assessment of these two parameters after hospital admission. Finally, the incidence of on-site intubation and following arrival at the hospital, and the respective times of arrival of the severely and not severely injured at a hospital were compared. Results: A total of 245 persons were injured. The average age of those injured was 17.3 years. The median of the TBSA of all of the injured was 12% and 87 patients (36%) had sustained an inhalation injury. Agreement between onsite (n = 46) and final TBSA assessment was poor (PCC = 0.77; R = 0.60). The estimates of total body surface area burned at the ED (n = 78) were more accurate than were those obtained prior to transport to the ED (PCC = 0.96; R = 0.93). The diagnosis of inhalation injury, both on-site (n = 79, sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 24%) and in the ED (n = 198, sensitivity = 99%, specificity = 36%), was sensitive, but not specific. Eight patients were endotracheally intubated on-site. Their injury and trauma parameters did not differ from those of the 73 patients who were intubated in the hospital. Also, there was no substantially significant difference in the time of arrival at a hospital between the severely and non-severely injured {p = 0.55). Conclusions: In this major burn accident, the TBSA burned was not estimated reliably in the non-clinical environment. The diagnosis of inhalation injury was adequate, but resulted in over-triage on-site and at the ED. On-site triage did not lead to priority transport for the severely wounded. Detailed assessment of injuries of burn casualties only is practical in a specialized clinical setting. The early transfer of victims to a hospital, therefore, has the greatest priority in major incidents involving burn casualties.


Temporally expressive planning, an important class of temporal planning, has attracted much attention lately. Temporally expressive planning is difficult; few existing planners can solve them, as they have highly concurrent actions. We propose an optimal approach to temporally expressive planning based on a SAT formulation of the problem, finding solutions with the shortest time spans. Our experiments on several temporally expressive domains showed that our planner is able to optimally solve many instances in a reasonable amount of time, comparing favorably to existing temporally expressive planners. Our second result is a temporally expressive planning problem formulation of the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network communications. In addition to demonstrating a better performance of our new method than the only existing temporally expressive planners on several temporally expressive problem domains, we apply our new planner to find optimal communication schedules for P2P networks. Our results will be potentially useful for designing efficient communication protocols in P2P networks.


A survey of 273 restaurateurs who have offered daily deals presents a mixed picture regarding the deals' success and the operators' attitudes on past and future deals. About half of the restaurateurs, a substantial majority of which were independents, had offered at least one deal, most of them through Groupon or LivingSocial. These operators reported that about 40 percent of the deal purchasers were new customers, meaning that there was substantial cannibalization of existing customers. However, 35 percent of the first-time deal customers returned to the restaurant without a further incentive. Although many restaurant operators said revenues increased, the number that said they made money on the deal was about the same as those who reported losing money. Additionally, a comparison of deal buyers' attitudes with the restaurateurs' view of the deal buyers found that the operators misjudged their guests in some regards but were correct on others. The operators underestimated deal buyers' likelihood of returning to the restaurant without a subsequent deal, and missed a key characteristic of the deal buyers, which is that they want to be opinion leaders, or "market mavens." This aspect of deal buyers can be important for future sales. Given the consumers' attitudes, the best strategy to bring back deal buyers is to offer them a first-class experience so that they can see a restaurant's full value proposition.


Several studies were conducted to explore the prognostic significance of podocalyxin-like protein (PODXL) expression in various cancers, with contradictory. This study aims to summarize the prognostic significance of PODXL expression in cancers. PubMed, the Cochrane Library and Embase were completely retrieved. The prospective or retrospective studies focusing on the prognostic role of PODXL expression in cancers were eligible. The endpoints were overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS) and disease-free survival (DFS).12 studies involving a total of 5,309 patients were identified. The results indicated that high PODXL expression was significantly associated with worse OS when compared to the low PODXL expression (HR=1.76, 95%CI=1.53-2.04, p<0.00001; I2=41%, p=0.08). And similar results were detected in the subgroup analysis of analysis model, ethnicity, sample size, tumor type and antibody type. And the results also showed that high PODXL expression was obviously related to shorter DSS (HR=2.47, 95%CI=1.53-3.99, p=0.0002; I2=66%, p=0.03) and DFS (HR=2.12, 95%CI=1.58-2.85, p<0.00001; I2=19%, p=0.29). In conclusion, it was revealed that high PODXL expression is an unfavorable predictor of OS, DSS and DFS in patients with cancers, and high PODXL expression is a promising prognostic biomarker for cancers, especially for patients in European.


Abstract. Severe regional haze pollution events occurred in eastern and central China in January 2013, which had adverse effects on the environment and public health. Extremely high levels of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM2.5) with dominant components of sulfate and nitrate are responsible for the haze pollution. Although heterogeneous chemistry is thought to play an important role in the production of sulfate and nitrate during haze episodes, few studies have comprehensively evaluated the effect of heterogeneous chemistry on haze formation in China by using the 3-D models due to of a lack of treatments for heterogeneous reactions in most climate and chemical transport models. In this work, the WRF-CMAQ model with newly added heterogeneous reactions is applied to East Asia to evaluate the impacts of heterogeneous chemistry and the meteorological anomaly during January 2013 on regional haze formation. As the parameterization of heterogeneous reactions on different types of particles is not well established yet, we arbitrarily selected the uptake coefficients from reactions on dust particles and then conducted several sensitivity runs to find the value that can best match observations. The revised CMAQ with heterogeneous chemistry not only captures the magnitude and temporal variation of sulfate and nitrate, but also reproduces the enhancement of relative contribution of sulfate and nitrate to PM2.5 mass from clean days to polluted haze days. These results indicate the significant role of heterogeneous chemistry in regional haze formation and improve the understanding of the haze formation mechanisms during the January 2013 episode.


Ataxia telangiectasia (A-T) cells are sensitive to a broad range of free-radical-producing and alkylating agents. Damage caused by such agents is in part repaired by base excision [base excision repair (BER)]. Two BER pathways have been demonstrated in mammalian cells: a single-nucleotide-insertion pathway and a long-patch pathway involving resynthesis of 2–10 nucleotides. Although early studies failed to detect DNA-repair defects in A-T cells exposed to ionizing radiation and radiomimetic agents, more recent experiments performed in non-dividing A-T cells and the demonstrated interaction of the A-T-mutated protein (ATM) with the BRCA1 gene product suggest that a DNA-repair defect may underlie, at least in part, the radiation sensitivity in A-T cells. We have analysed BER of a single abasic site or a single uracil in two A-T families, using an in vitro BER system. In both families, the mutation involved was homozygous and completely inactivated the ATM protein. No difference was observed between affected individuals and heterozygous or homozygous wild-type relatives in their capacity to perform DNA repair by either one-nucleotide insertion or the long-patch pathway. Hence, the putative DNA-repair defect in A-T cells, if any, does not involve BER.


OBJECTIVES
Hybrid coronary revascularization, performing a left internal thoracic artery (LITA) to left anterior descending (LAD) bypass followed by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in a non-LAD coronary artery lesion, represents an evolving revascularization strategy. It utilizes the survival benefit of the LITA-to-LAD bypass, while providing complete revascularization with PCI to a non-critical vessel to decrease procedural morbidity. However, quantitative patency results and clinical outcomes remain understudied. The objective of this study was to assess clinical follow-up and graft and stent patency at 6 months and 5 years in a single-stage hybrid revascularization population.

METHODS
From 2004 to 2012, a total of 96 patients (64 ± 12 years; 70 males and 26 females) consented to robotic-assisted LITA harvesting and a small left anterior thoracotomy for off-pump coronary artery bypass anastomosis onto the LAD. This was followed immediately by PCI in a non-LAD vessel in the same fluoroscopy-equipped hybrid operating room. Patients underwent a yearly clinical follow-up and a protocol-directed assessment of graft patency via a coronary angiogram at 6 months and cardiac computed tomography (CT) angiography with single-photon emission computed tomography myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPS) at 5 years.

RESULTS
Successful single-stage hybrid revascularization occurred in 94 of the 96 patients (2 patients required intraoperative conversion to conventional coronary bypass). Six-month protocol coronary angiogram follow-up has been performed in 85 patients. Fitzgibbon Grade A or B LITA-to-LAD patency at 6-month follow-up was 94% in those studied. A total of 105 stents were deployed (89 drug-eluting stents (DES) and 16 bare metal), and at 6-month follow-up in 85 patients, 79 stents were widely patent; 8 had in-stent restenosis, and 2 were completely occluded. To date, 19 patients have undergone 5-year coronary CT angiography and MPS. The LITA-to-LAD anastomosis was patent in 17 of the 19 patients. Of the 19 lesions in which PCI was performed, 17 were widely patent, while 2 circumflex DES were occluded. Five-year clinical outcome demonstrated 91% survival, 94% freedom from angina and 87% freedom from any form of coronary revascularization.

