Both an individual's genotype and environment govern its phenotype, and this phenotype may have extended consequences for species interactions and communities. We examined the importance of plant genotype and environmental factors operating at large (habitat) and small (microhabitat) spatial scales in affecting a multitrophic arthropod community on plants. We planted 926 plants from 14 genotypes of Oenothera biennis into five natural habitats that represent the range of environments in which this plant locally occurs. Genotypic differences among plants accounted for as much as 41% of the variation in arthropod diversity (Simpson's diversity index) and also affected arthropod evenness, richness, abundance, and biomass on individual plants. However, the effects of particular plant genotypes on the arthropod community varied across habitats (i.e., there were significant plant genotype-by-habitat interactions). Plant genotype explained more variation in the arthropod community than did environmental variation among microhabitats, but less variation than habitats, as predicted by the scale-dependent hypothesis. Herbivores and omnivores were more strongly affected by plant genetic variation than predators, consistent with the notion that phytophagous insects undergo stronger reciprocal interactions with plants than do predators. We detected heritable variation in arthropod community variables and the ability for the herbivore community to select on plant traits, suggesting that evolution in O. biennis can lead to changes in the arthropod community. Genetic variation in plant size, architecture, and reproductive phenology were the plant traits most strongly correlated with arthropod community variables. Our results demonstrate that genotype-by-environment interactions are a major determinant of arthropod community structure.


General situation and development conditions of Shigang Village in Shexian County, Hebei Province were introduced, "Shigang Pattern" based on ecotourism was analyzed from 3 perspectives: development objective, overall layout and development pattern. Shigang Village has explored a new rural development road of "eco-agriculture driving tourism industry, and tourism industry in turn promoting modern agriculture" supported by greenhouse vegetable base and Yuquan Water Park. Enlightenment of the construction of ecological model village in Taihang Mountains was obtained as: making plans for instructing scientific decision-making; promoting development of pillar industries based on local conditions; focusing on both material and spiritual civilization, motivating cultural life of the locals; developing advantages and promoting the construction of ecological civilization.


A convenient, rapid and metal free synthesis of 5-substituted-1H-tetrazoles is described by [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction of nitriles with sodium azide. The reaction was catalyzed by cuttlebone in DMSO at 110 C. Cycloaddition reaction of nitriles with sodium azide happened in the presence of mesoporous cuttlebone by "electrophilic activation" of nitriles through hydrogen bond formation between the cuttlebone and nitrile. Cuttlebone as a natural low cost heterogeneous catalyst with high porosity, high flexural stiffness, high compressive strength and high thermal stability affords 5-substituted-1Htetrazoles rapidly with high efficiency.


A number of woven fabrics are selected and their rustling sounds recorded. The spectra forms of these recorded sounds are then obtained by FFT. The level pressure of total sound (LPT) is calculated to evaluate sound loudness of specimens. Level range (ΔL) and frequency differences (Δf) are used to quantify sound spectra shapes. Linear trends in frequency with autoregressive errors are fitted to amplitude, and three coefficients (ARF, ARE, ARC) of the functions are obtained. KES-FB is used for mechanical property measure ments. Fabrics with the same fiber type show similar spectra shapes. Silk and polyester satin fabrics generally make the quietest sounds with low LPT, and they also have lower ARC values. Silk crepe de chine shows the highest level range value (ΔL). ARC values are significantly correlated to LPT. The sound parameters of each fiber group are predicted with some mechanical properties such as bending, shear, compression, and surface properties, fabric thickness, and weight by stepwise regressions.


Tin indium oxides (ITO) are the transparent conductor oxides (TCO) that currently have the best properties. However, the shortage of Indium and, therefore, its high cost make it necessary to search for new TCO materials, which are consolidated as more economically viable alternatives. In this sense, the use ZnO, a cheap, abundant and non-toxic, with a resistivity comparable to that of ITOs. In this sense, zinc oxides doped with indium have been studied to improve optoelectronic properties. Based on these considerations, several terms of the homologous series In2ZnkO3+k were prepared, with an exhaustive control of the synthesis conditions. The structural and microstructural characterization has allowed us to establish the relationship between the structure and the properties of the materials. The main challenges is to elucidate the origin of the modulation that occurs within the structural blocks of In/ZnO through the use of microscopic techniques with atomic resolution. Only in higher terms, disorderly intercreases between different members was observed. A displacement modulation in the homologous series structures for k> 6, according to a sinusoidal function in the basal plane and parallel to the c direction was observed by corrected aberration HRTEM. This modulation becomes compositional by doping the materials with other trivalent metal cations. In the cathodoluminescence spectra a main, wide and complex band between 1.5 and 2 eV is observed, whose intensity increases markedly with k, possibly related to the presence of In3+ in interstitial positions of the trigonal bipyramid. A second band of interest for k = 3-7 terms, centered at ~ 2.4 eV whose origin would be related to the formation of the ternary is observed. These results seem to indicate that the luminescent response can be regulated depending on the composition of the materials, in order to understand the luminescent behavior and explore further technological applications of these materials.


We derive the near- to mid-infrared period–magnitude relations and the period–bolometric luminosity relation of OGLE-III Mira-like variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The relations have a kink, and the period at which the break occurs is quantitatively obtained. There are many Mira-like variables whose fluxes at the optical and near-infrared wavebands are fainter than those predicted by the period–magnitude relations. The deviation is a result of the circumstellar extinction, and the amount of deviation is found to be strongly correlated with near-infrared colours. We derive the empirical formulae relating the amount of deviation and the near-infrared colours. These relations are useful to accurately calculate the distances to the dusty Mira-like variables, because the dimmed fluxes resulting from the circumstellar extinction can be estimated. In a manner analogous to the interstellar extinction law, the ratios of deviations at any two different wavebands are calculated. The ratios are found to change with the pulsation period, indicating that the dust properties are subject to change as Mira-like variables evolve.


The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. This article investigates the effect of the Great Recession on child poverty across the EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland and studies the extent to which social protection spending may have softened the negative impact of the economic crisis on children. While the risks of child poverty are substantially higher in countries with higher rates of working-age unemployment, suggesting a significant impact of the Great Recession on household incomes via the labour market, the study finds evidence for social protection spending cushioning the blow of the crisis at least to some extent. Children were significantly less likely to be poor in countries with higher levels of social protection spending in 2008–2013, even after controlling for the socio-demographic structure of the population, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the working-age unemployment rate. The poverty-dampening contextual effect of social spending was greater for the poverty risks of children in very low work intensity families and large families. The study uses two complementary thresholds of income poverty, both based on 60 percent of the national median: a relative poverty line and a threshold anchored in 2008. Although the choice of a poverty line makes a difference to aggregate child poverty rates, individual-level risks of a child being poor associated with a range of household-level characteristics are similar for the two poverty lines.


Background. The frontal recess area represents a challenge to ENT surgeons due to its narrow confines and variable anatomy. Several types of cells have been described in this area. The agger nasi cells are the most constant ones. The frontal cells, originally classified by Kuhn into 4 types, have been reported in the literature to exist in 20%–41% of frontal recesses. Aim of the Study. To identify the prevalence of frontal recess cells and their relation to frontal sinus disease. Methods. Coronal and axial CT scans of paranasal sinuses of 70 patients admitted for functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) were reviewed to identify the agger nasi, frontal cells, and frontal sinus disease. Data was collated for right and left sides separately. Results. Of the 140 sides reviewed, 126 (90%) had agger nasi and 110 (78.571%) had frontal cells. 37 frontal sinuses were free of mucosal disease, 48 were partly opacified, and 50 were totally opacified. There was no significant difference found in frontal sinus mucosal disease in presence or absence of frontal cells or agger nasi. Conclusions. The current study shows that frontal cells might be underreported in the literature, as the prevalence identified is noticeably higher than previous studies.


Low dimensional representations of words allow accurate NLP models to be trained on limited annotated data. While most representations ignore words' local context, a natural way to induce context-dependent representations is to perform inference in a probabilistic latent-variable sequence model. Given the recent success of continuous vector space word representations, we provide such an inference procedure for continuous states, where words' representations are given by the posterior mean of a linear dynamical system. Here, efficient inference can be performed using Kalman filtering. Our learning algorithm is extremely scalable, operating on simple cooccurrence counts for both parameter initialization using the method of moments and subsequent iterations of EM. In our experiments, we employ our inferred word embeddings as features in standard tagging tasks, obtaining significant accuracy improvements. Finally, the Kalman filter updates can be seen as a linear recurrent neural network. We demonstrate that using the parameters of our model to initialize a non-linear recurrent neural network language model reduces its training time by a day and yields lower perplexity.


The Supreme Court needs to adopt a code of ethics and a better system for handling recusals. Above all, the Court needs to begin treating recusals seriously, as matters involving legal and constitutional rights, rather than as matters calling for the simple exercise of judicial discretion. The Justices need to articulate standards and give reasons for their decisions, if they are to act, and to be perceived as acting, in the way in which courts normally are thought and expected to act. And while I agree with Professor Lubet that the Justices of the Supreme Court, like all other judges, should be subject to an integrated code of conduct that details their ethical responsibilities with as much precision as the subject matter allows, this agreement raises substantial additional questions: what role, if any, should Congress have in solving these problems? For example, can or should Congress require the Court to adopt a specific code of conduct, as H.R. 862 purports to do, or should it simply require that the Court adopt some code of conduct of its choosing?I also agree that the Court should institute a more effective mechanism for handling recusals — meaning a mechanism that encourages greater deliberation, consistency, and transparency in decision-making, gives appropriate weight to constitutional values in adjudication, facilitates objectively reasonable results, and promotes public confidence in the administration of justice. And yet I have some question as to whether en banc consideration of recusal motions necessarily would provide the best solution to the problem. Given the Justices' apparently longstanding reluctance to take the subject as seriously as it warrants, I question whether en banc consideration would necessarily lead to more deliberation or to better or more consistent results. Might not the requirement of en banc consideration simply produce recusal determinations that are formally styled as constituting decisions "by the Court," while actually being determinations that have been left, more or less, to the discretion of an individual Justice? Might not this diffusion of responsibility result in even less accountability? In addition, en banc consideration might not be conducive to the development of that sense of individual responsibility that is essential to the proper disposition of those cases in which possible grounds for recusal exist, but no motion has been filed, either because the putative movant is not aware of the relevant facts or because he or his lawyer believes that the potential costs or possibly negative repercussions of filing such a motion are too great.


