that cover a wide range of aerodynamic variations. Complete simulation results illustrate the engagement performance and applicability of this design.


Abstract. In the present work we use the NASA-JPL global ionospheric maps of total electron content (TEC), firstly to construct TEC maps (TEC vs. magnetic local time MLT, and magnetic latitude MLAT) in the interval from 1999 to 2005. These TEC maps were, in turn, used to estimate the annual-to-mean amplitude ratio, A1, and the semiannual-to-mean amplitude ratio, A2, as well as the latitudinal symmetrical and asymmetrical parts, A' and A" of A1. Thus, we investigated in detail the TEC climatology from maps of these indices, with an emphasis on the quantitative presentation for local time and latitudinal changes in the seasonal, annual and semiannual anomalies of the ionospheric TEC. Then we took the TEC value at 14:00 LT to examine various anomalies at a global scale following the same procedure. Results reveal similar features appearing in NmF2, such as that the seasonal anomaly is more significant in the near-pole regions than in the far-pole regions and the reverse is true for the semiannual anomaly; the winter anomaly has least a chance to be observed at the South America and South Pacific areas. The most impressive feature is that the equinoctial asymmetry is most prominent at the East Asian and South Australian areas. Through the analysis of the TIMED GUVI columnar [O/N2] data, we have investigated to what extent the seasonal, annual and semiannual variations can be explained by their counterparts in [O/N2]. Results revealed that the [O/N2] variation is a major contributor to the daytime winter anomaly of TEC, and it also contributes to some of the semiannual and annual anomalies. The contribution to the anomalies unexplained by the [O/N2] data could possibly be due to the dynamics associated with thermospheric winds and electric fields.


BACKGROUND
Thermal injuries can occur during cast removal with an oscillating saw. The purpose of this study is to describe the effect of blade material, blade wear, and cast material on blade temperature.

METHODS
Short arm plaster and fiberglass casts were cured overnight and bivalved with either new or worn stainless-steel or tungsten-disulfide coated blades. Blade use was defined as removing 1 short arm cast. Blades used to remove more than 20 casts were defined as worn. Ten trials were performed with each combination of blade material, blade wear, and cast material, except for the combination of fiberglass and a worn stainless-steel blade due to complete erosion of cutting teeth. Thirty casts were removed with stainless-steel blades, and 40 casts were removed with coated blades. Blade temperature was measured continuously at 5 Hz using a T-type thermocouple and microcontroller board. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the mean maximum temperature between groups.

RESULTS
For plaster casts, new and worn stainless-steel blades produced mean maximum temperatures of 51.4°C and 63.7°C (P=0.003), respectively. New stainless-steel blades produced significantly higher mean maximum temperatures on fiberglass casts than plaster casts (95.9°C vs. 51.4°C, P<.001). For plaster casts, new and worn coated blades produced mean maximum temperatures of 56.9°C and 53.8°C (P=0.347). For fiberglass casts, new and worn coated blades produced mean maximum temperatures of 76.6°C and 77.7°C (P=0.653). As with new stainless-steel blades, new coated blades produced significantly higher mean maximum temperatures on fiberglass than plaster (76.6°C vs. 56.9°C, P<0.001). Mean maximum temperatures between new stainless-steel and coated blades during removal of plaster casts were 51.4°C and 56.9°C (P=0.131), respectively. However, new coated blades demonstrated significantly lower mean maximum temperatures during fiberglass cast removal compared to new stainless-steel blades (76.6°C vs. 95.9°C, P=0.016).

CONCLUSIONS
Coated blades outperformed stainless-steel in nearly all combinations. We recommend limited use of stainless-steel blades to minimize blade temperatures during cast removal.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Appropriate selection of blade material and monitoring blade wear minimizes blade temperature during cast removal.


The posteromedial, serotonin-containing (PMS) neurons are found in the ventral aspect of certain anterior segmental ganglia of adult leeches. With one exception, these cells are unpaired in all the ganglia where they are found. During early embryogenesis in Hirudo medicinalis, however, a bilateral pair of PMS neurons appears and differentiates in each of the 21 segmental ganglia (SG1-SG21). Over the next several days, one of the pair dies in SG3-SG21. Examination of the PMS neuron in any one of these segments reveals that either the right or the left cell remains, with equal probability, suggesting that the elimination of one of the pair is a random process. When unpaired PMS neurons are examined in pairs of adjacent ganglia, however, the cells are from opposite sides in the majority of cases (approximately 88%). This observation implies that the death of a PMS neuron in 1 ganglion strongly biases which member of the pair of PMS neurons degenerates in adjacent ganglia. Detailed examination of the sequence of degeneration shows that it begins at several separate loci in the nerve cord. We propose that the mechanism responsible for the death of one of the pair of PMS neurons in a segmental ganglion is competition between these 2 cells for some trophic factor, but that the outcome of this competition is predetermined if one of the PMS neurons in an adjacent ganglion has already begun to degenerate.


A panel of 637 isolates of Candida albicans that had been typed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) and tested for susceptibility to amphotericin B, caspofungin, fluconazole, flucytosine, itraconazole, ketoconazole, miconazole, terbinafine and voriconazole was the material for a statistical analysis of possible associations between antifungal susceptibility and other properties. For terbinafine and flucytosine, the greatest proportion of low-susceptibility isolates, judged by two resistance breakpoints, was found in MLST clade 1 and among isolates homozygous at the MAT locus, although only three isolates showed cross-resistance to the two agents. Most instances of low susceptibility to azoles, flucytosine and terbinafine were among oropharyngeal isolates from HIV-positive individuals. Statistically significant correlations were found between terbinafine and azole minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs), while correlations between flucytosine MICs and azole MICs were less strong. It is concluded that a common regulatory mechanism may operate to generate resistance to the two classes of agent that inhibit ergosterol biosynthesis, terbinafine and the azoles, but that flucytosine resistance, although still commonly associated with MAT homozygosity, is differently regulated.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement, and its development is associated with environmental and genetic factors. Genetic variants in GBA and PARK2 are important risk factors implicated in the development of PD; however, their precise roles have yet to be elucidated. The present study aimed to identify and analyse proteins from the skin fibroblasts of patients with PD carrying heterozygous GBA and PARK2 variants, and from healthy controls. Liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry and label-free quantitative proteomics were performed to identify and compare differential protein expression levels. Moreover, protein-protein interaction networks were assessed using Search Tool for Retrieval of Interacting Genes analysis. Using these proteomic approaches, 122 and 119 differentially expressed proteins from skin fibroblasts of patients with PD carrying heterozygous GBA and PARK2 variants, respectively, were identified and compared. According to the results of protein-protein interaction and Gene Ontology analyses, 14 proteins involved in the negative regulation of macromolecules and mRNA metabolic processes, and protein targeting to the membrane exhibited the largest degree of differential expression in the fibroblasts of patients with PD with a GBA variant, whereas 20 proteins involved in the regulation of biological quality, NAD metabolic process and cytoskeletal organization exhibited the largest degree of differential expression in the fibroblasts of patients with PD with a PARK2 variant. Among these, the expression levels of annexin A2 and tubulin β chain, were most strongly upregulated in the fibroblasts of patients with GBA-PD and PARK2-PD, respectively. Other predominantly expressed proteins were confirmed by western blotting, and the results were consistent with those of the quantitative proteomic analysis. Collectively, the results of the present study demonstrated that the proteomic patterns of fibroblasts of patients with PD carrying heterozygous GBA and PARK2 variants are different and unique. Aberrant expression of the proteins affected by these variants may reflect physiological changes that also occur in neurons, resulting in PD development and progression.