CONCLUSIONS
A single-stage hybrid revascularization strategy appears to have acceptable 6-month and angiographic patency results for both LITA-LAD grafts and PCI interventions. Survival, freedom from angina and freedom from revascularization also appear favourable at the 5-year clinical follow-up.


Five viruses causing colour-breaking of tulip flowers were isolated from tulips and lilies. Tulip-breaking virus (TBV), tulip top-breaking virus (TTBV), tulip band-breaking virus, Rembrandt tulip-breaking virus and lily mottle virus were all characterized as potyviruses by serology and potyvirus-specific PCR. Sequence analysis of amplified DNA fragments spanning a conserved area of the coat protein cistron of potyviruses was performed in order to classify the isolates as distinct viruses or strains. It appears that all tulip-breaking viruses are distinct viruses and TTBV was found to be strain-related to turnip mosaic virus.


Competition between different males' sperm for the fertilization of ova has led to the evolution of a diversity of characters in male reproductive behaviour, physiology and morphology. Males may increase sperm competition success either by enhancing the success of their own sperm or by negating or eliminating the success of rival sperm. Here, we find that in the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum, the second male to mate gains fertilization precedence over previous males' sperm and fertilizes approximately two-thirds of the eggs. It is not known what mechanism underlies this pattern of last-male sperm precedence; however, the elongate tubules of the female sperm storage organ may encourage a 'last-in, first-out' sperm use sequence. Here we present an additional or alternative mechanism of sperm precedence whereby previously deposited sperm are removed from the female tract by the mating male's genitalia. In addition to providing evidence for sperm removal in T. castaneum, we also show that removed, non-self sperm may be translocated back into the reproductive tracts of new, previously unmated females, where the translocated sperm go on to gain significant fertilization success. We found that, in 45 out of 204 crosses, sperm translocation occurred and in these 45 crosses over half of the offspring were sired by spermatozoa which had been translocated between females on the male genitalia. In the natural environment of stored food, reproductively active T. castaneum adults aggregate in dense mating populations where copulation is frequent (we show in three naturally occurring population densities that copula duration and intermating intervals across three subsequent matings average 1 to 2 min). Selection upon males to remove rival sperm may have resulted in counter-selection upon spermatozoa to survive removal and be translocated into new females where they go on to fertilize in significant numbers.


In the vertebrate retina, gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) mediates inhibitory processes that shape the visual response and is also thought to have neurotrophic functions during retinal development. To investigate the role of GABAergic signaling at the beginning of visual experience, we used immunohistochemistry to compare the distribution of GABA, the two isoforms of glutamic acid decarboxylase GAD65/67, and the GABA receptor types A, B, and C, in neonate versus adult Octodon degus, a native South American rodent with diurnal‐crepuscular activity and a high cone‐to‐rod ratio. In parallel, we used electroretinography to evaluate retinal functionality and to test the contribution of fast GABAergic transmission to light responses at both developmental stages. Neonate O. degus opened their eyes on postnatal day (P)0 and displayed an adult‐like retinal morphology at this time. GABA, its biosynthetic sources, and receptors had a similar cellular distribution in neonates and adults, but labeling of the outer plexiform layer and of certain amacrine and ganglion cells was more conspicuous at P0. In neonates, retinal sensitivity was 10 times lower than in adults, responses to ultraviolet light could not be detected, and oscillatory potentials were reduced or absent. Blockade of GABAA/C receptors by bicuculline and TPMPA had no noticeable effect in neonates, while it significantly altered the electroretinogram response in adults. Conclusion: In spite of modest differences regarding retinal morphology and GABAergic expression, overall light response properties and GABAergic signaling are undeveloped in neonate O. degus compared to adults, suggesting that full retinal functionality requires a period of neural refinement under visual experience. J. Comp. Neurol. 514:459–472, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


BACKGROUND
Vaginal agenesis is a rare congenital disorder. It requires surgical management and still it is not defined universally. The surgical resolution of the pure vaginal agenesis, through fasciocutaneous pudendal thigh flaps, has few complications and allows the copulative function in normal conditions.

OBJECTIVE
To assess the results of the vaginal agenesis surgical management.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
From January 1996 to January 2005 we identified 33 patients with Müllerian duct and urogenital sinus disorders; eight of them had vaginal agenesis diagnosis. All the patients were subject to: complete medical history, karyotype study, determination of a complete gynecological profile, pelvic ultrasound, excretory urography, and, in some acute cases of hematometra or hematosalpinx, to an intervention with two surgical equipments: one of them used for the hematic collection emptiness of the internal genitals and the other one to solve the mechanical obstruction of vaginal agenesis. In some cases the study was completed through diagnostic laparoscopy.

RESULTS
In our series six patients had functional uterus. When we made the surgical intervention we tried to make the uterus tunelization in the neovagina through the use of a Foley catheter. Nevertheless, they continued with symptoms of cyclical pelvic pain and chronic hematometra. One of the patients was exposed to total abdominal hysterectomy without bilateral oophorectomy, and in two more we are planning to make the same procedure in a short term.

CONCLUSIONS
Fasciocutaneous pudendal thigh flaps technique is easy, safety and reliable, and it allows the creation of a neovagina in only one surgical time.


Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Objective: To evaluate the effect of warfarin on blood transfusion and postoperative complications in a low-energy hip fracture population compared with a non-anticoagulated comparison group. Design: Multicenter Retrospective Cohort. Setting: Three Urban Level I Academic Trauma Centers. Patients: Acute, low-energy, native hip fractures in patients 55 years of age or older on chronic warfarin anticoagulation, propensity score matched 1:2 to non-anticoagulated hip fracture patients meeting all other inclusion criteria. Main Outcome Measurements: Transfusion and postoperative complication rates. Results: Two hundred ten anticoagulated hip fracture patients were matched to 420 nonanticoagulated patients. A higher proportion of patients required blood transfusion in the warfarin cohort (52.4% vs. 43.3%, P < 0.001), attributable mostly to the subgroup of patients undergoing arthroplasty. Warfarin patients had higher incidence of overall 90-day complications (47% vs. 38%, P = 0.039) and readmissions (31.4% vs. 8.9%, P < 0.001). Day of surgery international normalized ratio (INR) did not influence transfusions or complications among warfarin patients. Warfarin patients undergoing surgery within 24 hours had no difference in transfusions and had fewer complications compared with those undergoing surgery after 24 hours. On multivariable logistic regression analysis, warfarin use and day of surgery INR were not predictors of transfusion or complications. Conclusions: Patients on warfarin experienced longer time to surgery and higher incidence of overall transfusion and postoperative complications within 90 days of surgery. However, warfarin use and day of surgery INR was not independently associated with transfusions or complications. The reason for poorer outcomes in warfarin patients remains a topic of further investigation. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


Aims: To increase our understanding of nurse-parents' experiences when their child is hospitalised with an acute illness. Background: The hospitalisation of a child is a stressful event for many parents. Parents who are also nurses (nurse-parents) may face additional challenges due to their nursing background and knowledge. Methods: Sixteen articles, including 14 qualitative studies and two mixed-methods studies, were reviewed. Results: No studies of nurse-parent experiences were identified. A review of the experiences of nurses as recipients of health care, and general-public parents with a hospitalised child was therefore undertaken to provide an insight into the potential experiences of nurse-parents. Conclusion: Nurse-parents' experiences may be complicated by a number of challenges not faced by general-public parents; including dual role conflicts, and amplified social, emotional and psychological difficulties. Implications for clinical practice Health care professionals need to consider the specific challenges that may be faced by nurse-parents to provide effective and supportive care. Research into this client group is therefore needed to enable an enhanced understanding of their particular needs.


A variation of the revised simplex method is proposed for solving the standard linear programming problem. The method is derived from an algorithm recently proposed by Gill and Murray, and is based upon the orthogonal factorization B = LQ or, equivalently, upon the Cholesky factorization ${BB}^T = {LL}^T$ where B is the usual square basis, L is lower triangular and Q is orthogonal. We wish to retain the favorable numerical properties of the orthogonal factorization, while extending the work of Gill and Murray to the case of linear programs which are both large and sparse. The principal property exploited is that the Cholesky factor L depends only on $underline{which}$ variables are in the basis, and not upon the $underline{order}$ in which they happen to enter. A preliminary ordering of the rows of the full data matrix therefore promises to ensure that L will remain sparse throughout the iterations of the simplex method. An initial (in-core) version of the algorithm has been implemented in Algol W on the IBM 360/91 and tested on several medium-scale problems from industry (up to 930 constraints). While performance has not been especially good on problems of high density, the method does appear to be efficient on problems which are very sparse, and on structured problems which have either generalized upper bounding, block-angular, or staircase form.