Process hazard analysis (PHA) is used to identify hazard scenarios. These hazard scenarios may be initiated by single or multiple failures. Other scenario events, such as the responses of safeguards, are also subject to multiple failure, and enabling events may combine with initiating events or other scenario events to produce a type of multiple failure. If multiple failures are not addressed in PHA, important scenarios may be missed, and the risks of scenarios may be underestimated. This article describes the meaning and types of multiple failures that are possible, discusses their importance, and provides an approach for addressing them in PHA. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 32: 361–364, 2013


Colloids are particles with a size in the nano- to micrometer range that are dispersed in a solvent, and that due to collisions from the solvent molecules, undergo Brownian motion. In most cases, the surface of the colloid acquires a net charge due to dissociation of chemical groups at the surface. In this thesis, we present results of computer simulations on the phase behavior of charged colloidal suspensions using various levels of description: Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory, DLVO theory with effective many-body interactions, and the primitive model.

We make two attempts to amend the DLVO theory to include many-body interactions: (i) density-dependent truncation and (ii) three-body interactions. In the case of three-body interactions, we find at low salt concentration a very broad coexistence between a fluid and a dense face-centered-cubic (fcc) phase, while at intermediate salt concentration a broad body-centered-cubic (bcc)-fcc coexistence regime appears. However, in our primitive model calculations, we did not find any broad coexistence regions or any other manifestations of three-body interactions. Thus, the effective Hamiltonian of charged colloids seems to be better described by the standard pairwise DLVO potential, than by a Hamiltonian including a density-dependent truncation or three-body interactions.

We study the gas-liquid critical point of asymmetric electrolyte mixtures consisting of large multivalent macroions and small monovalent co- and counterions. The system can be seen as a binary mixture of colloids with their counterions and salt at strong electrostatic coupling. We calculate the critical point locus that connects the salt-free state consisting of macroions and counterions with the pure salt state.

We calculate the ground-state phase diagram of a mixture of large and small (size ratio 0.31) oppositely charged colloids. The phase diagram displays novel structures, but also colloidal analogs of simple-salt structures and of doped fullerene C60 structures. Three of the predicted structures were also observed experimentally. We also calculate the phase diagrams of (i) the restricted primitive model (RPM) and (ii) screened Coulomb particles. We show that the two phase diagrams are qualitatively similar, and more importantly that both contain a new experimentally observed solid phase, which is a colloidal analogue of the CuAu structure.

We also look at the effect of external electric or magnetic fields on the phase behavior of charged colloids and study charged colloids in gravity. The phase diagram charged colloids in an external electric or magnetic field shows fluid, fcc, hexagonal-close-packed (hcp), body-centered-orthorhombic (bco), and body-centered-tetragonal (bct) phases. The phase diagram is in agreement with the experimental phase diagram. We show that gravity gives rise to a macroscopic charge separation of colloids and microions, provided the added salt concentration is low enough. The mechanism is due to the intricate balance between colloidal and ionic entropy, potential energy, and electrostatic energy. The electric field that is generated by the charge separation is shown to be such that it largely compensates the gravitational force on the colloids. Therefore, the colloids are lifted to altitudes much larger than their gravitational length and one observes highly non-barometric sedimentation profiles.


Background: Previous reports on perioperative mortality associated with hip arthroplasty have not documented, to our knowledge, patient characteristics and surgical factors that increase the likelihood of death. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of and associated risk factors for perioperative death after elective hip arthroplasty. Methods: The records of 30,714 consecutive patients who had undergone elective hip arthroplasty at our institution from 1969 to 1997 were retrospectively reviewed to identify patients who had died within thirty days after the procedure. Mortality rates were determined according to age, gender, diagnosis, implant type, and fixation mode. Results: Ninety deaths occurred within thirty days after elective total hip arthroplasty, for an overall mortality rate of 0.29% (ninety of 30,714). The thirty-day mortality rate was significantly higher for patients with preexisting cardiovascular disease (p < 0.0001), male patients (p < 0.0001), and patients who were seventy years of age or older (p < 0.0002). The mortality rate was slightly, but not significantly, higher for patients with an underlying diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (p < 0.36) and those receiving cemented implants (p < 0.57). There was no difference in the thirty-day mortality rate for revision as compared with primary hip arthroplasty (p < 0.92). Conclusions: Factors that are associated with an increased risk of mortality within thirty days after elective hip arthroplasty include an older age, male gender, and a history of cardiorespiratory disease. There has been a significant decline in the thirty-day mortality rate after elective hip arthroplasty in the last decade (p < 0.0002); during the 1990s, the overall rate at our institution was 0.15% (twenty-three of 14,989).


Nowadays, the general trend towards to minimally invasive interventions is present in all the medical domains. For the surgical intervertebral spinal disc cutting or removal domain, it is particularly a necessity because the manual methods currently employed are tedious, time consuming and taxing on the hands of the practitioner. In that context, new devices that are small enough to pass through a small opening in the skin or through a small portal are required. A detailed analysis of current cutting methods that are or could be used for disc and disc nucleus removal provided that ultrasonics technology should be investigated as a possible solution. The study of ultrasonics technology to fulfil the overall cutting function needed for spinal annulus and nucleus disc material removal is based on a design methodology that breaks down the overall cutting function in many partial functions. The applied design methodology consists in drawing a complete catalogue of solutions for each partial function. Based on a predetermined choice of criteria for each partial function, the evaluation and the classification of each solution allows determination of the best solutions for each partial function. A new ultrasonic transducer designed device composed of a piezoelectric stack for the source of energy and movement, a transmission partial function with rods or discs, an amplification partial function with exponential horns and the cutting partial function solutions is detailed. Existing analytical methods for the design of ultrasonic transducers are mostly based on quarter wavelength segments used to build the transducer. The modeling of that transducers with a finite element method (FEM) avoids building the prototypes and constitutes progress. Analytical models different from the quarter wavelength approach have already been developed and are very useful when used in an optimization process. Furthermore, when the geometry of the analyzed model is not straightforward, a FEM optimization approach to solve that kind of problems can be a valid solution too. Some existing optimization algorithms and other already developed pseudo-gradient methods applied to optimize the analytical models of the ultrasonic transducers are not valid for numerical optimizations where the computing time is a key factor. This leads to the development a new genetic algorithm (GA) optimization methods. One advantage being that the number of parameters to be optimized does not change the complexity of the algorithm unlike other algorithms. Three GAs with improvements done on different parts are discussed, implemented and tested. One GA is chosen to optimize the transducer model with numerical methods. As the main drawback with FE optimizations is the amount of computation time spent for each simulation, this creates a need to develop numerical 2D models that can be quickly simulated but with accurate results. Ultrasonic transducer prototypes are also built and measured. As the prototype has to be used for the cutting or the removal of spinal disc material, the cutting effect of the prototypes has been tested and evaluated.


Abraham Maslow and Timothy Leary are 2 of the most well-known American psychologists from the mid-20th century. Less well-known, however, is their pioneering methodological work. In this article we explicate their transgressive research, their epistemological visions, and their struggles to enact a more existential, historical, relational, participatory, and experientially focused human science. Using their personal documents, as well as published and unpublished works, we weave their stories to create an assemblage of these unknown, unacknowledged, or forgotten histories. We try to show that, for both Maslow and Leary, the phenomena and questions they sought to understand drove them from the prevailing modernist ethos and toward new ways of thinking and working. In the process, they fashioned methods for, and visions of, science that have striking echoes in the contemporary qualitative traditions—experimenting with unquantified stories and texts as data, with iterative interpretive methods, with participatory research relationships, and with existential and postmodern philosophies of science. Of course, these bold forays into the unsanctioned forward edge of psychological inquiry were disciplined in different ways—expulsion for Leary and assimilation for Maslow, erasure for both—and this also is instructive for us. The experiences of these influential scholars reveal how the challenges and potentials of the use of personal documents in research were (and are) embedded in a broader struggle over the scientific and political value of human experience.


Australian carp gudgeons (Hypseleotris spp.) of the Murray–Darling basin are a species complex including sexually reproducing taxa and unisexual hybrid lineages that reproduce via hybridogenesis. Unisexual fish require gametes of a sexual species to propagate themselves and can be regarded as 'sexual parasites' capable of driving closed populations to extinction. Metapopulation dynamics have been proposed as a mechanism that could facilitate coexistence between a sexual parasite and its 'host'. This study evaluates whether patterns of spatial genetic variation are compatible with metapopulation dynamics for a sexually reproducing member of the carp gudgeon complex (Hypseleotris sp. HA), in the Granite Creeks system of central Victoria. Genetic differentiation of fish among all study sites was accommodated by a model of migration-drift equilibrium using decomposed pairwise regression analysis. Given that the population was divided into discrete patches in the form of refugial waterholes during the time of this study, we infer that spatially constrained source–sink metapopulation dynamics may be responsible for producing this pattern. It is therefore possible that metapopulation dynamics contribute to coexistence in the Granite Creeks carp gudgeon hybridogenetic system, and further analysis is required to determine the relative importance of environmental versus demographic factors towards patch extinction.