Marine mammals possess high body burdens of persistent organic pollutants, including PCBs and dioxin-like compounds (DLC). Chronic environmental or dietary exposure to these chemicals can disrupt the function of reproductive and immune systems, as well as cause developmental defects in laboratory animals. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor, mediating the expression of a suite of genes in response to exposure to DLC and structurally related chemicals. Species-specific differences in AHR structure can affect an organism's susceptibility to the effects of DLC. The structures and functions of several cetacean AHRs were investigated using in vitro molecular cloning and biochemical techniques. Using a novel combination of remote biopsy and molecular cloning methods, RNA was extracted from small integument samples from living North Atlantic right whales to identify the cDNA sequence for AHR and other genes of physiological importance. Biopsy-derived RNA was found to be of higher quality than RNA extracted from stranded cetaceans, and proved a good source for identifying cDNA sequences for expressed genes. The molecular sequences, binding constants, and transcriptional activities for North Atlantic right whale and humpback whale AHRs cDNAs were determined using in vitro and cell culture methods. Whale AHRs are capable of specifically binding dioxin and initiating transcription of reporter genes. The properties of these AHRs were compared with those from other mammalian species, including human, mouse, hamster, and guinea pig, and other novel marine mammal AHRs, using biochemical, phylogenetic, and homology modeling analyses. The relative binding affinities for some marine mammal AHRs fall between those for the high-affinity mouse AHRb-1 and the lower affinity human AHR. Species-specific variability in two regions of the AHR ligand binding domain were identified as having the greatest potential impact on AHR tertiary structure, yet does not sufficiently explain differences observed in ligand binding assays. Additional studies are necessary to link exposure to environmental contaminants with potential reproductive effects in marine mammals, especially via interactions with steroid hormone receptor pathways.


Background Ongoing traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance dependency (SuD) can greatly affect an offender's ability to function while incarcerated and upon community reentry. Aims/Objectives/Purpose To identify factors associated with ongoing TBI-related symptoms among female offenders. Methods 275 female offenders were asked whether they experienced any of 19 ongoing symptoms after TBI. Variables (aggression, PTSD, mental health treatment, SuD, childhood victimisation, lack of parental/caregiver support, intimate partner violence, free or reduced lunch (ie, SES proxy) were entered into a Robust Poisson model (p≤0.25) to identify factors associated with having symptoms. Race did not meet criteria for model entry. Results/Outcomes (1) 154 of 275 (56%) offenders reported ongoing TBI-related symptoms. (2) SuD and PTSD were associated with having symptoms. An interaction was found between SuD and PTSD (p=0.0236). (3) An association was further found between females with PTSD and TBI-related symptoms among those without SuD (adjusted prevalence ratio (APR)=2.58; CI 1.49 to 4.45, p=0.0006), but not among those with SuD (APR=1.30; CI 0.98 to 1.73, p=0.0662). (4) Compared to having neither condition, the APR for the association between SuD and TBI-related symptoms was 2.32 (CI 1.34 to 4.01). The APR for the association with TBI-related symptoms among offenders with both SuD and PTSD, compared to having neither, was 3.03 (CI 1.80 to 5.08). Significance/Contribution to the Field PTSD and SuD are closely associated with ongoing TBI-related symptoms. Treating and managing all three conditions concurrently, as well as prevention efforts, would likely be cost effective and benefit both the female offenders and society.


Background: SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection with real time PCR is currently the central diagnostic tool to determine ongoing active infection. Nasopharyngeal and oral swabs are the main collection tool of biological material used as the source of viral RNA outside a hospital setting. However, limitation in swabs availability, trained health professional with proper PPE and potential risk of aerosols may hinder COVID diagnosis. Self-collection with swabs, saliva and throat wash to obtain oropharyngeal wash has been suggested as having comparable performance of regular swab. We performed throat wash (TW) based surveillance with laboratory heath workers and other employees (LHW) at a laboratory research institute. Methods: Consecutive volunteer testing of LWH and external household and close contacts were included. TW self-collection was performed in 5 mL of sterile saline that was returned to original vial after approximate 5 secs of gargle. RNA extraction and rtPCR were performed as part of routine COVID protocols using Allplex (Seegene, Korea). Results: Four hundred and twenty two volunteers, 387 (93%) LHW and 43 (7%) contacts participated in the survey. One or more positive COVID rtPCR was documented in 63 (14.9% CI95 12%-19%) individuals. No correlation was observed between with direct activities with COVID samples to positivity, with infection observed in comparable rates among different laboratory areas, administrative or supportive activities. Among 63 with detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA, 59 with clinical information, 58% reported symptoms at a median of 4 days prior to collection, most with mild disease. Over a third (38%) of asymptomatic cases developed symptoms 1-3 days after collection. Although overall CT values of TW were higher than that of contemporary swab tests from hospitalized cases, TW from symptomatic cases had comparable CTs. Conclusions: The study suggests that TW may be a valid alternative to the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. The proportion of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases is elevated and reinforces the need of universal precautions and frequent surveys to limit the spread of the disease.