For free-space optical (FSO) links in turbulent atmosphere modeled by gamma-gamma distributions, an approximation of the pairwise error probability (PEP) was derived for on-off keying in a recently published paper. It has been assumed that the channel state is perfectly known to the receiver and that the fading samples are independent and identically distributed. Based on these conditions, we show in this letter that the approximation can be replaced by a closed-form solution, disregarding a finite-limit integral which forms also part of the approximation in the reference paper. The PEP is then used to evaluate the union upper bound for convolutional codes with Viterbi decoding. Finally, in order to identify the potential of powerful error correction algorithms, like turbo codes as most prominent example in this respect, the lower bound of the error probability is given via the converse of Shannon's coding theorem.


Introduction:
 Transplantation of neural stem cells (NSCs) provides a promising therapy for stroke. Its efficacy, however, might be limited because of massive grafted-cell death following transplantation, as well as insufficient capability for tissue repair. Chemical preconditioning primes the cells to the ''state of readiness'' to withstand the rigors of lethal ischemia. In this study, we investigated whether cellular reprogramming of NSCs with minocycline or interleukin-6 (IL-6), both of which are known to possess cytoprotective properties, facilitates the effectiveness of stem cell therapy in ischemic stroke.

 Methods:
 NSCs harvested from the subventricular zone of fetal mice were preconditioned with minocycline (10 μM) or IL-6 (20 ng/ml) for 24 hours
 in vitro
 . For an
 in vitro
 study, the NSCs were subjected to oxygen-glucose deprivation and reoxygenation (n=4). For an
 in vivo
 study, the NSCs were transplanted into mouse brains 6 hours or 7 days after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (n=8). Histological and behavioral tests were examined from days 0 to 28 after stroke.

 Results:
 Minocycline preconditioning up-regulated the expression of Nrf2 (2.7-fold), as well as Nrf2-regulated antioxidant genes (HO-1: 4.0-fold/NQO1: 20-fold), and induced the NSCs to release paracrine factors, including BDNF, NGF, GDNF, and VEGF. IL-6 preconditioning activated STAT3-mediated up-regulation of SOD2 (2.3-fold), a primary mitochondrial antioxidant enzyme, and induced VEGF secretion (2.2-fold). Transplantation of minocycline- or IL-6-preconditioned NSCs significantly reduced grafted cell death, attenuated infarct size, and improved neurological performance compared with non-preconditioned NSCs. This minocycline- or IL-6-induced amelioration of ischemic insults was abolished by transfecting the NSCs with Nrf2- or STAT3-small interfering RNA before transplantation.

 Conclusions:
 Chemical preconditioning, which reprograms NSCs to tolerate oxidative stress after ischemic reperfusion injury and to induce trophic effects, is a simple and beneficial approach for enhancing the effectiveness of cell transplantation therapy in ischemic stroke.


There are few works on ecology and diversity of echinoderms in Nicaragua. Studies of many faunal groups of marine invertebrates, in particular which should focus on the fauna of tropical areas, have been scarce or have received only limited attention from the scientific community and government authorities of the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAS) of Nicaragua. Scientific research on these groups has targeted mainly resources of commercial importance (e.g. spiny lobster, Panulirus argus ). There is lack of information regarding the faunal biodiversity of Corn Island in general. The echinoderm fauna studied in this work comes from a wide variety of environments, from the rocky coastal area, sandy beaches, sea grass to areas of coral reef. Echinoderms were collected, from 14 points in a variety of marine substrates, aided by SCUBA diving equipment during the period from August 2012 to March 2013. There was a total of 41 species corresponding to four classes: three species of Asteroids, 16 species of ophiuroids, 11 species of Echinoids and 11 species of holoturoids. The most common species was Ophiolepis impressa present in ten of the 14 localities, followed of Diadema antillarum , Eucidaris tribuloides and Ophioderma cinerea who were present at seven locations each, respectively. The less common species were Clypeaster rosaceus , Leodia sexiesperforata , Meoma ventricosa and Ophioderma guttata . The study of echinoderms in diverse marine habitats facilitates the comparison of the state of fluctuation of those communities along time. Whether they were natural or caused by human activities. Therefore, the present study expands knowledge about the species of echinoderms that live in shallow areas of Corn Island (between 0-10 m depth), so able to establish measures for the conservation of these species.


In nature, the biological membrane can selectively transport essential small molecules/ions through facilitated diffusion via carrier proteins. Intrigued by this phenomenon and principle, membrane researchers have successfully employed synthetic carriers and carrier-mediated reversible reactions to enhance the separation performance of synthetic membranes. However, the existing facilitated transport membranes as well as the relevant facilitated transport theories have scarcely been comprehensively reviewed in the literature. This tutorial review primarily covers the two aspects of facilitated transport theories: carrier-mediated transport mechanisms and facilitated transport chemistries, including the design and fabrication of facilitated transport membranes. The applications of facilitated transport membranes in energy-intensive membrane processes (gas separation, pervaporation, and proton exchange membrane fuel cells) have also been discussed. Hopefully, this review will provide guidelines for the future research and development of facilitated transport membranes with high energy efficiency.


A 32-year-old man with a pituitary tumor had bitemporal hemianopia (figure 1). Peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) in optical coherence tomography (OCT) was reduced, which corresponded to visual field defects. OCT angiography showed a dropout of capillaries and correlated well with RNFL loss in the OCT (figure 2). Compressive optic neuropathy may be associated with loss of the retinal ganglion cell layer and impaired peripapillary retinal perfusion. OCT angiography may be helpful to detect various optic neuropathies and in analyzing the vascular status of the optic nerve head and RNFL.1


The increasing prevalence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM) has made it necessary to have new markers for early detection of diabetic nephropathy. Renal resistive index (RI) by using renal Doppler can be a helpful tool in detecting functional alterations in renal hemodynamics. This study was conducted on 100 children and adolescents with type 1 DM. They were further subdivided into two equal subgroups: group 1 with type 1 DM and normo-albuminuria [urinary albumin excretion (UAE) <30 mg/24 hours], and group 2 with type 1 DM and hyper-albuminuria (increased UAE >30 mg/24 hours). There were 37 males (37%) and 63 females (63%); their mean ages were 13.6±2.53 (range, 10-19) years and mean disease duration was 8.867±2.260 (range, 5-13) years. Progressive increase in RI was significantly associated with increased disease duration more than 10 years, elevated serum HbA1c more than 7.5% and early pubertal stages. While not significantly related to sex, weight, height, blood pressure or serum lipid profile, diabetic micro-vascular complications (nephropathy and sensory neuropathy) were more prevalent among patients with RI more than 0.58. Renal RI could be a useful complementary test for the evaluation of functional alterations in renal hemodynamics in the early stages of diabetic nephropathy.


In recent decades, Seventh-day Adventists have had several interactions discussing the use of the Qur'an for mission. Some Adventist ministers and workers have used the Qur'an as a tool to draw people into a discussion of faith and to guide people into an understanding of God that fits with the biblical portrayal. This has not been without controversy, and debate has taken place in formal and informal ways. This issue is often described as though it was a new form of mission Adventists are utilizing on the cutting edge of mission (Diop 2005; Maberly 2006). What this article demonstrates is that there have been Adventists who used the Qur'an in their discussions of faith with Muslims for nearly 100 years, if not more. The debate may feel fresh, but it is not a new debate. This article focuses on several examples from the 1920s through 1963.


This memo provides an analysis of the implications of prospective debt relief for the dynamics of the political marketplace in Somalia. While there is clearly great moral value in writing off Somalia's debt and opening the possibility for new development funding, which is in line with recent global trends and emphasised more so given the Covid-19 pandemic, this memo questions the dominance of short-term political calculus over ensuring systems of accountability and transparency. The contradictions of international demands, benchmarks and statements with the reality of those achievements is highlighted below and suggests that international political drivers are problematic and instrumentalised domestically. The memo further suggests that there are high risks in countries such as Somalia that key financial institutions become drawn into the political marketplace making short-term transactional decisions at the expense of long-term institution-building. The study findings were based on 34 interviews conducted between March and August 2020, out of which 26 were carried out remotely and 8 in Mogadishu. The key informants included long-term Somalia analysts and observers, Government and ex-Government officials, Mogadishu-based academics, civil society and businesspeople, ex-World Bank staff, donor and former donor staff members. In addition, the study carried out an extensive literature and media survey, including open sources such as the IMF and World Bank documents available online, as well as other grey literature.


A detailed approach to integrating behavioral techniques into patient education, case management, and treatment evaluation of persons with diabetes mellitus is offered. The author asks a series of "what if" questions to stimulate new thinking about ways to improve patient-physician relations in overcoming problems in managing the condition, citing recent research findings in the field. Adherence to regimens, self-management, goals of an integrated diabetes program and steps along the way to achieving it, psychophysiologic mechanisms in glucose metabolism, and the function of social support are among the topics covered.