First class fiction at an appropriate interest level, the books in TreeTops More All Stars Pack 1A provide: quality stories by top authors and illustrators to challenge and motivate your children; the right level of content, at an appropriate interest level for Reception children; and careful text levelling to gradually build stamina. Also available are flexible Teaching Notes (ISBN 0-19-919593-5) to provide support for much more than guided reading. The other titles in "TreeTops More All Stars" Pack 1A are: "The Snow Troll", "Charlie Stories", "The Lazy Giant", "Squirrel", and "Terry Takes Off". They are available in a Pack of six (ISBN 0-19-919586-2) and a Class Pack (ISBN 0-19-919585-4), containing 6 of each title.


Frequent words tend to shorten. But do homophone pairs, such as time and thyme, shorten equally if one member of the pair is frequent? This study reports an analysis of roughly 90,000 tokens of homophones in the Switchboard corpus of American English telephone conversations, in which it was found that high-frequency words like time are significantly shorter than their low-frequency homophones like thyme. The effect of lemma frequency persisted when local speaking rate, predictability from neighboring words, position relative to pauses, syntactic category, and orthographic regularity were brought under statistical control. These findings have theoretical implications for the locus of frequency information in linguistic competence and in models of language production, and for the role of articulatory routinization in shortening.


A series of regioisomers of piperidylanthracenes (PA) and bis(piperidyl)anthracenes (BPA) were synthesized and their photophysical properties examined in solution, suspension, and the solid state. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) was observed only for 1,4-BPA and 9,10-BPA, in which two piperidyl groups are substituted at the anthracene moiety in the para-position with respect to each other. Compared to previously reported AIE luminogens, these easily obtainable para-substituted BPAs, exhibited several unique and beneficial features, such as simple structures, bright solid-state fluorescence (Φfl = 0.49 and 0.86 for 1,4-BPA and 9,10-BPA, respectively), tunable fluorescence emission, and large Stokes shifts. Results from diffuse-reflectance and fluorescence lifetime measurements demonstrated that PAs and BPAs intrinsically possess an efficient non-radiative transition pathway in the solid state, and that 1,4-BPA and 9,10-BPA may overcome this pathway. The X-ray crystallographic analysis of 1,4-BPA revealed that undesirable interchromophoric interactions can be minimised, while TD-DFT calculations suggested that the enhanced Stokes shift of 1,4-BPA arises from severe electronic repulsion between neighbouring piperidyl moieties, which presumably results in the absence of self-absorption.


▪ Abstract I fled with my parents from Hitler's Austria to Australia and studied physics at Sydney University. I obtained my Ph.D. in quantum electrodynamics with Rudolf Peierls at Birmingham University and came to Cornell to work with Hans Bethe. I have stayed at Cornell ever since, and I have essentially had only a single job in my whole life, but have switched fields quite often. I worked in nuclear astrophysics and in late-stellar evolution, estimated the Initial Mass Function for star formation and the metal enrichment of the interstellar medium. I suggested black hole accretion as the energy source for quasars, worked on molecule formation on dust grain surfaces, and was involved in 21-cm studies of gas clouds and disk galaxies. I collaborated with my wife on the neurobiology of the neuromuscular junction and with one of my daughters on the epidemiology of tuberculosis.


This study aims to produce valid and reliable assessment instruments to measure the affective domain of entrepreneurial learning in high school students. Measurement of entrepreneurial education tends to be in the cognitive and psychomotor domains, whereas entrepreneurial attitudes and mentality are fundamental and can be measured on affective domains. With the population of 630 11th grade students in Jakarta entrepreneurial workshop program, with a sample of 210 respondents with a random sampling technique. Limited testing is done, 30 students in the first trial by testing the validity and reliability of Alpha Cronbach and standardizing the instrument to 160 people for the second test to get the value of the validity and reliability of the entrepreneurial assessment instrument, and the third stage test for instrument standardization by measuring consistency, that met the Goodness of Fit criteria. The resulting instrument can be used to assess the affective domain of entrepreneurship learning in high school students, Dimensions entrepreneurial attitude indicators:
1. Business Opportunities: Reading business opportunity, Capturing business opportunities and Leveraging business opportunities.
2. Risks of business: Entrepreneurship failure, Ability to manage time.
3. Innovation: The ability to innovate, Ability to develop business.
Dimensions value of entrepreneurship indicator:
1. Look confident: Be independent, know your abilities.
2. Leadership: Be disciplined, Respect the opinions of others, Ability to find ideas.
3. Future orientation: Motivation for the future, Future planning.
4. Orientation on assignments and results: Accuracy in gathering assignments, working on tasks with your abilities.


Objective Infusion reaction is a major adverse event in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with infl iximab. The possible factors including Fcγ receptor (FcγR) polymorphism associated with the development of infusion reactions in patients with RA receiving infl iximab were prospectively examined. Methods 96 patients with RA were enrolled and scheduled to receive infl iximab at a dose of 3 mg/kg at weeks 0, 2 and 6 and every 8 weeks thereafter. Genetic polymorphisms for FcγR were examined in FCGR3A 176F/V and FCGR3B NA1/2 alleles by allele-specifi c PCR analysis. Results An infusion reaction was observed in 17 patients (18%) during 52 weeks of treatment with infl iximab. The FCGR3B NA1/NA1 genotype was found in 75% of the patients with infusion reactions and in only 37% of those without (p=0.01), whereas the FCGR3A 176F/V genotype was equally distributed in the patients with or without infusion reactions. Glucocorticoids were used in 53% of the patients who developed an infusion reaction and in 80% of those without an infusion reaction (p=0.02). A multivariable logistic regression model showed that the FCGR3B NA1/NA1 genotype and use of glucocorticoids at baseline could be used as independent predictive factors for infusion reactions (OR 6.1 (95% CI 1.9 to 24.3) and OR 0.26 (95% CI 0.08 to 0.84), respectively). The presence of anti-infl iximab antibody during infl iximab treatment was also associated with infusion reactions. Conclusion FCGR3B NA1/NA1 genotype, use of glucocorticoids and the presence of anti-infl iximab antibody accounted for nearly all patients with RA who developed infusion reactions.


In this paper we present a novel method for foreground segmentation. Our proposed approach follows a non-parametric background modeling paradigm, thus the background is modeled by a history of recently observed pixel values. The foreground decision depends on a decision threshold. The background update is based on a learning parameter. We extend both of these parameters to dynamic per-pixel state variables and introduce dynamic controllers for each of them. Furthermore, both controllers are steered by an estimate of the background dynamics. In our experiments, the proposed Pixel-Based Adaptive Segmenter (PBAS) outperforms most state-of-the-art methods.


A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article type: Original article Introduction: Previous studies have indicated that Ramadan fasting has beneficial effects on cardiovascular risk factors, specially blood pressure and heart rate (1). In the present study, the effect of Ramadan fasting on 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure and heart rate has been investigated. Method: This prospective observational study was conducted on two groups of individuals. Six patients under hypertension treatment were allocated to the case group and 12 healthy individuals were selected as the control group. Twenty-four-hour blood pressure monitoring was carried out during four periods: prior to Ramadan, during the first ten days and the last ten days of Ramadan, and one month after it. All patients continued their medication, which was administered twice per day. Twenty-four-hour mean blood pressure, weight, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference were compared among the groups. Results: In the case group, there was a significant reduction in subjects' weight during the third period of the experiment; also, a significant improvement was observed in the heart rate during the second and third periods in the case group (P<0.05, t-test). Conclusion: This study indicated a significant improvement in the subjects' heart rate over second and third periods of measurements; also, no high-risk variations in blood pressure or heart rate were observed among the subjects.


In Reply. —We selected patients who had either clear media or, at most, minimal yellowing of the lens nucleus and/or small white, peripheral cortical opacities, none of which obscured clear visibility of the macula. Of the 29 eyes, 18 had a wet type of macular degeneration based on subretinal and/or subpigment neovascularization evident on fluorescein angiography with varying amounts of retinal edema, hemorrhage, exudate, and/or a fibrotic macular scar. Eleven eyes showed none of the above but did manifest macular drusen, which was associated with an atrophic macular lesion in ten eyes. Our article did not mention the presence of macular cysts, holes, or cystoid macular edema because none was present in any of our cases. We also did not refer to the term geographic atrophy , as we consider this a descriptive as much as a diagnostic term. Had we studied patients with a localized, atrophic, circumscribed, macular lesion not


This article considers quality-based justifications for antitrust challenges to collaboration among health care professionals. It first examines doctrinal developments resisting such justifications and, with a skeptical eye, analyzes attempts to interject quality of care and worthy motive defenses into antitrust appraisals of horizontal restraints of trade. Next the article assesses the economic basis and the risks and benefits of a market failure defense that would allow some quality-enhancing restraints of trade to escape antitrust challenge. Its principle recommendation is that courts recognize a narrow, market failure defense subject to several limiting principles to cabin its reach. The article concludes by applying its suggested approach to the market failure defense in cases involving horizontal conspiracies in which defendants justified certain actions by invoking their salutary effects on quality of care.