Method for making a synthetic turf comprising laying a turf (1) consisting of a mat (2) on which a plurality of blades (3, 3a, 3b, 3c) of synthetic material is woven. An infill material (18) is obtained using the granular and fibrous part (17) of a loose product based on ground coconut, alone or with addition of other material such as rubber in granules or sand or other loose vegetable material such as cork. The raw material based on coconut, having a heterogeneous granulometry set between about 500 micron and several mm, is obtained loading a loose product based on ground coconut by a hopper on a conveyor belt for being fed in a sieve, for example a rotating screen that separates the powder part from the granular and fibrous part. In particular, the powder part of the raw material, is gathered on a conveyor belt and from here sent to a storage reservoir. The granular and fibrous part of the raw material, which represents the main product of the process, is, instead, sent by a conveyor belt to a storage, reservoir from where it is taken for the process to provide infill material for a synthetic turf.


From carbon fibre racing bikes to 'sharkskin' swimsuits, the application of cutting-edge design, technology and engineering has proved to be a vital ingredient in enhanced sports performance. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of contemporary sports technology and engineering, providing a complete overview of academic, professional and industrial knowledge and technique. The book is divided into eight sections covering the following topics : Sustainable Sports Engineering, Instrumentation Technology, Summer Mobility Sports, Winter Mobility Sports, Apparel and Protection Equipment,
Sports Implements (racquets, clubs, bats, sticks), Sports Balls, Sports Surfaces and Facilities. Written by an international team of leading experts from industry, academia and commercial research institutes, the emphasis throughout the book is on innovation, the relationship between business and science, and the improvement of sports performance. This is an essential reference for anybody working in sports technology, sports product design, sports engineering, biomechanics, ergonomics, sports business or applied sport science.


The usefulness of the E-test((R) )has been studied to determine the in vitro susceptibility of 52 isolates of 17 species to five antifungal drugs: amphotericin B, 5-flucytosine, ketoconazole, itraconazole and fluconazole. Minimal inhibitory concentrations were determined following the manufacturers' instructions, except in the preparation of the inoculum. In this case a spectrophotometric method was used to obtain 1-5 ' 10(6) CFU/ml. Two different culture media were included: casitone-agar and RPMI 1640 agar. Most isolates showed clear growth in both media after 96 h of incubation at 37 degrees C. The species showed low MIC concentrations to ketoconazole and itraconazole. Only 55.8% of isolates showed MICs </= 2 mg/l to amphotericin B and 98% of strains presented MICs of 32 mg/l for 5-flucytosine. With the exception of one isolate, the remaining were resistant to fluconazole with MIC values 256 mg/l. No differences were found between the MICs for the two media, but values were easier to read in casitone-agar. These results suggest that itraconazole and ketoconazole should be the antifungals of first choice for treating infections due to the evaluated species. This study showed that the E-test((R) )appears to be a suitable method for testing the susceptibility of dematiaceous filamentous fungi to antifungals.


We introduce a data-free quantization method for deep neural networks that does not require fine-tuning or hyperparameter selection. It achieves near-original model performance on common computer vision architectures and tasks. 8-bit fixed-point quantization is essential for efficient inference on modern deep learning hardware. However, quantizing models to run in 8-bit is a non-trivial task, frequently leading to either significant performance reduction or engineering time spent on training a network to be amenable to quantization. Our approach relies on equalizing the weight ranges in the network by making use of a scale-equivariance property of activation functions. In addition the method corrects biases in the error that are introduced during quantization. This improves quantization accuracy performance, and can be applied to many common computer vision architectures with a straight forward API call. For common architectures, such as the MobileNet family, we achieve state-of-the-art quantized model performance. We further show that the method also extends to other computer vision architectures and tasks such as semantic segmentation and object detection.


Background and Purpose— Mild or rapidly improving stroke is a frequently cited reason for not giving intravenous recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator (rtPA), but some of these patients may have poor outcomes. We used data from a large nationwide study (Get With The Guidelines–Stroke) to determine risk factors for poor outcomes after mild or improving stroke at hospital discharge. Methods— Between 2003 and 2009, there were 29 200 ischemic stroke patients (from 1092 hospitals) arriving within 2 hours after symptom onset with mild or rapidly improving stroke symptoms as the only contraindication to rtPA. Logistic regression was used to determine the independent predictors of discharge to home. Results— Among 93 517 patients arriving within 2 hours, 31.2% (29 200) did not receive rtPA solely because of mild/improving stroke. Among the 29 200 mild/improving cases, 28.3% were not discharged to home, and 28.5% were unable to ambulate without assistance at hospital discharge. The likelihood of home discharge was strongly related to initial National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score (P<0.001). In multivariable-adjusted analysis, patients not discharged to home were more likely to be older, female, and black; have a higher National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score and vascular risk factors; and were less likely to be taking lipid-lowering medication before admission. Conclusions— In this large, nationwide study, a sizeable minority of patients who did not receive intravenous rtPA solely because of mild/improving stroke had poor short-term outcomes, raising the possibility that stroke-related disability is relatively common, even in "mild" stroke. A controlled trial of reperfusion therapy in this population may be warranted.


Conflicting claims are often made about the price effects of specific wool marketing innovations. In this paper, a regression model is used to estimate the price effects of two innovations, namely, computerised selling by separation and pre-sale, dense packaging of wool. The results are indicative of aggregate price differentials between wool sold via the 'normal' system and via an innovative system for the particular wool types and sale dates analysed. The extent to which price effects may be offset by differences in selling charges is also considered. In addition, some underlying reasons for price differences, where they exist, are proposed.


Attitude towards women of gender schematic vs aschematic individuals. After the fourfold gender typology (1970s), a dual model —gender schematic versus aschematic individuals— emerged in the 1980s. In this research, the relationship between gender schemas and attitudes towards women's rights were tested. Two studies were carried out (2001 and 2009) with adolescents (boys and girls) from 12 to 14 years old, with 359 participants in 2001 and 224 in 2009, using two instruments: the Bem Sex Role Inventory and the Attitudes Towards Women Scale. Factor analysis and ANOVAs were carried out. The results of both studies supported the hypothesis that girls maintain more favourable attitudes about themselves than boys do. Both studies supported the hypothesis that feminine and androgynous individuals display similar attitudes towards women, but they differ from the other gender categories. Masculine boys and feminine girls did not show differences in attitudes towards women in comparison to aschematic or cross-gendered adolescents. Inconsistent results were found between studies regarding the hypothesized differences between typical and atypical schematics in attitudes towards women, as well as between undifferentiated and gender schematic individuals. The implications of these results for the instruments used, as well as for theories, are considered.