In this paper, we present a middleware architecture for coordination services in sensor networks that facilitates interaction between groups of sensors which monitor different environmental events. It sits on top of the native routing infrastructure and exports the abstraction of mobile communication endpoints maintained at the locations of such events. A single logical destination is created and maintained for every environmental event of interest. Such destinations are uniquely labeled and can be used for communication by application-level algorithms for coordination and sensory data management between the different event locales. For example, they may facilitate coordination, in a distributed intrusion scenario, among nodes in the vicinity


The nonleptonic weak processes s+u{yields}u+d and u+d{yields}s+u are known to dominate the dissipation mechanism responsible for the viscosity of strange quark matter in its normal phase. The rates of such processes remain unknown for many color superconducting phases of quark matter. In this paper, we partially fill up the gap by calculating the difference of the rates of the two nonleptonic weak processes in four transverse spin-one color superconducting phases of quark matter (slightly) out of {beta} equilibrium. The four phases studied are the color-spin locked phase, the polar phase, the planar phase, and the A phase. In the limit of vanishing color superconducting gap, we reproduce the known results in the normal phase. In the general case, the rates are suppressed relative to the normal phase. The degree of the suppression is determined by the structure of the gap function in momentum space, which in turn is determined by the pairing pattern of quarks. At low temperatures, the rate is dominated by the ungapped modes. In this limit, the strongest suppression of the rate occurs in the color-spin-locked phase, and the weakest is in the polar phase and the A phase.


Purpose: This comparative study holistically assesses the effect of personality on scholastic motivation and scholarly performance. Design/Methodology/Approach: The contribution and the relevant methodology are based on an educational motivation interceded the association between openness to experience and standards with scholarly performance. The research sample consists of students who willfully participated and they were approached to finish a personality poll (NEO-FFI), and a scholastic motivation survey (AMS-C 28, included GPA and statistic information) on a pioneering critical comparative structural model. Findings: Based on the implied arguments and yielded results, the article considers the interceding role of scholastic motivation about personality and performance. The nature of these relations, can be a point of takeoff to assist inquires about this issue. Practical implications: Based on addressing its structural purposes, the study sheds a new light on the conscientiousness that predicts both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Earlier investigations show that there is a relationship between openness to involvement and insights. Originality/Value: Although this study builds upon recent studies about character, motivation and different factors can affect scholastic performance that can be analyzed in future investigations as an innovative idea for the harmonization in this field.


In this paper, we address the problem of user scheduling in downlink coordinated multi-point transmission (CoMP) systems, where multiple users are selected and then served with zero forcing beamformer simultaneously by several cooperative base stations (BSs). To reduce the enormous overhead led by obtaining full channel state information at the transmitter, a low-feedback user scheduling method called channel norm-based user scheduler (NUS), is proposed by exploiting the asymmetric channel feature of CoMP systems. Simulation results show that the channel norm provides sufficient information for user scheduling when each BS has one antenna, where the performance gap between the NUS and the greedy user selection (GUS) is negligible with respect to both the cell average throughput and the cell edge throughput. When each BS has multiple antennas, NUS is inferior to GUS, but still significantly outperforms the uncoordinated systems.


Abstract. The Jurassic rocks of Gebel Maghara, northern Sinai, Egypt, contain a well-preserved and highly diverse macrobenthic fauna, dominated by bivalves. This fauna, particularly bivalves and gastropods, have received little attention in the last 100 years. In an attempt to provide a sound database on the marine bivalve diversity of Egypt during the Jurassic period, a first faunal group, the protobranch bivalves, is reviewed in detail. Sixteen taxa (three of them new), belonging to two orders, five families, and nine genera are systematically described and compared to closely related Jurassic taxa from various locations, particularly in Europe and India. New species are Nuculoma douvillei n. sp., N. sinaiensis n. sp., and Palaeoneilo aegyptiaca n. sp. In addition, Palaeonucula cuneiformis (J. de C. Sowerby), P. muensteri (Goldfuss), Dacryomya diana (d'Orbigny), D. lacryma (J. de. C. Sowerby), and Praesaccella juriana Cox are identified from Jurassic strata of Egypt for the first time. The younger records of the genus Palaeoneilo have not been accepted by some researchers, since almost all exhibit only limited features. The genus occurs with certainty in the Middle Jurassic (Bajocian–Bathonian) rocks of Egypt, based on well-preserved external and internal characters. Similarly, Dacryomya and Ryderia from Bathonian–Kimmeridgian rocks of Egypt are younger than previously recorded from other parts of the world. The identified genera have wide geographic ranges and have been reported from different faunal provinces, which suggests that latitudinal climate differences did not influence their distribution pattern to a great extent.


A (E, E)-dioxime, N,N′-bis(7-aminobenzo-17,23-dimethyl-4,11-dioxa-1,14,17,23-tetraazapentacyclo[188.8.131.52,10]hexadiconta-1,5,7,12,14-pentane)diaminoglyoxime (H2L) has been synthesized from (E, E)-dichloroglyoxime and 7-aminobenzo-17,23-dimethyl-4,11-dioxa-1,14,17,23-tetraazapentacyclo[22.214.171.124,10]hexadiconta-1,5,7,12,14-pentane which has been prepared from 7-nitro-17,23-dimethyl-4,11-dioxa-1,14,17,23-tetraazapentacyclo[22.214.171.124,10]hexadiconta-1,5,7,12,14-pentane. A mononuclear Ni(II) complex with a metal : ligand ratio of 1 : 2 was prepared and then a Ni(II) complex bridged with was obtained by reaction with boron trifluoride etherate. The structure of the dioxime and its transition metal complexes are proposed according to elemental analysis, 1H NMR, IR and mass spectral data.


BACKGROUND
The relationship between sexual differences of body fat distribution and cardiovascular dysmetabolic factors in old people is controversial.

OBJECTIVES
To use centrality index-derived body fat distribution to clarify its relationship with glucose tolerance status, blood pressure and lipid profile.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional survey in a tertiary-care medical centre in Tainan, Taiwan.

SUBJECTS
114 men and 101 women, aged > or = 60 years.

METHODS
We measured total % body fat and body fat distribution (reflected as centrality index) by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry, and plasma glucose, glycosylated haemoglobin, blood pressure, total cholesterol, triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and atherogenic index (total cholesterol/HDL cholesterol).

RESULTS
Centrality index showed better linear correlation with cardiovascular dysmetabolic factors than body mass index, total % body fat and waist-to-hip ratio, except in systolic blood pressure. Women had higher total % body fat, but the % abdominal fat and centrality index were both higher in men. Subjects with diabetes mellitus had the highest centrality index compared with those with impaired or normal glucose tolerance. After adjustment for age and total % body fat, men still had higher diastolic blood pressure, triglyceride levels and atherogenic indices, but lower HDL cholesterol levels than women. However, when further adjusted for centrality index, the sex differences in cardiovascular dysmetabolic factors were statistically insignificant.

CONCLUSIONS
Centrality index is a useful method for assessing body fat distribution in older people. Body fat distribution is an important factor in sex differences of cardiovascular dysmetabolic factors in old people.


Objective To compare the angiographic features in the diabetic or non-diabetic patients with peripheral arterial disease. Methods Forty-three diabetic patients and 39 nondiabetic patie nts with peripheral arterial occlusive disease underwent arteriography. Stenose s in the abdominal aorta, the common iliac artery, the external iliac artery, th e internal iliac artery, the superficial femoral artery, the profunda femoral ar tery, the popliteal artery, the anterior tibial artery, the posterior tibial art ery, and the peroneal artery were scored on the basis of vessel lumen reduction: 0 if stenoses involved the vessel lumen reduction of 50%; 1 if 50% to 70% red uction; 2 if 75% to 100% reduction , and 3 if total occlusion was present. The sum of the points assigned to each of these arteries was called the angiogra phic score. Results The prevalences of the abdominal aortic d isease, the visceral, the profunda femoral and the anterior tibial arterial dise ase, were 33/34(97%), 11/30(37%), 11/69(16%), 25/42(60%) in non-diabetics and 2 6/36(72%), 1/36(3%), 24/78(31%) and 61/75(81%) in diabetics (P=0.0271~0.0 007), respectively. The angiographic scores (mean±SD) in the abdominal aorta, the common iliac artery, the internal iliac artery were significantly higher in non-diabetic than diabetic patients (0.26±0.67 vs 0, 0 .55±1.06 vs 0.15±0.58, 1.08±1.29 vs 0.57±1.05, P0.02, 0.004, 0.008 ) . However, there were significantly higher scores for other peripheral arterie s in diabetics than in non-diabetics: 0.60±0.61 vs 0.17±0.48 for the profunda femoral artery, 1.15±0.82 vs 0.75±1.22 for the popliteal artery, 1.92±1.39 vs 0.81±0.94 for the anterior tibial artery, 1.72 ±1.85 vs 1.07±1.00 for the posterior tibial artery and 1.99±1.05 vs 0.98± 1.00 for the peroneal artery, all these differences were significa nt. Conclusions The abdominal aorta and the visceral artery a re more often involved in non-diabetic patients. Arterial diseases in diabetic patients are more often and more severe in the profunda femoral, the popliteal, the anterior tibial, the posterior tibial, or the peroneal artery.