Alstonia is the largest and most widespread genus of trees and shrubs in the subtribe Alstoniinae of the tribe Plumerieae of the Apocynaceae. Many of its species provide important timbers of commerce, and several species are used in traditional local medicine. The genus occurs in Central America, tropical Africa, and from the Himalayas and China to New South Wales in Australia, and has its centre of diversity in the Malesian region. This study aims to contribute to our still fragmentary knowledge of the tropical biodiversity, and provides a comprehensive survey of the macromorphological and pollen morphological diversity within the genus Alstonia (Chapter 2), a cladistic analysis based on this diversity (Chapter 3), a comparative wood anatomical study of three of the five sections with analyses of ecological and phylogenetic trends in the wood anatomical data (Chapter 4), and a full taxonomic revision of the entire genus (Chapter 5). In the taxonomic revision 43 species are recognised; five of them are new to science, including one which has previously been considered as var. annamensis of A. angustifolia. The five new species are A. penangiana, A. annamensis, A. beatricis, A. breviloba, and A. rubiginosa. Several species and taxa below the species level are reduced. For instance, A. brassii Monach. and A. glabriflora Markgr. appear to be synonyms of A. macrophylla Wall, ex G. Don; A. montana Turrill, A. reineckeana Lauterb., A. roeperi Van Heurck & Mull. Arg., A. vitiensis Seem., and. A. marquisensis M.L. Grant to be the synonyms of A. costata (G. Forst.) R. Br. No taxa below the species level are maintained. Regional and synoptical keys to all taxa are given. Species descriptions incorporate full synonymy and data on geographical distribution, habitat and ecology. For most species notes are added to explain the variation of characters and/or to point to the differences with other taxa. Uses (especially medicinal) and vernacular names are given when known. An identification list of all c. 4,200 specimens examined is given. The cladistic analysis, based on 68 characters (61 macromorphological and 7 palynological), using the closely related genus Dyera as outgroup, produced a single most parsimonious tree. The tree shows five distinct monophyletic groups which are maintained as the five sections recognised in the present study: Tonduzia, Monuraspermum, Alstonia, Blaberopus, and Dissuraspermum. Tonduzia, previously treated as a separate genus (Pittier, 1908), is nested in the cladogram, and is therefore treated here as a section of the genus Alstonia. The previously recognised section Winchia (Monachino, 1949) has to be united with section Alstonia. The cladogram is accepted as a working hypothesis for the phylogeny of Alstonia and the character transformations leading to the present morphological diversity are discussed. The three sections that have been studied wood anatomically are Monuraspermum, Alstonia, and Dissuraspermum. The wood anatomical characters support the infrageneric classification recognised on the basis of macromorphological and pollen morphological features. Vessel frequency, mean tangential vessel diameter, L/D ratio, ray frequency, presence or absence of laticifers, parenchyma distribution, fibre wall thickness, and fibre wall pitting are all, in various degrees, diagnostic to separate the light Alstonia timber group (= section Alstonia) from the heavy Alstonia group (including the other two sections studied). The sections Monuraspermum and Dissuraspermum can be separated on vessel frequency and mean tangential vessel diameter. Among the light Alstonia group, the swamp-inhabiting species have lower multiseriate rays than the non-swamp species presumably rooting in well-aerated soils. Among the species of the heavy Alstonia group (sections Monuraspermum and Dissuraspermum), the small trees and shrubs show a higher vessel frequency, smaller vessel diameter, shorter fibres, higher ray frequency, and higher multiseriate rays than the species growing into big trees, confirming a well-documented general trend of wood anatomical correlations with plant size and stem diameter. Mutual correlations of character pairs such as vessel diameter and frequency, and quantitative ray and vessel attributes are also analysed and discussed with reference to findings in other woody plant families.


Abstract The importance of categorical structure in the recognition and classification of realistic face prototypes, following a variable number of learning trials, was investigated in four experiments. Subjects either classified or observed well-defined (Experiments 1–3) or ill-defined (Experiment 4) faces belonging to three categories for one or nine trial blocks, followed by a transfer test. Recognition performance following classification (Experiment 1) and observational (Experiments 2 and 3) training was virtually the same: Oldness judgments were highest for the category prototypes and old instances and were least for new and random instances, with these tendencies increased following nine learning trials. When features were made ill defined (Experiment 4), oldness judgments decreased for the category prototype following nine learning trials. Multidimensional scaling (Experiment 5) revealed that the category structure for the well-defined and ill-defined faces was globally similar, and therefore, the disparate recognition of the category prototype was not due to a radical reorganization of the stimulus space. These results suggest that false recognition of the category prototype is at least partially based on type of category structure, and that prior studies using false recognition of the category prototype as evidence of an earlier abstraction process are probably misguided. Rather, false recognition is more likely due to erroneous combinations of features, with category influences playing less of a role.


: The study into the nature and severity of clinical and electrocardiographic manifestations of paroxysms of atrial fibrillation in 213 patients with coronary heart disease identified the basic clinical and instrumental ECG signs (subjective attack tolerance, transient ECG changes, onset of left ventricular failure) that correspond to four stages of the natural history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. The use of the grades in clinical practice allows one to more definitely evaluate the status of patients, to correctly choose their management policy, and to define indications for hospitalization.


Motion capture data of a musical conductor's movements when conducting a string quartet is analysed in this work using the Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model (GP-LVM) framework. A dimensionality reduction on the high dimensional motion capture data to a two dimensional representation using a GP-LVM is performed, followed by classification of conduction movements belonging to different interpretations of the same musical piece. A dynamical prior is used for the GP-LVM, resulting in a representative latent space for the sequential conduction motion data. Classification results with great performance for some of the interpretations are obtained. The GP-LVM with dynamical prior distribution is shown to be a reasonable choice when wanting to model conduction data, opening up the possibility for creating for example a "conduct-your-own-orchestra" system in a principled mathematical way, in the future.


Rainwater is essential in the sustenance of ecosystem in all parts of the world. It is a free source of nearly pure water and naturally replenishes the earth's water supply. On the other hand, tap water is one of the most available types of water intended for human consumption while rainwater serves many purposes too. This study aimed to assess the quality of tap water and rainwater in Davao City, specifically in Agdao, Ecoland and Artiaga. The proponents used plant growth of selected varieties such as mongo, radish, tomato, eggplant, and squash, as the main parameter in comparing the rainwater and tap water after 30 days; pH, conductivity, and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) were also used as additional parameters, which were determined at the Science Resource Center of the University of the Immaculate Conception. This study employed of a descriptive – comparative design making use of quantitative measurements and data from laboratory analyses. The results revealed that rainwater and tap water in Davao city are both safe for plant growth as indicated by the values of the parameters which are within the acceptable range describing a good quality for growing plants. Keywords:  Plant growth, tap water, rainwater, pH, conductivity, Total Dissolved Solids, Davao City, Philippines


This paper introduces a novel dimension of household heterogeneity that plays an important role in housing markets. Households who self-assess themselves to be more financially literate are 1) more likely to own a house and 2) take on higher leverage on their home. We solve a heterogeneous agent portfolio choice model to infer the role of mortgage terms and of expectations on future house prices for the empirical patterns. We find that households with higher levels of self-assessed financial literacy are in fact better at the parts of the transaction that are relevant to them, namely access to more accommodating mortgage terms when they are young and better risk-return trade-offs when they are old. Moreover, by ignoring heterogeneity in financial literacy, standard models introduce quantitatively substantial biases in evaluating housing market policies. Housing demand elasticity with respect to wealth is downsized by approximately 40% when taking financial literacy into account.


At 8:48 a.m. on Sept. 11, when Los Angeles-bound American Airlines flight 11 from Boston struck the World Trade Center's North Tower, Steve Malin was in an elevator at the New York Federal Reserve Bank at 33 Liberty St., two blocks away. He heard the noise of the impact and rushed back to his department to find out what happened. From the office windows, his department could see people in the streets of the financial district running for their lives. Malin's secretary arrived, with debris in her hair and on her clothing. Her bus had made its stop near the trade center sometime during the course of the swiftly unfolding events. Someone turned on CNN and that was when Malin' department learned what had happened. A co-worker instantly voiced his own suspicions: "Terrorists!" Malin, a Fed spokesman, says he scoffed at first, even though he had been at the Fed when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. But 15 minutes later, his co-worker gave him an "I told you so look when the second 767 struck the trade center's south tower. Time passed quickly. Malin and his co-workers were transfixed by the awful spectacle unfolding on-screen and from the view of it they had from their windows, when, at 9:59, the south tower, the second one hit, collapsed. "There was an incredible gust of wind," says Malin, and debris and tons of papers began falling in the area. The windows, he says, went black as the dust clouds and smoke of the collapse enveloped the financial district. It took more than an hour for things to clear. One blessing: All N.Y. Fed employees could be accounted for. On the 11th, with classic Fed restraint, the Fed Board of Governors put a simple notice on its website: "The Federal Reserve System is open and operating. The discount window is available to meet liquidity needs." The New York Fed posted a similar notice on the 11th, followed the next day with this notice: "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is open. The Funds and Securities wires are operational The FRBNY is settling trades today." FDIC, likewise, immediately sought to calm any jitters: "The public can rest assured that deposit insurance is in full force-money is safe in an FDICinsured account." [In days that followed other banking regulators and the Department of Housing and Urban Development urged lenders to work with borrowers affected by the attacks.] New York State Banking Superintendent Elizabeth McCaul was stranded in Japan when US. skies were closed to civilian air traffic and her agency's downstate office, near the trade center, was closed for safety's sake. …


Pavement performance evaluation is a reasonable safeguard for the conservation plan and an important basis for investment decisions. In order to obtain a precise and quantitative evaluation result, a general evaluation model based on Extension Theory is established, and a concrete index is raised to indicate the pavement real condition. Practical pavement detection data of Jing-hu highway in Jiangsu Province is used to validate this model. The result shows that the evaluation model based on Extension Theory gives an accurate evaluation on pavement performance, and reflects the pavement condition well. It could provide solid foundation for pavement maintenance orders, and may have a bright future.