Interpreting and labeling human electroencephalogram (EEG) is a challenging task requiring years of medical training. We present a framework for learning representations from EEG signals via contrastive learning. By recombining channels from multi-channel recordings, we increase the number of samples quadratically per recording. We train a channel-wise feature extractor by extending the SimCLR framework to time-series data. We introduce a set of augmentations for EEG and study their efficacy on different classification tasks. We demonstrate that the learned features improve EEG classification and significantly reduce the amount of labeled data needed on three separate tasks: (1) Emotion Recognition (SEED), (2) Normal/Abnormal EEG classification (TUH), and (3) Sleep-stage scoring (SleepEDF). Our models show improved performance over previously reported supervised models on SEED and SleepEDF and self-supervised models on all three tasks.


In this paper, the diagnosis of broken rotor bar (BRB) is investigated analytically and experimentally based on induction motors (IM) with variable speed drives (VSD). The analysis of the VSD process has understood that the sensorless control mode adjusts both supply voltage and current in order to maintain the operating speed within high accuracy. It means that any asymmetric problems with the rotor such as BRB will cause changes to current, voltage and power signals. Therefore, all of these signals can be used to diagnose BRB. However, experimental studies show that the components at twice slip frequency can be extracted more reliably in the spectrum of power signal which contains diagnostic information of both current and voltage signals. Consequently, it produces better results in separating different BRB cases under sensorless control mode, compared with that of using either current or voltage signal.


Escalating obesity rates have become a significant public health problem in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and have been associated with shifts towards a westernized diet. This integrative review aimed to examine the current dietary trends and transitions and their association with obesity in Arabic-speaking countries of the MENA region. Relevant databases were searched for studies in MENA countries between 1998 and 2014 that investigated obesity trends and changes in dietary patterns at the regional level in all age groups. A total of 39 articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria. All the articles noted that obesity was increasingly prevalent and that there was a significant dietary shift away from traditional dietary patterns; 51% reported a shift towards a westernized diet and half found that the western diet was correlated with increased obesity. Culturally relevant dietary health education and health promotion strategies are warranted to address both the dietary shifts towards the westernized diet and the increasing obesity.


In today's Internet, online content and especially webpages have increased exponentially. Alongside this huge rise, the number of users has also amplified considerably in the past two decades. Most responsible institutions such as banks and governments follow specific rules and regulations regarding conducts and security. But, most websites are designed and developed using little restrictions on these issues. That is why it is important to protect users from harmful webpages. Previous research has looked at to detect harmful webpages, by running the machine learning models on a remote website. The problem with this approach is that the detection rate is slow, because of the need to handle large number of webpages. There is a gap in knowledge to research into which machine learning algorithms are capable of detecting harmful web applications in real time on a local machine.

The conventional method of detecting malicious webpages is going through the black list and checking whether the webpages are listed. Black list is a list of webpages which are classified as malicious from a user's point of view. These black lists are created by trusted organisations and volunteers. They are then used by modern web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. However, black list is ineffective because of the frequent-changing nature of webpages, growing numbers of webpages that pose scalability issues and the crawlers' inability to visit intranet webpages that require computer operators to login as authenticated users.

The thesis proposes to use various machine learning algorithms, both supervised and unsupervised to categorise webpages based on parsing their features such as content (which played the most important role in this thesis), URL information, URL links and screenshots of webpages. The features were then converted to a format understandable by machine learning algorithms which analysed these features to make one important decision: whether a given webpage is malicious or not, using commonly available software and hardware. Prototype tools were developed to compare and analyse the efficiency of these machine learning techniques. These techniques include supervised algorithms such as Support Vector Machine, Naive Bayes, Random Forest, Linear Discriminant Analysis, Quantitative Discriminant Analysis and Decision Tree. The unsupervised techniques are Self-Organising Map, Affinity Propagation and K-Means. Self-Organising Map was used instead of Neural Networks and the research suggests that the new version of Neural Network i.e. Deep Learning would be great for this research.

The supervised algorithms performed better than the unsupervised algorithms and the best out of all these techniques is SVM that achieves 98% accuracy. The result was validated by the Chrome extension which used the classifier in real time. Unsupervised algorithms came close to supervised algorithms. This is surprising given the fact that they do not have access to the class information beforehand.


With rapid technology scaling, the proportion of the leakage power catches up with dynamic power gradually. The leakage dissipation through the gate oxide is becoming an important component of power consumption in currently used nanometer CMOS processes without metal gate structure. This paper presents adiabatic sequential circuits using P-type complementary pass-transistor adiabatic logic circuit (P-CPAL) to reduce the gate-leakage power dissipations. A practical sequential system with a mode-10 counter is demonstrated using the P-CPAL scheme. All circuits are simulated using HSPICE under 65nm and 90nm CMOS processes. Simulations show that the mode-10 counter using P-CPAL circuits obtains significant improvement in terms of power consumption over the traditional N-type CPAL counterparts.


In the past century, oil palm has developed from a sustenance crop in West Africa to a major global agricultural commodity, with substantial impacts on biodiversity, the environment, society, and livelihoods. Although the oil palm industry contributes to local and national economies across the tropics, there are significant concerns about the negative effects of oil palm cultivation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, as well on local communities and farmers. There is a growing awareness of the need for managing agricultural landscapes more sustainably, and the importance of ecological, social, and also interdisciplinary research to inform this. To understand the current status of research across these areas for oil palm, we carried out a systematic mapping exercise to quantify social, ecological, and interdisciplinary socio-ecological research on oil palm cultivation, assess trends in the research, and to identify priority knowledge gaps in the literature. Literature was searched using adapted preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses and Collaboration for Environmental Evidence protocols. We reviewed 4959 publications on the ecological, social, and socioecological effects of oil palm cultivation. Each publication was classified according to study context (the study site location and type), comparators (the type of comparison the study makes), intervention (the potential action or decision being studied), and outcome (the effects of the intervention on the population). This resulted in 443 classified papers, which we then analyzed in more detail, to identify co-occurrence of different research foci between the disciplines and in socio-ecological research. We found a global increase in oil palm research over the past three decades, with a clear bias to Malaysia and Indonesia, mirroring global production trends. Over 70% of the research was focused on ecological outcomes, 19% on social, and less than 10% interdisciplinary. The majority of studies were conducted within industrial plantations, with comparisons to non-modified habitats, such as forests. Research has focused most on the effects of cultivation on yield, invertebrate biodiversity, and livelihood. To place our findings in context of production of palm oil and sustainability priorities, we used information on regional oil palm production in Tonnes, priorities of sustainable certification bodies, and recognized causes of yield gaps. The most pressing knowledge gaps included a lack of studies on the effects of plantation inputs on pollination and herbivory, the relationship between ecological factors and human health and wellbeing, and comparisons of different management practices within oil palm plantations. We advocate that these gaps become the focus of future research attention, as they lie in identified priority research areas and outcomes are likely to be critical to informing the development of more sustainable palm oil production.