THE CHARPY IMPACT TEST IS A STANDARD PROCEDURE FOR DETERMINING THE DUCTILE-BRITTLE TRANSITION IN WELDS. THE PREDICTIONS OF SUCH TESTS HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED BY FULL THREE DIMENSIONAL TRANSIENT ANALYSES OF CHARPY V-NOTCH SPECIMENS. THE MATERIAL RESPONSE IS CHARACTERISED BY AN ELASTIC-VISCOPLASTIC CONSTITUTIVE RELATION FOR A POROUS PLASTIC SOLID, ACCOUNTING FOR ADIABATIC HEATING DUE TO PLASTIC DISSIPATIONFIAND THE RESULTING THERMAL SOFTENING. THE ONSET OF CLEAVAGE IS TAKEN TO OCCUR WHEN THE AVERAGE OF THE MAXIMUM PRINCIPAL STRESS OVER A SPECI¯ED VOLUME ATTAINS A CRITICAL VALUE. TYPICALLY, THE MATERIAL PARAMETERS IN THE WELD MATERIAL DIFFER FROM THOSE IN THE BASE MATERIAL, AND THE HEAT A®ECTED ZONE (HAZ) TENDS TO BE MORE BRITTLE THAN THE OTHER MATERIAL REGIONS. THE EFFECT OF WELD STRENGTH UNDERMATCH OR OVERMATCH IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE. SOME SPECIMENS, FOR WHICH THE NOTCHED SURFACE IS ROTATED RELATIVE TO THE SURFACE OF THE TEST PIECE, HAVE SO COMPLEX GEOMETRY THAT ONLY A FULL 3D ANALYSIS IS ABLE TO ACCOUNT FOR THE INTERACTION OF FAILURE IN THE THREE DIFFERENT MATERIAL REGIONS, WHEREAS THER SPECIMENS CAN BE APPROXIMATED IN TERMS OF A PLANAR ANALYSIS


We present an improved technique for detection of trace impurities in iodine-filled absorption cells for laser frequency stabilization. The results of purity investigation are compared to frequency shifts measured with a set of two iodine stabilized Nd:YAG lasers. The setup for direct fluorescence measurement with an Argon-ion laser operating at 502 nm wavelength is equipped with compensation for laser power and spectral instabilities.


The intent of this paper is to show enhancements in level 2 and 3 fusion capabilities through a new class of graph models and solution strategies. The problem today is not often lack of information, but instead, information overload. Graphs have demonstrated to be a useful framework to represent and analyze large amounts of information. Classical strategies such as Bayesian networks, semantic networks and graph matching are some examples of the power of graphs. We will introduce two different but related graph-based structures that will allow us to span the temporal performance of decision-making processes. Given that most of the high level information fusion problems of interest are NP-Hard, there is a need to separate methodologies between "near real-time" tools and forensic heuristics. With this in mind we will introduce a real-time decision-making tool (INFERD) and a forensic graph matching algorithm (TruST)


20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (20-HETE), a CYP4A-derived arachidonic acid metabolite, is a potent vasoconstrictor and a modulator of vascular reactivity. We have shown that CYP4A1 and CYP4A2 are the major CYP4A isoforms expressed in the rat renal microcirculation. In the present study, we constructed two bicistronic vectors, pIRES2-EGFP-4A1 and pIRES2-EGFP-4A2, and examined their functional efficacy in COS-1 and vascular smooth muscle (A7r5) cells and in microdissected rat interlobar arteries. Immunocytochemistry coupled with fluorescence microscopy of pIRES2-EGFP-4A1- or pIRES2-EGFP-4A2-transfected COS-1 and A7r5 cells indicated that both enhanced green fluorescence protein (EGFP) and CYP4A1/4A2 were expressed in 80 to 90% of the cells. Western blot analysis showed a 3- to 5-fold increase of CYP4A1 and CYP4A2 proteins in pIRES2-EGFP-4A1- and pIRES2-EGFP-4A2-transfected cells as compared with control pIRES2-transfected cells. Cells transfected with pIRES2-EGFP-4A1 and pIRES2-EGFP-4A2 catalyzed arachidonic acid ω-hydroxylation to 20-HETE at rates of 0.85 ± 0.29 and 0.27 ± 0.04 nmol/107 cells/h, respectively. Transfection of interlobar arteries with either plasmid yielded EGFP immunofluorescence that was localized to the intima, media, and adventitia. Arteries transfected with pIRES2-EGFP-4A1 and pIRES2-EGFP-4A2 showed increased vasoreactivity displaying EC50 to phenylephrine of 0.24 ± 0.07 and 0.11 ± 0.03 μM, respectively, as compared with arteries transfected with pIRES2-EGFP (1.11 ± 0.21 μM; n = 6, p < 0.05). The increased vasoreactivity to phenylephrine was inhibited by N-methylsulfonyl-12,12-dibromododec-11-enamide, an inhibitor of CYP4A-catalyzed reactions, suggesting that a product of CYP4A1 and CYP4A2 catalytic activity contributed to the increased constrictor responsiveness. Removal of the endothelium did not prevent the sensitization to phenylephrine in vessels transfected with the plasmid containing the CYP4A1 cDNA, suggesting that the CYP4A product responsible for the sensitizing effect, presumably 20-HETE, is not of endothelial cell origin.


With the shrinking of technology feature sizes, the share of leakage in total power consumption of digital systems continues to grow. Traditional dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) fails to accurately address the impact of scaling on system power consumption as the leakage power increases exponentially. The combination of DVS and adaptive body biasing (ABB) is an effective technique to jointly optimize dynamic and leakage energy dissipation. In this paper, we propose an optimal soft real-time loop scheduling and voltage assignment algorithm, loop scheduling and voltage assignment to minimize energy, to minimize both dynamic and leakage energy via DVS and ABB. Voltage transition overhead has been considered in our approach. We conduct simulations on a set of digital signal processor benchmarks based on the power model of 70 nm technology. The simulation results show that our approach achieves significant energy saving compared to that of the integer linear programming approach.


Due to the arising concern for sustainability in built environment, numerous green building certification and rating systems are available throughout the world including Green Building Index (GBI) and GreenRE which were introduced in Malaysia in 2009 and 2013 respectively. However, the current methods of measuring, analysing and documenting the green building design rely on a number of disjointed processes to meet the discrete requirements for various building systems. The development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology has made it easier to get complicated building modelling be digitally constructed, generating all required information to support green building design and assessment throughout various design stages. Thereby the aim of this research is to integrate BIM and green building certification in Malaysia, using GBI as a unique case. Firstly, Green Building Index (GBI) and related guidelines were reviewed. Secondly, functionalities of BIM software (Autodesk Revit) were studied and compared to GBI assessment criteria. Finally a generic BIMGBI model was developed based on the matchup of GBI credits and the functionality of Revit, focusing on the first category of GBI, which is Energy Efficiency (EE) and holds 35% of total points in GBI. The proposed BIM-GBI (EE) model was preliminarily validated by creating a use case of GBI subcategory EE1. The fundamental contribution of this research will be the unique approach it proposed to fulfil green building certification such as GBI by integrating functionalities of BIM. Keywords-sustainability; green building certification; Revit; OTTV


Since 2005, the Malaysian government has boosted its support towards the biotechnology sector in terms of a strong policy framework, financial mechanisms and by setting up several implementation agencies to drive this sector forward. This chapter evaluates the current development of the health biotech sector by identifying the main challenges faced by private health biotechnology firms in Malaysia. The case study analysis is based on comprehensive information obtained from semi-structured interviews, a survey and a focus group discussion with key informants from the private biotech sector combined with secondary data using the triangulation method. The chapter identifies several main challenges related to regulatory systems, niche areas, human capital and access to financing. These challenges stem from an underdeveloped health innovation system in Malaysia. Additionally, we propose several specific strategies and recommendations to build an effective national healthcare innovation system, which can strengthen private sector capabilities and increase interactivity and knowledge flows between various actors within the health biotech sector. The effective exploitation of the role of biotechnology firms and industry would be the key to sustaining successful development of this knowledge-intensive sector.