Weddings vary considerably in form across the Tibetan cultural area and in exile. Furthermore, there is much scope for creativity within the wedding format in any given region. One such area of creativity is poetry and riddling between 'champions' from the bride and groom's parties. Leaving the riddling aside, the poetry (ka bshad, or 'pillar exposition') enables the bridegroom's champion to lay out the cosmology of the household and place its occupants within it. In the course of laying out this cosmology, themes of health, prosperity and protection recur—often in the idiom of household deities and/or related astrological concepts. Certain configurations of these household deities correspond to personal deities residing in different parts of the body, establishing a form of 'folk ontology' where personal identity is triangulated from the household and the local area. Drawing from, among other sources, ethnography from India, this article examines themes of this 'folk ontology' found in Tibetan wedding poetry. Specific attention is paid to poems concerning the groom's ritual arrow (mda' dar), and the central pillar (ka ba) of the house (which gives the genre of wedding poetry its name), and the roles of these objects in weddings and other occasions.


In vitro, cellular processing on polymeric surfaces is fundamental to the development of biosensors, scaffolds for tissue engineering and transplantation. However, the effect of surface energy and roughness on the cell–surface interaction remains inconclusive, indicating a lack of complete understanding of the phenomenon. Here, we study the effect of surface energy (Es) and roughness ratio (r) of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate on cell attachment, growth, and proliferation. We considered two different cell lines, HeLa and MDA MB 231, and rough PDMS surfaces of different surface energy in the range Es = 21–100 mJ m−2, corresponding to WCA 161°–1°, and roughness ratio in the range r = 1.05–3, corresponding to roughness 5–150 nm. We find that the cell attachment process proceeds through three different stages marked by an increase in the number of attached cells with time (stage I), flattening of cells (stage II), and elongation of cells (III) on the surface. Our study reveals that moderate surface energy (Es ≈ 70 mJ m−2) and intermediate roughness ratio (r ≈ 2) constitute the most favourable conditions for efficient cell adhesion, growth, and proliferation. A theoretical model based on the minimization of the total free energy of the cell–substrate system is presented and is used to predict the spread length of cells that compares well with the corresponding experimental data within 10%. The performance and reusability of the rough PDMS surface of moderate energy and roughness prepared via facile surface modification are compared with standard T-25 cell culture plates for cell growth and proliferation, which shows that the proposed surface is an attractive choice for efficient cell culture.


Background and purpose A number of studies have examined the role of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in aneurysm healing following endovascular coiling. Because ruptured aneurysms are known to express higher levels of MMPs, we hypothesized that subarachnoid hemorrhage patients who were on a statin at the time of coil embolization would have lower aneurysm recanalization and retreatment rates than non-statin patients. Materials and Methods We performed a retrospective chart review of patients who received intrasaccular coil embolization of ruptured intracranial aneurysms≤10 mm with at least 6-months of imaging follow-up. Patients were separated into two groups: 1) patients who were on an oral statin medication at the time of coiling and 2) patients who were not on a statin. Outcomes studied were aneurysm recurrence and aneurysm retreatment after endovascular coiling. Student's t-test and chi-squared tests were used to test statistical significance of differences between groups. Results 132 ruptured aneurysm patients with 132 ruptured aneurysms were included in our study. 16 were on statin (12.1%) and 116 were not (87.9%). Recurrence rates were significantly lower in the statin group than in the non-statin group. Recurrence rates were 6.3% (1/16) for the statin group and 36.2% (41/116) for the non-statin group (P = 0.017). There was a trend towards lower retreatment rate in the statin group. Unplanned retreatment rates were 6.3% (1/16) for the statin group and 25.9% (30/116) for the non-statin group (P = 0.08). The only baseline characteristics that differed between the statin and non-statin groups were mean age. When considering patients with ruptured aneurysms 10 mm or small and adjusting for age, statin use was associated with a significantly lower odds of recurrence (OR=0.13, 95% CI=0.01–0.72, P = 0.016) and a non-statistically significant lower odds of retreatment (OR==0.29, 95% CI=0.01–1.55, P = 0.16). Conclusions Statins were associated with a lower rate of aneurysm recurrence following endovascular coiling of small and medium sized ruptured aneurysms in this retrospective study. Further studies are needed to confirm this finding to determine if statins can be used to reduce recurrence rates in these aneurysms. Disclosures W. Brinjikji: 1; C; Brain Aneurysm Foundation. V. Shahi: None. H. Cloft: None. G. Lanzino: 2; C; Covidien. D. Kallmes: 1; C; Covidien. R. Kadirvel: None.


Objective: To explore the clinical manifestations, pathological features, differential diagnosis and gene mutation status in patients with pulmonary involvement of Erdheim-Chester disease (ECD). Methods: The clinical data of 4 cases of Erdheim-Chester disease admitted to Peking Union Medical College Hospital from October 2014 to August 2016 were examined for imaging, microscopic and immunohistochemitry findings, and BRAFV600E mutation. The related literatures were reviewed. Results: Among the 4 cases, there were 3 males and 1 female, aging from 7 to 47 years, and the average age was 34.5 years. They complained of chest tightness, shortness of breath and bone pain. They all had multiple bone lesions, involving the long bones, skulls and vertebrae, and imaging showed increased bone uptake and bone sclerosis. CT scan showed pleural thickening or pleural effusion(4/4), widened lobular septa(3/4), bronchial vascular bundle thickening(3/4), multiple patchy ground glass and solid shadows(4/4), and cystic shadows(1/4). Multiple bone lesions were the main extrapulmonary manifestations. All the cases had multiple bone lesions, involving the long bones, skulls and vertebrae, and showed increased bone uptake and bone sclerosis. Surgical biopsy of the thoracic tissue was performed in all 4 cases (pleural in 1 case, lung in 2, anterior mediastinal mass in 1). Microscopically, the lesion was composed of spindle-shaped fibroblasts and foamy histiocytes enmeshed in reactive fibrous tissue. Lymphocytes and plasma cells were also found. Immunohistochemically, all the histiocytes were positive for CD(68), and none of them expressed CD1a. All cases were detected by real-time quantitative PCR for BRAFV600E gene mutation. Conclusions: The pulmonary involvement of Erdheim-Chester disease is rare, with clinical manifestations of chest tightness, shortness of breath, and some have no obvious respiratory symptoms. Pulmonary involvement in Erdheim-Chester disease has important manifestations, in which foam-like tissue cells with diffuse distribution along the lymphatic enmeshed in reactive fibrous tissue. It should be differentiated from diffuse interstitial lung diseases and metastatic tumors. The clinical features are often manifested as pleural thickening and pleural effusion, with multiple bone sclerosis lesions.BRAFV600E mutation detection is helpful for the diagnosis.


The tube leakage in the large power station boiler is the main reason for unplanned outage of power units. So how to prevent and control the leakage accident has become an important part of ensuring the safe operation of power grid. Sound spectrum analysis is the most commonly used detection method. At the top of the boiler, the temperature is high, and sometimes the positive pressure produced inside the boiler will make ordinary audio sensors particularly easily damaged. This paper designs a system of high temperature resistance fiber optic audio sensor and acoustic resonator. It can determine the parameter of fiber optic audio sensor, and double the leakage noise signal through the design of acoustic resonators. According to the experimental test results and theory, this system can effectively test leakage signal inside the boiler tube, and provide a new idea for leakage detection.


The body of literature which this thesis will examine forms a relatively neglected thread of literary development in Germany during the 1960's. I stress the question of development because this work will not seek to deal with main stream writers such as Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Martin Walser or Uwe Johnson. Accepting that such figures form the dominant corpus of literary activity, then the first and more widely discussed area of development in the Sixties encompasses the relationship between literature, politics and society, and the drive to make literature more politically and socially relevant.

This development itself had different elements. Firstly, documentary writing sought on the one hand to project historical and objective fact, as in the dramas of Hochhuth, Kipphardt, and Weis, and on the other to present authenticity, through autobiography, tape-recorded Interviews or the fictionalised but documentary reports of working life by Gunther Wallraff and the accounts of historical events by Alexander Kluge. Another movement towards workers' writing emerged later.

Alongside this general interest ran a current of literary- activity which attracted the epithet 'experimental'. It would be inaccurate to speak in terms of an experimental movement because the writing which attracted the tag 'experimental' varied considerably, indeed its application was so wide that one critic exclaimed in despair:
Unbestimmt wie die Texte selbst, wenn man sie an die traditionollen Mustorn des Erzahlens
mist, ist der Begriff der experimentellen Prosa.

However, the four writers I have chosen have all been labelled thus and I will hope to show in what ways their writing can be linked and in what ways their works differ. They are Helmut Heissenbuttel, Franz Mon, Becker, Jurgen and Ror Wolf. In those writers, literary self-consciousness based on a questioning of language creates texts where the processes of articulation rather than what is articulated come to the fore. In this, these four writers do not stand alone. Figures from earlier - Arno Schmidt, the Expressionists, Doblin, Broch, Hofmannsthal, the Naturalists especially Arno Holz, could also justly demand inclusion in a work discussing writing as 'experimental'. In the Sixties, too, the Wiener Gruppe, and poets such as Gomringer could also claim consideration. Even, within the area of prose, rather than poetry, many others could vie for consideration, for example, the 'pop' writers such as Wolf Wondratschok, Uwe Brandner, Brazon Brock and Wolf Vostell; the short texts of Reinhard Lettau, or the 'Maulwurfe' by Gunthor Eich; the works of Helga Novak, Friederike Mayrocker, Peter Bichsel, Michael Scharang. All of those could lend themselves profitably to examination in this context.