Time in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is out of joint. The white characters spiral into a temporal chaos that inevitably leads the Compsons to destruction. The focus of time, however, can be expanded to the black characters by merging racial alterity and time into a theory of racial temporality. Racial temporality is a fluid concept that develops from the constant interaction between the alternate temporalities of the white and black characters. This flexible concept challenges racism and reveals the black characters as the actual controllers of time against the fragmented, inflexible, and arbitrary temporality of the whites. The black servants—Versh, T. P., Luster, and Dilsey—maintain the flow of time, while the Compsons lose themselves in their stagnant white temporality. Black temporality and white temporality engage with and deviate from each other, constantly modifying the overarching racial temporality that interconnects the four sections in the novel. In Benjy's section, racial temporality conveys superiority to the black servants—Versh, T. P., and Luster. The three black servants maintain the flow of time within Benjy's chaotic temporality, thereby holding an unconventional superiority over a white character. In Quentin's section, racial temporality exposes Quentin's static white temporality through his interaction with Deacon, eroding the validity of white supremacy. Later in Jason's section, racial temporality proves white supremacy to be an arbitrary construct of race. As the faults emerge, Jason appears threatened as Job's behavior challenges his racial beliefs. The arbitrary impositions further highlight his hypocritical attitude towards white supremacy. In the last section, racial temporality further explores the whites' apprehension towards the declining white-centered social structure through Dilsey's interaction with Miss Quentin. Racial temporality can thus signal social changes, such as the deteriorating black-white division and the blacks' rise to equality. Approaching The Sound and the Fury with racial temporality allows further exploration of Faulkner's approach to time, change, and race.


In the operational systems of the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, data about criminal cases are registered. This information is used to generate crime statistics or other management information as input for policymaking. A key element for these statistics is the crime type of a case, which is normally deduced from the registered law articles of each case. However the quality of these registered law articles has shortcomings. Additional data describing the crime could be useful to enhance the equality of these law articles. In this paper we investigate the possibility to map additional descriptions of the crime to the formal notations of law articles using a deep learning neural network approach called sequence-to-sequence learning. We describe the characteristics of the data and carry out a number of experiments on these data. Subsequently, we compare two approaches: a) one-hot encoding for the words in a sentence and b) pre-trained word embeddings. The results show that the mapping of the crime description to law articles works reasonably well: a measured accuracy of 91% is reached, and when some issues in the dataset would be resolved the performance could be even higher.


My research interests and experiences have focused on bio- inspired fluidic lens, which is a lens that can change its curvature just like the crystalline lens of the human eye. The curvature tuning capability allows for a theoretical limit of 300 diopters of tuning without having any moving lenses. With this key feature, the lens can be made very small but yet has a tremendous amount of tuning capability. This is very different from traditional optical lenses, which are made out of rigid material where the curvature cannot change. Hence, the only way for traditional optical systems to change its power is by changing the location of the lenses. This forces the traditional optics to be much larger, much longer, and much bigger with limited functionality. With bio-inspired fluidic lenses, the lenses are much smaller and compact with more optical function. My main contribution is in developing the fabrication process for the fluidic lens and the optical design techniques that will improve the image quality. With only one single fluidic lens, I designed a miniature optical system that can function as a regular camera, micro-mode camera, or even a microscope. With two fluidic lenses, I designed a miniature optical zoom camera that has very large optical zoom (17 mm total track and >4X optical zoom). The working distance can be as short as 2 cm, which is difficult to design with traditional lens technology. The unique functions of the optical systems are made possible with the unique function of bio-inspired fluidic zoom lens. Finally, the unique technology of this optical device has particular interest in biomedical applications, such as minimally invasive surgery, retinal camera, etc. Several functions of biomedical applications are demonstrated. Most importantly, a demonstration gallbladder removal surgery was performed solely relying on the images acquires with the miniature zoom lens developed with fluidic lenses


We studied the transmission of norovirus infection in households in Quininde, Ecuador. Among household contacts of norovirus positive children with diarrhea, norovirus negative children with diarrhea and asymptomatic controls, infection attack rates were 33%, 8% and 18%, respectively (N = 45, 36, 83). Infection attack rates were higher when index children had a higher viral load.


The new oxygen service—providing consistency throughout the UK

Home oxygen therapy services have a vital role in supporting children with breathing difficulties, including those with long-term medical conditions such as chronic lung disease of the newborn, pulmonary interstitial fibrosis, neurodisability and cystic fibrosis.1 This article discusses the practicalities of prescribing oxygen for children who require it in the home.

Until recently, oxygen was prescribed by the patient's general practitioner (GP), with a supplier providing the oxygen concentrator service and local pharmacies supplying oxygen cylinders to patients in their homes. Liquid oxygen was only available following application to the primary care trust (PCT) for funding. This resulted in variations and inconsistencies throughout the UK in the way home oxygen was prescribed, used and delivered. In 2003, the Department of Health2 announced plans to modernise the domiciliary oxygen service to improve patient access to a wider range of modern technologies supporting patients' clinical care and other needs. The aim was to improve quality of life, ambulatory oxygen provision, holiday provision in the UK and safety. From February 2006, following the development of new service specifications and a competitive tendering process, four companies (Air Products, Allied Respiratory, Linde Gas and BOC) were awarded contracts to provide this service across 11 regions in England and Wales. Domiciliary oxygen is now provided by a single contractor in each home oxygen service region and all modalities are available, including liquid oxygen. Air Products is the provider to most of the regions in England and Wales.

Once a decision has been made for a child to be discharged on supplemental oxygen, a home oxygen consent form (HOCF) is signed by the parents (box 1, step 1). A home oxygen order form (HOOF) is completed (in large trusts this is done by a designated healthcare professional …


Water sand and gravel stratum is characterized by high gravel content, big grain size and high strength, easy permeation for water and air, brittleness and hysteresis quality in stratum failure, causing great difficulties in EPBM hyperbaric intervention and changing cutter tools working under air pressure. Due to the special geological conditions and no useful reference or criterion about gas permeability in such stratum all over the world, gas permeability test is done to fetch air loss data in natural state and bentonite-added state.Based on the practical situation of ChengDu Metro Line 1-Lot 3 project, by using methods of site test and theoretical analysis,the air loss before/after bentonite is added are given: At the air pressure of 1.0 bar, the air loss with bentonite added is 27% of that without bentonite. The acreage of pressure air loss around excavation face is from 35.2 m2 (In case of half chamber muck and bentonite slurry is 100% in effect around shield machine) to 129.6m2 (In case of empty chamber and bentonite slurry is 50% in effect around shield machine), providing reference in choosing air compressor, also for other project in this stratum and similar project.