Superbrain Yoga (SBY) is based on the principle of ear acupuncture and subtle energy movement in the body. SBY enhances the qualitative and quantitative pranic energy in the brain. The present study aims to improve the concentration, memory, and confidence of students by practicing SBY. The study consists of 1,945 school students from Mysore district, India. SBY was introduced to the students through the teachers for a period of 3 months. After three months, responses from the students were collected using a questionnaire centered on concentration, memory, and confidence facing examinations of students. Attributes harvested from the questionnaire were collected and analyzed with contingency coefficient and Chisquare tests. 86 % of the students reported that by practicing SBY has helped them to face examinations more confidently. Students also reported that their memory has improved by 75.9 % and concentration by 70.5 %. Thus, SBY has improved the overall performance of students in the school.


Recent years have seen the emergence of two significant technologies: big data systems capable of storing, retrieving, and processing large amounts of data, and machine learning algorithms capable of learning and predicting complex sequences. In combination, these technologies present new opportunities to leverage the increasingly large amounts of traffic volume data to improve traffic flow prediction and the detection of anomalous traffic flows. In this paper, we investigate and evaluate the use of hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) for short-term prediction of traffic flows over real-world Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System data on arterial roads in the Adelaide metropolitan area in South Australia. Results are compared with those from long–short-term memory (LSTM). Extended experimentation with LSTM network configurations in both batch learning and online learning modes provide results with superior predictive performance over previous usage of LSTM and other deep learning techniques for short-term traffic flow prediction. In addition, we argue that HTM has potential as an effective tool for short term traffic flow prediction with results on par with LSTM and improvements when traffic flow distributions change.


An increasing number of people in the world today speak a mixed-language as a result of being multilingual. However, building a speech recognition system for code-switching remains difficult due to the availability of limited resources and the expense and significant effort required to collect mixed-language data. We therefore propose a new learning method, meta-transfer learning, to transfer learn on a code-switched speech recognition system in a low-resource setting by judiciously extracting information from high-resource monolingual datasets. Our model learns to recognize individual languages, and transfer them so as to better recognize mixed-language speech by conditioning the optimization on the code-switching data. Based on experimental results, our model outperforms existing baselines on speech recognition and language modeling tasks, and is faster to converge.


I read with interest the two case reports on the use of the laryngeal mask airway (LMA) in prehospital trauma care by Greene, Roden and Hinchley (Anaesthesia 1992; 47: 688-9). I am pleased that the LMA is increasingly being considered for emergency airway management when intubation of the trachea proves impossible. The degree of protection against aspiration provided by the LMA remains unproven, but as the authors stated, there is some evidence that it is, at least, partially protective [I]. In the prehospital care of trauma victims (and indeed other critically ill patients), adequate tissue oxygenation is the therapeutic priority. Therefore, in situations where tracheal intubation is not possible, the LMA is a useful alternative. It has been shown that paramedical personnel can easily learn to use the LMA and insert it rapidly with only a small failure rate (94% success rate at first insertion) 121. The second-line intervention for airway maintenance in North America is the oesophageal obturator airway (OOA) and, to date, there have been no studies directly comparing the OOA with the LMA. However the OOA is associated with recognised complications (tracheal obturation, oesophageal perforation and aspiration of stomach contents on removal) and is not available in paediatric sizes [3]. The OOA also requires neck flexion for insertion and is contraindicated in cervical spine trauma, whereas the LMA can be inserted with no neck movement. There has been one small field study examining the use of the LMA in prehospital trauma care, but it only investigated 25 patients and there was no clinical information about these patients. However it did confirm the high success rate of insertion of the LMA in the field 141. Insertion of the LMA is a very valid second-line manoeuvre when intubation of the trachea is not possible during prehospital emergency care. I believe LMAs should be available wherever advanced life support is carried out (including in ambulances) and that when paramedical personnel are taught tracheal intubation they should also be taught how to use the LMA.


This commentary discusses my exploration in applying openness to minimalist compositional methods in the forms of inclusivity, democracy, intuition, improvisation and non-teleology. Additionally, I consider methods of balancing such openness with the specificity of virtuosity, idiom and process within my Master of Arts by Research portfolio of compositions. Each section of the thesis details my approach to different aspects of openness and specificity as a post-minimalist composer and how I have considered them in my music, including; contextualising my music within contemporary and historical manifestations of minimalist music and wider discourse; paradigms of role, format and protocol in the musical process; enculturation in the process of musical learning. I have referred to a wide range of academic and informal literature, music and media to substantiate my research interests as relevant to contemporary music and its practitioners, and widespread in popular and vernacular idioms. I conclude to clarify the position of my compositions and their methodologies in a relevant post-minimalist context and their functions as archetypes of a pragmatic system for future compositions.


Reducing the consumption of cement with simultaneous utilizing waste materials as cement replacement is preferred for reasons of environmental protection. Blended cements consist of different supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs), such as fly ash, silica fume, Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBFS), natural pozzolans, etc. These materials should be chemically activated to show effective cementitious properties. The present review article reports three different methods of nanofabrication, using ultrasound irradiation, solvothermal/hydrothermal process and microwave irradiation, that were used for activation of two types of SCMs. Based on the obtained results, these methods are suggested as effective methods for nanomodification of supplementary cementing materials.


The main objective of ExoMars 2020 is to search for signs of past and/or present life on Mars. Because these signs may be beneath the inhospitable surface of Mars, the ExoMars Rover has on board a suite of instruments aiming at characterizing the subsurface. In particular, the Rover payload includes WISDOM (Water Ice Subsurface Deposits Observation on Mars), a polarimetric ground penetrating radar designed to investigate the shallow subsurface. WISDOM is able to probe down to a depth of few meters with a resolution of few centimeters; its main objective is to provide insights into the geological context of the investigated Martian sites and to determine the most promising location to collect samples for the ExoMars drill. In this paper, we demonstrate the ability of WISDOM to locate buried rocks and to estimate their size distribution. Indeed, the rock distribution is related to the geological processes at play in the past or currently and thus provides clues to understand the geological context of the investigated site. Rocks also represent a hazard for drilling operations that WISDOM is to guide. We use a 3D FDTD code called TEMSI-FD (which takes into account the radiation pattern of the antenna system) to simulate WISDOM operations on a realistic (both in terms of dielectric properties and structure) ground. More specifically, our geoelectrical models of the Martian subsurface take into account realistic values of the complex permittivity relying on published measurements performed in laboratory on Martian analogues. Further, different distributions of buried rocks are considered based on the size-frequency distribution observed at the Mars Pathfinder landing site and on Oxia Planum, the landing site currently selected for ExoMars 2020. We will describe the algorithm we developed to automatically detect the signature of the buried rocks on radargrams. The radargrams are obtained simulating WISDOM operations along parallel and perpendicular profiles as planned for the ExoMars mission. Our ultimate goal is to show that WISDOM observations can be used to build a 3D map of the subsurface. We will also present experimental data obtained with a prototype of WISDOM to test our method.


BACKGROUND
Preliminary evidence indicates that fetal drug exposure may be associated with alterations in temperament. However, studies often do not dissociate the potential effects of drug exposure from other perinatal or environmental factors that could influence temperament phenotypes.

METHODS
High risk children (n = 120) were followed from birth to 6 months of age to determine the effects of fetal drug exposure on temperament, after controlling for the child's gender, gestational age, medical morbidity, ethnicity, and maltreatment as well as the mother's stress, income adequacy, and quality of caregiving. Methods included medical chart review, questionnaires, and videotapes of mother-child interaction.

RESULTS
Preliminary analyses indicated that fetal drug exposure was associated with both distractibility and intensity of children's responses to the environment at 6 months of age. After adjusting for potentially confounding variables, drug exposure accounted for 12% of the variance in distractibility but was not a significant predictor in the regression model for intensity.

CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that drug-exposed children may experience difficulty sustaining their focus of attention and be more easily distracted by environmental stimuli than non-drug-exposed children. Results converge with previous research to implicate cortical hyperarousal, stemming from teratogenic effects on the dopaminergic system during fetal development.


This paper provides evidence on abnormal returns of Portuguese privatization public offerings for the period from 1989 to 2001. Previous empirical studies report the existence of underpricing for privatized firms in the short-run and positive abnormal returns in the long run. This study explores the abnormal performance of a comprehensive sample of Portuguese privatization transactions and investigates the determinants of the observed price behavior. Our results are not supportive of the underpricing phenomenon except if we exclude the very extreme observations. The results show further that privatization IPOs underperform private sector IPOs. In the long run, we observe negative abnormal returns. While in early event months, privatization public offerings yield more negative returns than private sector offerings, this effect is reversed in longer horizon periods. Initial underpricing is thus reversed and investors seem to require higher returns in partial privatizations.