I have limited the main textual analysis to one work by each of the four writers. This is because much of the available criticism of those writers and their work consists of newspaper reviews and brief articles or references within articles and this has load to a tendency for the critic to be satisfied with generalisation and comment rather than analysis. A more consistent foundation for understanding writing of this kind is needed in order to show what a detailed critical reading of such texts can achieve.
The four writers to be considered each represent one facet of the wider canvas of literary experimentation during the Sixties. Ror Wolf's work 'Fortsetzung des Berichts' is a long prose-text concerned with questions of perception and articulation which also occupied Becker in his shorter texts, with very different results. All the writers concern themselves with these two issues: Franz Mon stands closest to the concrete poets and the Wiener Gruppe: 'herzzero' is an interesting attempt to maintain the techniques of such poetry in a longer context, a concrete novel. Finally, Heissenbuttel is the most prominent of the writers both in literary and critical terns. His six Textbucher published between 1960 and 1967 provide an opportunity to view his development over a longer period from the more poetical early texts to the collages of the last Textbuch.

This selection of writers and works will also facilitate examination of a range of problems involved in approaching self-consciously experimental literature and contemporary works as a whole. An initial account of the issues raised by writing of this kind for the immediate context of cultural awareness may be derived from a consideration of the uses to which the term experimental was put in Germany during the Sixties.


ABSTRACT We observed that binding sites for the ubiquitously expressed transcription factor CP2 were present in regulatory regions of multiple erythroid genes. In these regions, the CP2 binding site was adjacent to a site for the erythroid factor GATA-1. Using three such regulatory regions (from genes encoding the transcription factors GATA-1, EKLF, and p45 NF-E2), we demonstrated the functional importance of the adjacent CP2/GATA-1 sites. In particular, CP2 binds to the GATA-1 HS2 enhancer, generating a ternary complex with GATA-1 and DNA. Mutations in the CP2 consensus greatly impaired HS2 activity in transient transfection assays with K562 cells. Similar results were obtained by transfection of EKLF and p45 NF-E2 mutant constructs. Chromatin immunoprecipitation with K562 cells showed that CP2 binds in vivo to all three regulatory elements and that both GATA-1 and CP2 were present on the same GATA-1 and EKLF regulatory elements. Adjacent CP2/GATA-1 sites may represent a novel module for erythroid expression of a number of genes. Additionally, coimmunoprecipitation and glutathione S-transferase pull-down experiments demonstrated a physical interaction between GATA-1 and CP2. This may contribute to the functional cooperation between these factors and provide an explanation for the important role of ubiquitous CP2 in the regulation of erythroid genes.


1. Binding of branched-chain 2-oxo acids to defatted bovine serum albumin was shown by gel chromatography and equilibrium dialysis. 2. Equilibrium-dialysis data suggest a two-side model for binding in Krebs-Henseleit saline at 37 degrees C with n1 = 1 and n2 = 5. Site association constants were: 4-methyl-2-oxovalerate, k1 = 8.7 x 10(3) M-1, k2 = 0.09 x 10(3) M-1; 3-methyl-2-oxovalerate, k1 = 9.8 x 10(3) M-1, k2 = 0.08 x 10(3) M-1; 3-methyl-2-oxobutyrate, k1 = 1.27 x 10(3) M-1, k2 = less than 0.05 x 10(3) M-1. 3. Binding of 4-methyl-2-oxovalerate to defatted albumin in a phosphate-buffered saline, pH 7.4, gave the following thermodynamic parameters: primary site delta H0(1) = -28.6kJ . mol-1 and delta S0(1) = -15.2J . mol-1 . K-1 (delta G0(1) = -24.0kJ . mol-1 at 37 degrees C) and secondary sites delta H0(2) = -25.4kJ . mol-1 and delta S0(2) = -46.1J . mol-1 . K-1 (delta G0(1) = -11.2kJ . mol-1 at 37 degrees C). Thus binding at both sites is temperature-dependent and increases with decreasing temperature. 4. Inhibition studies suggest that 4-methyl-2-oxovalerate may associate with defatted albumin at a binding site for medium-chain fatty acids. 5. Binding of the 2-oxo acids in bovine, rat and human plasma follows a similar pattern to binding to defatted albumin. The proportion bound in bovine and human plasma is much higher than in rat plasma. 6. Binding to plasma protein, and not active transport, explains the high concentration of branched-chain 2-oxo acids leaving rat skeletal muscle relative to the concentration within the tissue, but does not explain the 2-oxo acid concentration gradient between plasma and liver.


Traditionally, constrained sequence coding has been employed exclusively in codes using binary or multilevel signalling. This thesis extends the procedure for constructing DC-free constrained sequence codes to alphabets that use signalling constellations with complex-valued symbols. In particular, the codes are separated into two types: i) constraints with independent logical signalling dimensions and ii) constraints using dependent logical signalling dimensions. In both cases, constraint modelling for the purpose of the evaluation of capacity is explored. Within the case of dependent signalling dimensions, the state machines can contain a finite or an infinite number of states, depending on the signalling constellation that is used. Evaluation of capacity of these types of constrained systems is considered in detail.
Building upon the capacity analysis and constraint modelling techniques, DC-free codes using complex-valued signalling constellations are constructed. The three constellations that are considered in detail in this thesis are quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), 8 phase shift keying (PSK), and 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). A number of codes have been constructed for each of the three types for various RDS spans. Further, it is shown that Justesen's relationship for codes using binary-valued symbols, which relates the value of the sum variance to the width of the spectral notch around DC, also holds for codes using complex-valued symbols.
To complete the code construction procedure for DC-free codes using complex-valued signalling alphabets, which involves state-based encoding and decoding, an algorithm was developed to construct codes that can be decoded at the receiver without requiring state information. This algorithm was designed to execute in polynomial time with respect to the size of the input and to be both general and flexible, so that it can operate on any family of constrained sequence codes. In addition to codes with complex-valued symbols, a number of binary DC-free RLL block codes are constructed using this algorithm, achieving the maximum possible code rates with codeword lengths less than 20. This algorithm is also extended to include the principles of weakly constrained coding.


We analyse order placement strategies in a limit order market, using data on the order flow from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Traders submitting market or limit orders trade off the order price against both the execution probability and the winner's curse risk associated with different order choices. The optimal order strategy is characterized by a monotone function, which maps the liquidity demand of the investors into their order choice. We develop and implement a semiparametric test of this monotonicity property, and find no evidence against the monotonicity property for buy orders or sell orders. We do find evidence against the hypothesis that the trader's decision to be a buyer or a seller depends only on the trading profits available in the limit order book. We estimate that traders submitting market buy orders have private valuations that exceed the asset value by 2.3% on average and receive an average payoff of at least 1.8% of the asset value. Traders submitting limit buy orders at the price below the best ask quote have private valuations between 0.1% and 2.3% above the asset value and earn an average payoff of between 0.3% and 1.8% of the asset value. Although the distribution of liquidity demand does not depend on conditioning information, conditioning information helps us to predict the composition of the order flow in our data. These findings imply that variation in the composition of the order flow can be explained by empirical variation in the relative profitability of alternative order choices and movements in the common value of the asset.


Introduction: Population ageing is a main concern under the biosanitary point of view. Aim: To assess the nutritional status of people 65 year- old and older in Cantabria (Spain) Method: A total of 1605 persons were studied by means of the MNA (Mini Nutritional Assessment); a) by pri- mary care (59.9% in the unit, and 4.7% at home) and, b) in nursing homes (35.4%). Results: Nutritional score (NS) was 23.4 ± 4.1 for women and 24.4 ± 4 in males (p < 0.001). We emphasize the fact that 22.3% of people studied in the nursing homes were malnourished or at risk of malnutrition, compared with 14.2% of those studied at the unit, and only 3.3% of the home visited elders. The correlation between the value of the NS and the subjective estimation of nutrition status showed a high value (0.65). We emphasize the negative correlation (-0.53) between BNI value and the incidence of skin lesions. Conclusion: Our results highlight the importance of identifying malnutrition or its risk in elders in order to prevent the negative consequences of this deficiency.


Received 2August 2015 Accepted2 November 2015 Available online 20 January 2015 Equal channel multi angular pressing (ECMAP) process is an efficient method to enhance the productivity of ultra-fine grained (UFG) materials by increasing process continuity and as a result decreasing the process required time. Comparing repetitive ECAP method, in the same period, the number of passes can be done by ECMAP. In this article, ECMAP of AL strips in two typical annealed and as received conditions were studied, and route C was selected as multi pressing route. Values of equivalent plastic strain (PEEQ) and micro-hardness in the cross section of ECMAPed strips were obtained both by FE simulations and practical tests, correspondingly. These values were also used for obtainingtheinhomogeneity of produced ECMAPed strips. Furthermore, mechanical property for both as received and annealed strips before and after pressing was studied experimentally. Also, load-displacement curve during the ECMAP process was obtained by finite element method (FEM). For FEM results validation, PEEQwas calculated by the analytical method, too. Results show that there is good conformity between FE, analytical, and practical results.