Eosinophilic myocarditis (EM) is a rare cause of cardiac arrest and cardiogenic shock. However, in the cardiac transplant population on immunosuppressive therapy this phenomenon has never been described. We report a case of a patient 3 years after heart transplantation who suffered a cardiac arrest and had allograft biventricular failure with histological evidence suggestive of EM.


Background
We assessed prevalence and risk factors for anal human papillomavirus (HPV) in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive men who have sex with men (MSM), who are at high-risk of HPV-related anal cancer.

Methods
APACHES is a multicentric, prospective study of anal HPV infection and lesions in HIV-positive MSM aged ≥35 years. At baseline, participants underwent anal swabs for HPV and cytology, plus high-resolution anoscopy. High-risk HPV (HR-HPV) was tested by Cobas4800, with genotyping of HR-HPV positives by PapilloCheck.

Results
Among 490 participants, prevalence of HPV16 and HR-HPV was 29% and 70%, respectively, and did not differ significantly by age, sexual behavior, or markers of HIV or immune deficiency. Smoking was the only, albeit weak (odds ratio, 1.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-2.7), predictor of HR-HPV. High-risk HPV and HPV16 prevalence increased strongly with anal diagnosis severity, both by worse cytological/histological (composite) diagnosis at APACHES baseline and worse historical diagnosis. HPV16 rose from 19% among participants who were negative for lesions to 63% among participants with high-grade lesions. In contrast, non-HPV16 HR-HPVs were less prevalent in high-grade (37%) than negative (64%) composite diagnosis, and their causal attribution was further challenged by multiple HPV infections.

Conclusions
Human papillomavirus 16 is ubiquitously frequent among human immunodeficiency virus -positive men having sex with men, and more strongly associated with high-grade anal lesions than other high-risk types, confirming it as a target for anal cancer prevention.


ligAim:l/ig The aim of the study was to describe the characteristics of volunteers who remained active in the home-based
care project located in Tzaneen (Limpopo Province) and thereby assist the project leaders to improve the recruitment and quality of the service in the future.
lbrgligMethodology:l/ig Structured questionnaires were completed with all the available volunteers trained during 1999. The questionnaires were quantitatively analysed manually.
lbrgligResults:l/ig Ninety-six (96) people attended the introductory phase of the home-based care course during 1999. Seventy-one
(71) were volunteers and 25 were people living with HIV. Forty-six (46) of the participants completed the questionnaires
(44 volunteers plus two people living with HIV working as volunteers). Twenty-seven (27) volunteers could not be
traced, as they were no longer active in the project. The following factors were associated with active volunteers:
lolg
llig Marriedl/lig
llig Femalel/lig
llig >30 years of agel/lig
llig Breadwinners themselves or have a husband/spouse who is the breadwinner.l/lig
l/olg
lbrgligConclusions:l/ig Presently, most of the active volunteers are married, female, older than 30 and are the breadwinner themselves or have a husband who is the breadwinner.


Background—A child's cancer affects their entire family and is a source of chronic stress for a sick child, as well as for their parents and siblings. It deprives them of the feeling of security; introduces uncertainty, fear and anxiety; and destabilises their life. It mobilises the family since they have to reconcile the treatment and frequent appointments at the hospital with the hardships of everyday life. The emotional burden they have to deal with is enormous. Recognition of the needs of such a family allows for the implementation of support, psychosocial care and psychoeducation, as well as the provision of reliable information. Patients and Methods—A population survey was conducted between 2015 and 2020. Caregivers of children diagnosed with cancer were invited to participate in the study to assess their problems and needs. Results—All respondents in their legal status were parents of children with cancer. The study included 800 people, where women accounted for 85% and men accounted for 15%. The mean age of the mother was 38.09, SD = 7.25, and the mean age of the father was 41.11, SD = 7.03. The occurrence of problems negatively correlated with both the age of the parents (p < 0.0001) and the level of education (p < 0.0001). Parents who admitted having financial problems more often reported problems of a different kind; moreover, financial problems were more often reported by parents of children who were ill for a longer time (p = 0.01). Conclusions—Parents of children suffering from cancer reported numerous psychological, social and somatic problems. The identification of problems through screening should translate into specific interventions, thus creating support for the families of children with cancer. Promoting coping with difficult emotions and the ability to solve problems when a child is ill has a positive effect on the functioning of the family.


In this paper, using a deep neural network and a genetic algorithm, an optimized digital metasurface is designed to trap sunlight in thin-film solar cells. The deep neural network is trained using full-wave numerical simulation results as the training dataset, and it is designed to predict the electromagnetic response of thin-film solar cells whose active layers are shaped as a digital metasurface. The developed neural network can predict the results much faster than full-wave solvers and therefore can be used for optimization purposes. Using the results generated by the trained neural network, an evolutionary procedure based on the genetic algorithm is developed to find the optimum structure for the digital metasurface, which provides the highest short circuit current inside the thin-film solar cell. The performance of the resultant optimum design is validated using full-wave numerical simulation illustrating a short circuit current of 15.39mA/cm2 and 13.30mA/cm2 for TE and TM polarization of the incident light, respectively. The resultant short circuit current is 2.47 and 2.13 times higher than a simple thin-film solar cell with the same amount of silicon inside, for TE and TM polarization of the incident light, respectively. To have a more comprehensive comparison, the designed optimum structure is compared with several standard shapes for the metasurface, such as star and plus sign. This comparison showed that the optimum structure provides a short circuit current which is much higher than the current achieved by standard shapes.


Simulations and experiments in the fusion and plasma physics community generate large datasets at remote sites. Visualization and analysis of these datasets are difficult because of the incompatibility among the various data formats adopted by simulation, experiments, and analysis tools, and the large sizes of analyzed data. Grids and Web services technologies are capable of providing solutions for such heterogeneous settings, but need to be customized to the field-specific needs and merged with distributed technologies currently used by the community. This paper describes how we are addressing these issues in the fusion grid service under development. We also present performance results of relevant data transfer mechanisms.