Temporal variation of NO, NO2, SO2, SPM (suspended particulate matter), and O3 were measured at a high altitude station in the northwestern part of Turkey. The long- and short-term trends in the concentrations of measured parameters were investigated to understand sources contributing to the observed concentrations of these pollutants. Higher concentrations of O3 during summer months were consistent with higher photochemical production with increased solar flux. Seasonal patterns observed in other parameters were consistent with their source strengths during different periods of the year. O3 showed a peak at approximately 3 pm, together with SO2 and NO2. SPM, on the other hand, showed a different diurnal pattern with a maximum concentration occurring during night hours. The main sources of O3, SO2, and NO2 on Mt. Uludag were found to be transported from the town of Bursa and from a nearby ski resort. The vehicular activities on the road which connects the town of Bursa to the ski resort are also an observable source of O3 and its precursors, but not of SO2 and SPM. High concentrations of O3 were observed during night hours. Unlike daytime peaks, these peaks were sporadic and did not correlate with the SO2 and NO2. These night-time O3 concentrations were suspected to be due to injection from the stratosphere.


The localization of nucleolar proteins (fibrillarin and B-23), and of the protein of interphase nuclear matrix (NMP-65) was studied in the perichromosomal material (CM) after of short hypotonic treatment (15% solution of Henks medium) on cultured pig embryonic kidney cells, followed by restoration of isotonic conditions. It is shown that during hypotonic shock the mitotic chromosomes demonstrate reversible swelling, but their periphery is bounded with a rim of PCM, containing antibodies to fibrillarin and NMP-65, but not to B-23. After returning the cells to the initial isotonic medium, all the three proteins can be detected again on the periphery of chromosomes. It suggests the existence of different stability in the association of free proteins with chromosome bodies. Besides, B-23 and fibrillarin could be visualized in residual nucleoli after a complete extraction of histones and DNA from nuclei.


Multislice spiral computed tomography (MSCT) is a new non-invasive imaging technique for detecting coronary artery disease. It allows direct visualization of not only the lumen of the coronary arteries, but also plaque within the artery. Identification of soft plaques is of the utmost importance in the therapeutic decision making for patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), including acute myocardial infarction and unstable angina pectoris. MSCT detected coronary artery soft plaques in 2 cases of ACS. (Circ J 2004; 68: 263 - 266)


Single quadrupole gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) has been widely used for isotopic analysis in metabolic investigations using stable isotopes as tracers. However, its inherent shortcomings prohibit it from broader use, including low isotopic precision and the need for chemical derivatization of the analyte. In order to improve isotopic detection power, liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-itMS2) has been evaluated for its isotopic precision and chemical sensitivity for the analysis of [13C]palmitoylcarnitine. Over the enrichment range of 0.4-10 MPE (molar % excess), the isotopic response of LC/ESI-itMS2 to [13C]palmitoylcarnitine was linear (r = 1.00) and the average isotopic precision (standard deviation, SD) was 0.11 MPE with an average coefficient of variation (CV) of 5.6%. At the lower end of isotopic enrichments (0.4-0.9 MPE), the isotopic precision was 0.05 MPE (CV = 8%). Routine analysis of rat skeletal muscle [13C4]palmitoylcarnitine demonstrated an isotopic precision of 0.03 MPE for gastrocnemius (n = 16) and of 0.02 MPE for tibialis anterior (n = 16). The high precision enabled the detection of a small (0.08 MPE) but significant (P = 0.01) difference in [13C4]palmitoylcarnitine enrichments between the two muscles, 0.51 MPE (CV = 5.8%) and 0.43 MPE (CV = 4.6%), respectively. Therefore, the system demonstrated an isotopic lower detection limit (LDL) of < or =0.1 MPE (2 x SD) that has been impossible previously with other organic mass spectrometry instruments. LC/ESI-itMS2 systems have the potential to advance metabolic investigations using stable isotopes to a new level by significantly increasing the isotopic solving power.


This paper describes an evaluation of automatic video summarization systems run on rushes from several BBC dramatic series. It was carried out under the auspices of the TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation (TRECVid) as a followup to the 2007 video summarization workshop held at ACM Multimedia 2007. 31 research teams submitted video summaries of 40 individual rushes video files, aiming to compress out redundant and insignificant material. Each summary had a duration of at most 2% of the original. The output of a baseline system, which simply presented each full video at 50 times normal speed was contributed by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as a control. The 2007 procedures for developing ground truth lists of important segments from each video were applied at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the BBC videos. At Dublin City University (DCU) each summary was judged by 3 humans with respect to how much of the ground truth was included and how well-formed the summary was. Additional objective measures included: how long it took the system to create the summary, how long it took the assessor to judge it against the ground truth, and what the summary's duration was. Assessor agreement on finding desired segments averaged 81%. Results indicated that while it was still difficult to exceed the performance of the baseline on including ground truth, the baseline was outperformed by most other systems with respect to avoiding redundancy/junk and presenting the summary with a pleasant tempo/rhythm.


This study was sought to establish how Tax Compliance influences the survival of Small and Medium Enterprises in Rwanda-A case study of medium taxpayers in Kigali City. However, establishing the level of tax compliance by SMEs from 2011 to 2013, analysing the effects of nontax compliance on SMEs in Rwanda, examining the extent to which tax compliance depends on bookkeeping records was the specific objectives of the study. The study aimed at helping the SMEs to take into account that keeping proper books of accounts and financial records are the major factors of tax compliance. The study also revealed the significance of sensitising taxpayers and SMEs in particular by the tax administration on how to keep financial records and books of accounts would lead to self-tax assessment hence reducing costs incurred by tax administration on tax collections. The researcher and academic community will use this study as a stepping stone for further research as it is giving a basis for further academic investigation in this area, especially regarding the factors affecting the tax compliance. Theoretically, having contributed to literature and methodology of such future studies, it also prompts more researchers in this area. This study was carried out on the basis of a case study where the researcher used a descriptive research design. The total population of this study was composed of the Medium Enterprise taxpayers (1,905) in Kigali City and 133 SMTO staff. However, the researcher used lottery method of simple random sampling to select 43respondents. Primary data was collected from the respondents and RRA through the use of questionnaires and interviews respectively. Data was processed and analysed in line with the research objectives in order to get quality information in line with the research objectives. Tabulation was also used in summarizing and analysing the answers given to each question. It was evident that the level of SMEs" tax compliance is low. SMEs are extremely diverse and their tax compliance costs are influenced by a range of factors. As a result, the experience of both tax and non-tax compliance costs can vary significantly from business to business. For some few businesses, tax compliance costs will dominate, but for many others, non-tax compliance costs will be more significant. Some business operators choose not to grow beyond a certain size so that they can avoid additional risk, complexity and administrative burdens as a result of tax compliance costs. Some SMEs may become confused about what tax compliance costs are. They do not always distinguish between tax compliance costs and either the amount of tax they have to pay or the general accounting and record keeping costs that are an essential part of running an effective business. RRA, the tax profession association and PSF should improve on their strategies of taxpayers" education through targeting the large number of taxpayers in the community work mainly known as Umuganda. While charging penalties and fines to non-tax compliant has done little to avert the problem, tax auditors from RRA should put much time to discuss with taxpayers on how to declare and pay taxes on time and the type of penalties and fines they will have to pay if they failure to comply with tax laws. RRA should work hand in hand with tax advisors as they are the ones meeting taxpayers on daily basis.


Most of the currently used cancer chemotherapies are based on compounds that inhibit general cellular mechanisms, such as DNA replication or tubulin function, and lack specificity in relation to features of the cancer cell. Recent advances in genomic studies have increased our knowledge of tumor cell biology, and a panoply of new targets have been postulated. This has provided an opportunity to develop and validate drugs that specifically target cancer cells through their unique genetic characteristics. Identification of MUC16/CA125 both as a marker and a driver of transformation led us to design a target-based high-content screen to identify and classify compounds that exhibit differential effect on MUC16-expressing cells. We developed a coculture assay in 384-well plate containing isogenic ovarian cancer cells that are positive or negative for the MUC16 protein. High-throughput screening of our small molecule pilot library led to the identification of compounds preferentially cytotoxic to MUC16+ or MUC16− cells, using a Preferential Score analysis. We compared screening results in both A2780 and SK-OV-3 ovarian cancer cells in single and coculture settings. We also identified compounds that were cytotoxic for both types of ovarian cancer cells regardless of the MUC16 status. Compounds that were preferentially targeting MUC16 cells were subsequently confirmed by caspase-induction assays. The isogenic, dual-color fluorescence strategy is an innovative approach that can effectively identify novel drug candidates, selectively targeting cancer cells that have unique molecular properties. Mol Cancer Ther; 10(10); 1939–48. ©2011 AACR.