Supporters of free markets often have a general feeling that there is too much regulation or that it is too intrusive, badly formulated, and ineffective. However, proponents of these positions are often lacking in empirical evidence and are susceptible to accusations of either exaggerating the impact of regulation or not caring about the environment, workers, children or consumers. However, supporters of free markets value and recognise the importance of these and believe that market solutions would improve the overall situation. As the UK leaves the EU, it will adopt an independent regulatory policy with the ability to repeal and amend EU rules, and introduce new regulations in fields of EU competence. This freedom will have to be exercised in line with Britain's international commitments and the impact on trade with the EU that will come from diverging at a national level from its regulations. Regulation has been a tool of EU integration. The implications of this driver being removed from UK regulatory policy should not be underestimated. Regulation is a major source of concern for businesses, though the concerns tend to differ between the strategic interests of larger businesses with legal and lobbying firepower and small and new businesses ,for whom the costs of regulation represent barriers to entry and growth. The perception that unelected officials in entrenched positions are enforcing rules contributed to the feelings of dissatisfaction that led British people to vote to leave the EU in 2016. There is a risk now, with EU laws being transposed en masse into UK law and regulators pouring cold water on suggestions of reforms, that the innate stickiness of the regulatory state will assert itself and the opportunity for meaningful change will be lost.<br>


Nanofluid is an advanced fluid with enhanced thermophysical properties that has been introduced in many applications for better heat transfer process. In automotive cooling system, conventional coolants such as water and ethylene glycol could have superior thermophysical properties of thermal conductivity, viscosity, density and heat transfer coefficient by introducing nanoparticles suspension. This study investigated the thermophysical properties of Copper/Water nanofluid by using mathematical modeling approach to come out with a new coolant for Louvered-fins and flat tube of a radiator. The nanofluid showed enhanced thermophysical properties with nanoparticles suspension of 2 vol.% to 10 vol.%. By offering 10 % of copper nanoparticles concentration, the heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluid was increased up to 26000 W.m -2 K -1 with enhancement of 92 %. Consequently, it also enhanced the heat transfer rate in the cooling system. The different particles sizes of 10 nm, 50 nm, and 100 nm showed different heat transfer coefficients but the heat transfer rate in the radiator is similar, up to 64400 W with 10 % of nanoparticle volume fraction. The nanofluids showed better heat transfer characteristics as a new alternative coolant for the radiator.


A guide to understanding the role of culture in the clinical encounter and paying particular attention to the relationship between culture, contexts and social structures.


This paper analyzes the effect of different aspects of family background such as family income, parental education, parental job, and the socioeconomic status of parents on the university admission in Iran in 2008. The Iranian university and college admission system involves prospective students listing up to one hundred majors in order of their preference in the application. Places in universities are offered to the applicants based on both their preferences and their entrance examination results. The gathered data from the Iranian university and college applications in 2008 is analyzed using data mining methods to investigate the effects of family background variables on entrance examination grades. The results of this analysis show that parental education, parental job and the socioeconomic status of family have large effects on entrance examination grades, and as a result on university and college acceptance. The proportion of acceptance in universities for high social class families are more than the proportion of candidates in the other categories. In other words, applicants who come from higher social classes have a significantly better chance of becoming admitted in university.


Robotic assistance in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) have extended the capabilities of surgeons via improved precision dexterity and computer assistance. By tapping on the capabilities of MIS, this paper aims to design a new tendon Fixation mechanism which utilizes springs to actuate surgical tools for the removal of osseous giant cell tumor. We presents our preliminary design conceptualization and prototype development using spring backbone and tendon-driven mechanism. By investigating different tendon routing mechanisms, for the first time this study shows that it is potentially feasible to accomplish needle-size (outer diameter of 1 mm) to catheter-size (outer diameter of 2–3 mm) singlechannel surgical instruments for minimally invasive surgery. Through this mechanism, it is expected that our surgical robot can provide completeness of tumor removal through a minimal incision without compromising oncological principles.


ABSTRACT Aim: Aim: The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) is inhabited by over 20 million people, making it one of the most populated urban centres globally. It encompasses 60 municipalities, ranging from highly urbanized to remote rural communities. Since cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Mexico, we sought to analyze if cancer-related mortality in MCMA is influenced by urban marginality status. Methods: Methods: Cancer-related mortality data for MCMA for the years 1990 to 2012 were obtained from the National Institute of Geography and Statistics. Population estimates for each year were obtained from published statistics. A Global Marginality Index (GMI), including 9 socioeconomic indicators, was obtained for each municipality for the years 2000 and 2010. Age-adjusted cancer mortality rates and trends were calculated using Joinpoint regression analysis. A multiple linear regression model was used to study the relationship between cancer mortality and GMI. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Results: Between 1990 and 2012 a total of 259,874 cancer-related deaths were reported in the MCMA, representing 19% of all cancer deaths in the country. Age adjusted cancer-specific death rates changed from 94.46/100,000 in 1990 to 82.49/100,000 in 2012, with an annual percent change (APC) of -0.7% (95% CI -0.6 to -0.8, p = 0.05). This was true both for men and women. A statistically significant relationship was found between cancer-specific deaths and GMI both for the year 2000 and 2010 (p Conclusions: Conclusions: In 2010, around 10% of people lived in municipalities located above the mean GMI for MCMA. Cancer specific deaths were correlated with marginality status in the MCMA for the years 2000 and 2010. Our results show a stabilization of the cancer specific mortality rate in MCMA, which may be related to recently implemented healthcare programs. However, marginality continues to be a factor for poor cancer outcomes in certain populations, highlighting the fact that inequities in access to healthcare may be present within a very limited territory and representing a challenge to health systems in large metropolitan areas worldwide. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


Aging wiring has been identified as a national concern and is a major topic for those involved in aerospace electrical systems. This paper identifies some of the major contributions why wiring installed on legacy aircraft has taken center stage. It suggests a planned approach to enhance wiring safety that will improve electronic system performance and reliability. We suggest a two pronged approach: 1. Become cognizant of the technical and operational issues that govern electronic systems robustness and determination of useful life. This is accomplished by providing training to those individuals directly exposed to the aircraft electrical systems during operations. Training can aid management, engineering and technical positions by providing the latest practices that are applicable to the tasks at hand. 2. Apply available technology complementary to the issues of legacy and new design aircraft for systems level diagnostics, prognostics and enhanced life expectancy. Several alternatives in obtaining both of these objectives are presented in this document and is only meant to stimulate the thinking of those readers involved in the everyday operations of aircraft into a more proactive approach to maintaining aircraft electrical systems.


Hidden target detection and classification is an important task for many security and military applications. Long wave infrared (8-14 μm) cameras, otherwise known as thermal cameras, can be used towards hidden target detection and classification but are less studied in the Computer Vision literature due to their high cost and low resolution. Thermal imagery is able to reveal targets such as camouflaged or shallowly buried targets that would be hidden to optical band sensors. For this dissertation, I studied some of the problems in designing a computer vision system that uses the thermal modality along with other modalities to detect and classify hidden targets. Specifically, this dissertation seeks to address (1) calibration of multiple cameras both within the thermal modality and across modalities, (2) detection of hidden targets in the scene by identifying anomalous regions and known targets, and (3) classification of the hidden targets. I propose novel approaches towards solutions of these issues and argue for the efficacy of these approaches. Particularly, for calibration I used a ceramic backing and preprocessing technique for enhancing the contrast and its duration, and show that heating a printed calibration board is indeed viable for calibration in contrast to previous work. For detection, a dynamically updating Gaussian mixture model and sensor fusion was used to identify anomalous regions, while neural networks were used for fusing multimodal sensors and detecting known objects. Finally, for classification I developed novel thermal-based features such as water permeation and heating/cooling patterns to classify the materials. I developed the CHAracteristic Model of Permeation (CHAMP) for modeling both the rate and shape of water permeation, and use the heat equation for extracting physical material parameters for a heat feature. In each case, my results show that thermal is a useful modality for detection and classification of objects, and can be combined with other modalities to increase performance.


Background and Objectives: Repair of tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) with monocusp pulmonary valve reconstruction prevents pulmonary regurgitation (PR) for a variable period. Since postoperative outcome is governed by PR and right ventricular function, we sought to assess the severity of pulmonary regurgitation and right ventricular outflow (RVOT) gradient in the immediate postoperative period and at 1 year and attempted to identify the anatomical substrates responsible for adverse outcomes. Methods: The study included 30 patients. Transthoracic echocardiography was performed before surgery, within 5 days of surgery, and 1 year later. Presence and severity of PR, RVOT gradient, and residual branch pulmonary stenosis were assessed. Right ventricular and monocusp valve functions were studied. Results: Median age was 36.5 months (3-444 months). There were no deaths. Pulmonary regurgitation was mild in 18, moderate in 10, and severe in 2 patients immediately following surgery. At 1 year, 10 patients had severe PR and one had significant RVOT gradient. None of the variables like age, presence of supravalvar pulmonary branch stenosis, main pulmonary artery diameter, or mobility of monocusp valve was found to have any significant association with the progression of PR. McGoon index <1.5 showed a trend toward more PR, while patients with more residual RVOT gradient had lesser regurgitation. Conclusions: Repair of TOF with monocusp pulmonary valve reduces immediate postoperative PR. At 1 year, the monocusp valve underwent loss of function in a significant proportion and PR also progressed. This study could not identify any predictors of progression of PR, though patients with McGoon index <1.5 tended to have more PR while those with more outflow gradient had lesser PR.


The initial survival of basin wildrye (Leymus cinereus (Scribn. & Merr.) A. Löve [Poaceae]) plugs used in restoration of riparian habitats in the Crooked River National Grassland in northeastern Oregon was strongly associated with habitat type and planting depth. Five plots in each of 4 study areas were assessed. Survival was strongly dependent on habitat, ranging from 18.8% at the lowest elevation to 70.5% at the highest elevation. Northern pocket gophers (Thomomys talpoides (Richardson) [Geomyidae]) were considered a major cause of mortality, while mortality by cattle (Bos taurus Bojanus [Bovidae]) grazing was significant at only one habitat. The lowest elevation habitat had a sandy loam soil with few rocks and strong evidence of gopher activity, whereas the highest elevation habitat had a rocky sandy loam soil with weak evidence of gophers. The highest elevation habitat had burned, which likely reduced competition. Survival of plants that were buried (69%) or with the top of the plug surface flush with the soil surface (53%) was significantly greater than for plants with some of the plug root mass above the soil surface (about 14%). Improved survival of L. cinereus plugs will likely be realized with control of gophers and cattle; additionally survival can be improved by ensuring plug surfaces are flush with the soil surface or buried by a few centimeters of soil.