The possibility is studied to create a sodium (circuit in an AMTEC type conversion device. The proposeid circuit is based on a heat pipe that includes the evaporation-condensation cycle. Different layouts based on this principle are presented. The proposed circuit is characterized by the following advantages: no need for an electromagnetic pump; low load on the converter; and a better capability to control temperature drop at the converter.


Input-output models are attractive for the study of pollution problems because they can trace pollutant flows through the whole economy. The purpose of this paper is to show how input-output models, while easily adaptable for the case of pollution generated by producers and falling on consumers, are unable to handle pollution affecting producers and then to show how an essentially neoclassical model of pollution falling on producers can be put into an input-output context. In the neoclassical model pollution affecting producers has a dual effect on commodity prices and resource endowments. The dual effects of pollution are then interpreted by appealing to two theorems of international trade.


Document Summarization is a very challenging task in text mining. Summarizing a large document in concise short sentences which is a subgroup of the initial text is called as extractive summarization. There are various applications of text summarization, but here the CNN News articles are summarized to its key sentences. In this project, Topic Modeling Algorithm the Latent Dirichlet Allocation is used to generate extractive text summarization. It is used in capturing important topics from the text and later using distribution weighting mechanism sentences are fetched from the text. The model performs well on the data andfetchesthesummaryforthenewsarticle. Thishelpsinsaving timetoreadlongtextsordocuments. Document summarization is a means of deriving significant and relevant data from the document and to make a piece of comprehensive and meaningful information. In this project, an extractive summarization of large documents is carried out using documentissegmentedinalistofsentencesandappliedto the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to extract main topics. Then using the frequency of words of those topics in sentences, key sentences are extracted having highest distribution to summarize the text. The report is structured below in following sections. The Literature Review in Section II which discusses the work of various authors towards document summarization and LDA. The Section III specifies the actual methodology implemented using LDA model and includes data processing. Empirical results in text modeling and document summarization are discussed in the segment IV. Finally, Section V bestows the conclusion and the futurescope. Summarizing these information is of great importance and a need. Document Summarization has turned into a significant research in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Big Data arenas. The extractive summarization using topic modeling LDA algorithm successfully generates a summary ofimportant sentences from the original document. It also provides good level of topic diversity. Later on, we might want to investigate progressively target works and improve the summary generation further and utilize diverse topic modeling techniques. Likewise, we mean to assess our way to deal with various dialects. There is a future scope of generating abstractive summaries which are more human like summaries and will require heavy machine learning tools for semantic language generation.


For one/two semester courses in Engineering and Computer Science at the freshman/sophomore level. Engineering Problem Solving With C++, Fourth Edition provides a clear, concise introduction to engineering problem solving with C++ as well as the object-oriented features of the C++ programming language. The authors proven five-step problem solving methodology is presented and then incorporated in every chapter of the text. The chapters in this text are designed to give the instructor flexibility in the ordering of topics with chapter topics covering the essentials of mathematical computations, character data, control structures, functions, arrays, classes, and pointers. Outstanding engineering and scientific applications are used throughout; all applications are centered around the theme of engineering challenges in the 21st century with an emphasis on incorporating real-world engineering and scientific examples and problems.


Snapshot FLASH preceded by a preparation sequence is used to measure NMR parameters. Some preparation information is lost during snapshot FLASH acquisition as the magnetization evolves towards the steady state. This problem is often addressed by assuming that image intensity is proportional to the central k‐space line, which may be sampled immediately after preparation using a centric‐reordered scheme. Although some limitations of this assumption have been discussed, they are often ignored in parameter measurement. In this study, magnetization evolution effects in snapshot FLASH were investigated by computer simulation and phantom experiments in the context of T2 measurement. It was found that the standard analysis may lead to significant error in parameter measurement. Some improvement may be obtained using a more sophisticated analysis to take account of magnetization evolution. However, at the expense of a 50% reduction in signal intensity, accurate values may be obtained by a novel method that uses crusher gradients to eliminate evolved magnetization. Magn Reson Med 41:63‐71, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


There are two main approaches to the distributed representation of words: low-dimensional deep learning embeddings and high-dimensional distributional models, in which each dimension corresponds to a context word. In this paper, we combine these two approaches by learning embeddings based on distributional-model vectors - as opposed to one-hot vectors as is standardly done in deep learning. We show that the combined approach has better performance on a word relatedness judgment task.


Virtual travel agents are opportunistic internet-based travel agents. They are intermediary businesses that create mutually beneficial three-party transactions that secure accommodations for a traveler that: (a) meet the basic needs of the traveler (at a discount), (b) fills vacant room for accommodation retailers with guests that pay below market, but above standard costs, and (c) profit from the extra cash, the margin in the transaction. The virtual intermediary's eye is always on the discount and the cash flow. One of the things that catches their attention are the accommodation taxes which they collect from the traveler in advance and remit to the accommodation retailer when they are invoiced for the room. Needless to say, there are incentives to minimize consumption taxes on the part of the intermediary just as there are counter-incentives on the part of revenue authorities to prevent revenue losses. Unclear statutes exacerbate these problems. Canada is unique among the system considered, and their experience with intermediaries is very informative. It is the only system considered here where there are consumption taxes on accommodations at three levels of government (federal, provincial and local). A considerable amount of Canadian thought has gone into how to harmonize these taxes, how to deal with compliance and enforcement issues, as well as what to do about the very difficult problem of the non-resident, non-registered intermediary engaged in reselling accommodations at a discount. Only Canada analyses this problem triangularly. The model adopted federally in the GST/HST and in the Province of Quebec is a drop shipment model. The Canadian approach is similar to the way California handles drop shipments. The paper concludes by applying Canadian and European insights to this problem, and suggests statutory approaches to this issue in the US and Japan.


Activation of G-proteins by internal perfusion with GTP-gamma-S or external application of carbachol resulted in oscillations of cytoplasmic Ca2+ in isolated mouse pancreatic beta-cells. The Ca2+ transients were associated with the generation of K+ currents sufficiently pronounced to induce marked pulses of hyperpolarization. The oscillatory G-protein response remained largely unaffected when altering the membrane potential. The oscillations became less frequent in the presence of 1 mM neomycin and disappeared when the cells were internally perfused with 100 micrograms/ml heparin. The frequency of the oscillations was positively correlated with the basal level of cytoplasmic Ca2+. Addition of Ca2+ to the internal perfusion medium increased the oscillatory rate and buffering of the ion with Indo-1 or EGTA had the opposite effect. It is concluded that G-protein activation results in cyclic mobilisation of intracellular calcium mediated by inositol-1,4,5-triphosphate and that the basal concentration of cytoplasmic Ca2+ is an important determinant for the frequency of the oscillations.