No student of American agrarian history in the third quarter of the nineteenth century will neglect the Patrons of Husbandry. From a number of well-documented accounts he may learn how in 1867, in Washington, D.C., their Order was founded to enrich the cultural life of farmers and their wives, and how their association in Granges moved them instead to express the chronic discontents of agricultural producers as a body. Even better-known is the ground of those discontents, which temporarily united the cotton, sugar and tobacco farmers of the South with the corn raisers of Kansas and Nebraska and with the wheat producers of Minnesota and the Dakotas. In a physically depleted land, and under a system subservient to the business needs of the victorious north and east, the farmer of the Mississippi Valley found himself in thrall to the distant manufacturer and to the local merchant by credit arrangements frequently entailing a crop-lien system. In order to rid himself of this bondage, to put himself instead upon a firm basis of cash buying and selling, and to develop a more diversified agriculture, the farmer required – as the Patrons repeatedly insisted – an alternative source of capital to the eastern banker.


The IceCube neutrino observatory pursues a follow-up program selecting interesting neutrino events in real-time and issuing alerts for electromagnetic follow-up observations. In 2012 March, the most significant neutrino alert during the first three years of operation was issued by IceCube. In the follow-up observations performed by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF), a Type IIn supernova (SN IIn) PTF12csy was found 0.°2 away from the neutrino alert direction, with an error radius of 0.°54. It has a redshift of z = 0.0684, corresponding to a luminosity distance of about 300 Mpc and the Pan-STARRS1 survey shows that its explosion time was at least 158 days (in host galaxy rest frame) before the neutrino alert, so that a causal connection is unlikely. The a posteriori significance of the chance detection of both the neutrinos and the SN at any epoch is 2.2σ within IceCube's 2011/12 data acquisition season. Also, a complementary neutrino analysis reveals no long-term signal over the course of one year. Therefore, we consider the SN detection coincidental and the neutrinos uncorrelated to the SN. However, the SN is unusual and interesting by itself: it is luminous and energetic, bearing strong resemblance to the SN IIn 2010jl, and shows signs of interaction of the SN ejecta with a dense circumstellar medium. High-energy neutrino emission is expected in models of diffusive shock acceleration, but at a low, non-detectable level for this specific SN. In this paper, we describe the SN PTF12csy and present both the neutrino and electromagnetic data, as well as their analysis.


This review deals with design, description, and analysis of outcome studies of pneumonia. A review of studies of mortality from pneumonia shows deficiencies in reporting in several areas including description of exclusion/inclusion criteria, information on patients not enrolled in the study, referral patterns, and statistical analysis. Very few studies have evaluated outcomes other than mortality. Recommendations are provided for studies that evaluate a broad set of outcomes in patients with pneumonia.


Occult hyperthyroidism, a subclinical thyrotoxic state, is not readily identifiable clinically or through routine thyroid function tests. "Idiopathic" atrial fibrillation may be a manifestation of occult hyperthyroidism in the elderly. A normal response on a TRH stimulation test excludes this diagnosis. A blunted TSH response, coupled with elevation of free thyroid hormones and a high radioactive iodine uptake, will settle the diagnosis. Patients with occult hyperthyroidism frequently have toxic adenomas or nonpalpable nodular goiters, and treatment is best achieved with radioactive iodine ablation.


Infections with COVID-19 are now global, reaching 213 countries, and as of May 29, 2020, more than 5M+ confirmed cases, with over 355.000+ deaths, although the number is still rising by the day. This short review aims to briefly highlight what is known about the epidemiology, aetiology, testing techniques and clinical features of COVID-19. The inter-human transmission of coronaviruses mainly occurs through saliva droplets, aerosols and direct/indirect contact through surfaces. Successful containment preceding any future effective vaccine includes social distancing, contact tracing, tracking of infected people, mass screening and providing healthcare professionals and social care workers with adequate personal protective equipment.


Many birds see in the ultraviolet (300–400 nm), but there is limited evidence for colour communication (signalling by spectral shape independently of brightness) in this 'hidden' waveband. Such data are critical for the understanding of extravagant plumage colours, some of which show considerable UV reflectance. We investigated UV colour vision in female social responses to the male UV/violet ornament in bluethroats, Luscinia s. svecica. In an outdoor aviary at the breeding grounds, 16 females were each presented with a unique pair of males of equal age. In UVR (UV reduction) males, sunblock chemicals reduced only the UV reflectance and thereby the spectral shape (colour) of the throat ornament. In NR (neutral reduction) males, an achromatic pigment in the same base solvent (preen gland fat) was used for a corresponding but uniform brightness reduction. Both colour and brightness effects were invisible to human eyes, and were monitored by spectrometry. In 13 of the 16 trials, the female associated most with the NR male, a preference that implies that UV colour vision is used in mate choice by female bluethroats. Reflectance differences between one–year–old and older males were significant only in UV, suggestive of a UV colour cue in age–related mate preferences.


High frequency injector-coupled thermoacoustic instabilities are a major threat to multi-jet combustors in rocket and gas turbine engines. The complex three-dimensional acoustic coupling between the combustion chamber and injector acoustics cause local fluctuations in heat release. In turn, multiple thermoacoustic feedback mechanisms close the thermoacoustic loop and serve as a source of the thermoacoustic instability. Except for the flame deformation and flame displacement mechanism, the underlying feedback mechanisms for high frequency instabilities are to a large extent unknown. The paper at hand gives new insights into the injector-coupled convective driving mechanisms that are present in multi-jet combustors at perfectly premixed conditions. The forced flame response to the first transverse combustor mode is investigated for two distinct injector tube lengths: one with an axial acoustic velocity node and one with a velocity anti-node coupling at the injector - combustor interface. Phase locked OH* images reveal convectively transported coherent vortex structures as the main source of the flame response. The origin of the flame response can be linked to the axial acoustic velocity at the injector - combustor interface using numerical simulations. Both configurations show a positive Rayleigh Integral and a clear oscillation of the heat release fluctuations in-phase with the acoustic pressure fluctuations over the full period. In similarity to time delay models in low frequency thermoacoustics, a wave number model is proposed to estimate the local flame response due to feed flow modulations and validated with the experimental results.


The Kaziranga Eco-Sensitive Zone is located on the edge of the Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot region. In 1985, the Kaziranga National Park (KNP) was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Nowadays, anthropogenic interference has created a significant negative impact on this national park. As a result, the area under natural habitat is gradually decreasing. The current study attempted to analyze the land use land cover (LULC) change in the Kaziranga Eco-Sensitive Zone using remote sensing data with CA-Markov models. Satellite remote sensing and the geographic information system (GIS) are widely used for monitoring, mapping, and change detection of LULC change dynamics. The changing rate was assessed using thirty years (1990–2020) of Landsat data. The study analyses the significant change in LULC, with the decrease in the waterbody, grassland and agricultural land, and the increase of sand or dry river beds, forest, and built-up areas. Between 1990 and 2020, waterbody, grassland, and agricultural land decreased by 18.4, 9.96, and 64.88%, respectively, while sand or dry river beds, forest, and built-up areas increased by 103.72, 6.96, and 89.03%, respectively. The result shows that the area covered with waterbodies, grassland, and agricultural land is mostly converted into built-up areas and sand or dry river bed areas. According to this study, by 2050, waterbodies, sand or dry river beds, and forests will decrease by 3.67, 3.91, and 7.11%, respectively; while grassland and agriculture will increase by up to 16.67% and 0.37%, respectively. The built-up areas are expected to slightly decrease during this period (up to 2.4%). The outcome of this study is expected to be useful for the long-term management of the Kaziranga Eco-Sensitive Zone.


PURPOSE
To compare the outcome of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles performed with frozen-thawed epididymal spermatozoa between patients who respond poorly and patients who respond well to ovarian stimulation.

METHODS
17 patients suffering from obstructive azoospermia underwent microsurgical retrieval of epididymal spermatozoa (MESA) and the spermatozoa were frozen. The frozen-thawed spermatozoa were used in subsequent ICSI cycles. In six patients, the female partners responded poorly to ovarian stimulation. They accomplished nine ICSI cycles. In 11 patients, the female partners responded well to ovarian stimulation and they accomplished 16 cycles.

RESULTS
Poor responders were older than those who reponded well. The mean number of metaphase II oocytes collected was lower in the poor responder group. In the poor responders, two couples failed to fertilise the oocytes in two ICSI cycles. In the good responders, one couple failed to fertilise the oocytes in an ICSI cycle. There were no significant differences in fertilization rates between the two groups. The estradiol concentrations on the day of hCG administration were significantly higher in the good responders. There was no pregnancy in the poor responder group, while three patients who responded well conceived. Eight good responders had 34 supernumerary 2PN oocytes which were cryopreserved.

CONCLUSION
Frozen-thawed epididymal spermatozoa from men with obstructive azoospermia are potent to achieve satisfactory fertilization rates. Poor ovarian response to stimulation induction appears to be the main limiting factor in reaching the stage of embryo transfer. It is preferable in older women to cancel cycles with poor response in the hope that a better response might be obtained in a subsequent cycle. Thus, the frozen-thawed epididymal sperm can be preserved and the most stressful and expensive phase of IVF-ICSI treatment can be avoided.