The bred vector (BV) technique applied to the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Mars General Circulation Model (MGCM) identifies regions and seasons of instability of the Martian atmosphere, and a kinetic energy equation applied to the control and perturbed states elucidates their physical origins. Instabilities prominent in the late autumn to early spring seasons of each hemisphere along the polar temperature front result from baroclinic conversions from BV potential to BV kinetic energy near the surface, whereas both baroclinic and barotropic conversions play a role for the westerly jets aloft. The low‐level tropics and the northern hemisphere summer are relatively stable, with negative bred vector growth rates. Bred vector growth precedes initiation of travelling wave activity in the midlatitudes during the transition seasons, and their structure relates to the eddy field. Topography plays a role in determining favoured locations for near‐surface instabilities. Bred vectors are also linked to forecast ensemble spread in data assimilation and help explain the growth of forecast errors. We finally note that the ability to use breeding to identify instabilities as well as their physical origin depends on the fact that both the control and the perturbed solutions that give rise to bred vectors satisfy exactly the model's governing equations. As a result, this approach can be used with any dynamical system represented by a model. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society


Background/Objective Central nervous system (CNS) anomalies are the most serious congenital abnormalities. Ultrasound examination is an effective and noninvasive modality for prenatal diagnosis of these anomalies. The purpose of the current study was to determine the frequency of CNS and associated abnormalities. Patients and Methods A total of 22500 pregnant women who were referred by obstetricians/gynecologists for routine work up of pregnancy were scanned over a period of 3 years by two expert sonologists in a referral center using high resolution ultrasound unit. Results After transabdominal sonographic examination of 22500 pregnant women, 112 (0.5%) fetuses were detected with CNS anomalies, some of whom had more than one anomaly. Forty-one (37%) Chiari malformations, 26 (23%) monro and aqueductal stenosis cases, 18 (16%) anencephaly cases, nine (8%) encephaloceles, seven (6%) microcephalies, five (4%) Dandywalker syndromes, two (2%) arachnoid cysts, two (2%) agenesis of corpus callosum cases, one (1%) holoprosencephaly and one (1%) schizencephaly were reported in our study. Conclusion According to our results, Chiari malformation and hydrocephalus were the most prevalent anomalies of CNS congenital abnormalities in East Azarbaijan, Iran. An accurate diagnosis depends upon fetal age, amniotic fluid volume, fetal position, operator experience and careful evaluation of the associated malformations, which are often present.


We consider the problem of learning the optimal policy for infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs). For this purpose, some variant of Stochastic Mirror Descent is proposed for convex programming problems with Lipschitz-continuous functionals. An important detail is the ability to use inexact values of functional constraints and compute the value of dual variables. We analyze this algorithm in a general case and obtain an estimate of the convergence rate that does not accumulate errors during the operation of the method. Using this algorithm, we get the first parallel algorithm for mixing average-reward MDPs with a generative model without reduction to discounted MDP. One of the main features of the presented method is low communication costs in a distributed centralized setting, even with very large networks.


Background Functional outcomes are central in patients with chronic inflammatory musculoskeletal diseases. In a secondary data analysis of the GO-REVEAL trial (NCT00265096), we investigated wether structural damage is linked to functional impairment in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), a link that is still elusive in this disease. Methods We analysed 363 patients enrolled in the GO-REVEAL study and obtained modified Sharp/van der Heijde Scores (mSvdHS) from X-rays performed at baseline, after 24, 52 and 104 weeks. Using longitudinal analyses, we assessed the effect of total mSvdHS (and its subscores, joint space narrowing (JSN) and erosions (ERO)) on functional status (measured by the Health Assessment Questionnaire) in all patients and in those attaining remission (n=117). Furthermore, we analysed wether structural damage reduces the responsiveness of functional limitations to treatment in a subgroup of responders who had functional impairment at baseline (n=67). Additionally, internal and external validation analyses were performed. Results The effect of damage on function was seen in the disease activity-adjusted models using total mSvdHS (p=0.005), JSN (p=0.019) and ERO (p=0.001) as well as in the remission analyses for mSvdHS (p=0.029) and JSN (p=0.010), respectively. Functional responsiveness was limited by increasing total mSvdHS (p=0.010), JSN (p=0.002) and ERO (p=0.040). The results were validated using other functional outcomes and in an independent clinical cohort. Conclusions In PsA, structural damage, particularly JSN, has implications for physical function. Functional outcomes have an irreversible component that is strongly related to the extent of joint destruction. This needs to be considered when targeting functional outcomes in clinical practice.


OBJECTIVE
We investigated the effects of therapy cushions on the in-seat and on-task behaviors of 2 kindergarten students with autism spectrum disorder during math activities.

METHOD
We used a single-subject A-B-A-B-C design across 2 male participants who used chairs during baseline phases (A) and cushions during intervention phases (B). We included a choice phase (C) to determine participant seating preferences. Social validity was addressed by assessing teacher and participant seating preferences. Data were graphed and visually analyzed for functionally relevant changes between phases.

RESULTS
No clinically relevant changes in the in-seat or on-task behaviors of either participant were observed with cushion use. CONCLUSION. Therapy cushions may not impose sufficient postural demands or provide adequate sensory input to produce behavioral changes. Continued research in this area is needed.


Introduction: Informal carers are increasingly relied on for support by older people and the health and social care systems that serve them. It is therefore important that health and social care professionals are knowledgeable about and responsive to informal carers' needs. This study explores informal carers' own needs within the context of caregiving; and examines, from the informal carers' perspective, the extent to which professionals assess, understand and are responsive to informal carers' needs. Methods: We interviewed (2016–2018) 47 informal carers of older people being served by 12 integrated care initiatives across seven countries in Europe. The interviews were thematically coded inductively and analysed. Results: Informal carers reported that professionals treated them with respect and made efforts to assess and respond to their needs. However, even though professionals encouraged informal carers to look after themselves, informal carers' needs (e.g., for respite, healthcare) were insufficiently addressed, and informal carers tended to prioritize older people's needs over their own. Discussion and conclusion: Informal carers need better support in caring for their own health. Health professionals should have regular contact with informal carers and proactively engage them in ongoing needs assessment, setting action plans for addressing their needs, and identifying/accessing appropriate support services. This will be important if informal carers are to continue their caregiving role without adverse effects to themselves.