In the Chinese chronicles Shi ji and Han shu there is a story about Kun-mo, the ruler of the Wu-sun, who was abandoned as a child but survived by being fed by a wolf and a crow. This story can be found among peoples of the Altaic language group, but it also clearly resembles the story of Romulus and Remus in ancient Rome who were said to have been taken care of by a wolf and a woodpecker. There is a possibility that the motif of a child fed by an wolf and a bird may have traveled from the Near East via Rome to Central Asia to the Wu-sun, although this may not be the case for modern versions of the story among the Mongols. However, the special aspect of the Central Asian tradition is that it always features the wolf and the crow as one set. It is, therefore, suggested that this may be due not only to cooperation between the two animals as is observable in nature, but also to religious beliefs related to these animals.


The results of a biomonitoring survey carried out in the town of Arezzo (central Italy) using the biodiversity of epiphytic lichens as indicator of environmental quality are reported. Lichen biodiversity counts raised progressively with distance from the old town centre, with concentric zones extending from the central parts towards the edge of town. Compared with the situation of 1994, ameliorating conditions were found, with higher biodiversity values and new colonizing species at all stations. This trend was confirmed by analytical measurements, which showed decreasing values for the most common phytotoxic gaseous pollutants (SO 2 , NO X ). Increasing use of unleaded fuel and catalytic vehicles, as well as areas of the town closed to traffic and conversion to methane for domestic heating are probable reasons for this improvement.


The use of social media data to mine opinions during elections has emerged as an alternative to traditional election polls. However, relying on social media data in electoral scenarios comes with a number of challenges, such as tackling sentences with domain specific terms, texts full of hate speech, noisy, informal vocabulary, sarcasm and irony. Also, in Twitter, for instance, loss of context may occur due to the imposed limit of characters to the posts. Furthermore, prediction tasks that use machine learning require labeled datasets and it is not trivial to reliably annotate them during the short period of campaigns. Motivated by the aforementioned issues, we investigate if it is possible to use or mix curated datasets from other domains as a starting point to opinion mining tasks during elections. To avoid introducing a knowledge from the other domains that could end up by disturbing the task, we propose to use similarity metrics that point out whether or not the dataset should be used. In our approach, we conduct a case study using the 2018 Brazilian Presidential Elections and labeled datasets for sentiment analysis from other domains. To identify the similarity between the datasets, we use the Jaccard distance and a metric based on word embeddings. Our experimental results show that taking into account the (dis) similarity between different domains, it is possible to achieve results closer to the ones that would be achieved with classifiers trained with annotated datasets of the electoral domain.


Education and research are vital for social development and progress. The changing sociocultural structures and new needs have resulted in some important functional changes in higher education systems with a deep impact on universities serving these needs at the highest level. Besides experiencing these functional changes, the universities today have become spaces of socialization with their social, cultural and sports facilities, replacing their traditional spatial role of offering education only. The local dynamics changing with globalization have now reshaped the global and local roles of universities, highlighting the added value they provide to the society. Sociocultural changes trigger all these functional and structural changes in universities. Therefore, sociocultural factors and their importance should not be ignored in a changing higher education system. In this study, the impact of sociocultural factors with their related spatial structures on world higher education system will be analyzed within their historical contexts, and some suggestions for future universities will be offered considering the current changes. In the first part of the study, the changes in societies and universities will be presented within the historical context. In the second part, the spatial forms and structures of universities will be discussed. In the third part, the catalytic effects of the specific sociocultural factors will be highlighted and elaborated on. Finally, some suggestions will be made for the universities of the future in the light of the current situation and the data available.


We present the first work on antecedent selection for bridging resolution without restrictions on anaphor or relation types. Our model integrates global constraints on top of a rich local feature set in the framework of Markov logic networks. The global model improves over the local one and both strongly outperform a reimplementation of prior work.


Recent food scares in the food market has caused a reduction in consumer's confidence in the food system that it has induced a significant reduction in consumption in a sector, the beef sector that was already characterized by a saturated trend in quantity terms. In this context, all participants in the beef production system are facing to a great challenge, to retrieve consumer's confidence in the food chain and to mitigate the reduction in beef consumption. The aim of the paper is to analyse the impact of consumer's confidence in the food system as well as other factors on the explanation of food consumption reduction. A structural modelling approach has been used to analyse factors affecting the reduction in beef consumption in two different regions characterised by different production systems and different marketing strategies (PGI beef label). Results indicate that main factor explaining the reduction in beef consumption is the confidence in the beef and a positive relation has been found. Moreover, confidence in a product is directly related to the perceived quality offered by farmers and other decision makers on the beef chain, and to the consumer involvement with the product. Therefore, the main implication is that participants in the food chain has to develop adequate communication strategies such as quality labelling in order to increase consumers perceive quality because, higher quality perception will recover consumers' confidence in beef, and therefore, it will mitigate beef consumption reduction.


Critical genre analysis, especially targeting specific professional practices, crucially depends on the availability of discursive data from the professional practice under investigation, which is not always easily accessible. In this paper, I take up a typical example of this kind of difficulty focusing on an international initiative, in which I have been involved for the last several years, with collaboration from more than twenty research teams from as many countries. By drawing on discoursal data (narrative, documentary and interactional), it is possible to look at the motivations for interdiscursive processes and procedures. However, the so-called duty to strict confidentiality observed and practiced in international arbitration practice makes it difficult to get access to data from arbitration practice and thus to undertake such critical genre-based interdisciplinary research. In this paper, I will focus on some of the important issues involved in this study of professional practice and discuss implications of this generally assumed requirement of confidentiality, and its implications for research in and development of the institution of arbitration. I also propose alternatives to collection of data from arbitration practice to make such research possible.


ABSTRACT Two carboxin-resistant field isolates of Ustilago nuda from Europe were crossed with a carboxin-sensitive field isolate from North America. Meiotic tetrads isolated from germinating F(1) teliospores of one of the hybrids were tested for carboxin resistance and mating type. Carboxin resistance was shown to be controlled by a single gene (CBX1R), because a 1:1 segregation of carboxin resistance was observed in all 27 tetrads. Tetrad analysis indicated that the loci for carboxin resistance (Cbx1) and mating type (MAT1) segregate independently but may be located on the same chromosome. Tetrad analysis was not possible with the F(1) hybrid of he other field isolate, and its resistance cannot yet be attributed to CBX1R. Carboxin resistance was qualitatively dominant to sensitivity in vitro, as demonstrated by triad analysis of germinating F(1) teliospores. Quantitative in planta infection percents supported the conclusion that CBX1R is dominant, although incompletely, in the F(1) hybrid of one of the field isolates. Also, fewer than expected carboxin-sensitive F(2) individuals were observed in planta. However, inoculations of host plants with U. nuda have resulted in similar, unexpected variation in the past.


We propose a model of inference and heuristic decision-making in groups that is rooted in the Bayes rule but avoids the complexities of rational inference in partially observed environments with incomplete information, which are characteristic of group interactions. Our model is also consistent with a dual-process psychological theory of thinking: the group members behave rationally at the initiation of their interactions with each other (the slow and deliberative mode); however, in the ensuing decision epochs, they rely on a heuristic that replicates their experiences from the first stage (the fast automatic mode). We specialize this model to a group decision scenario where private observations are received at the beginning, and agents aim to take the best action given the aggregate observations of all group members. We study the implications of the information structure together with the properties of the probability distributions which determine the structure of the so-called "Bayesian heuristics" that the agents follow in our model. We also analyze the group decision outcomes in two classes of linear action updates and log-linear belief updates and show that many inefficiencies arise in group decisions as a result of repeated interactions between individuals, leading to overconfident beliefs as well as choice-shifts toward extremes. Nevertheless, balanced regular structures demonstrate a measure of efficiency in terms of aggregating the initial information of individuals. These results not only verify some well-known insights about group decision-making but also complement these insights by revealing additional mechanistic interpretations for the group declension-process, as well as psychological and cognitive intuitions about the group interaction model.


Electrically switchable broadband infrared reflectors that are relatively transparent in the visible region have been fabricated using polymer stabilised cholesteric liquid crystals. The IR reflectors can change their reflection/transmission properties by applying a voltage in response to changes in environmental conditions. Simulations predict that a significant amount of energy can be saved on heating, cooling and lighting of buildings in places such as Madrid by using this switchable IR reflector. We have also fabricated a switchable IR reflector which can also generate electricity. These polymer based switchable IR reflectors are of high potential as windows of automobiles and buildings to control interior temperatures and save energy.


A general expression is derived for the matrix element for the resonant transfer of energy between an initially excited donor species and an acceptor moiety in the ground state, with each entity possessing an electric multipole moment of arbitrary order. In the quantum electrodynamical framework employed, the coupling between the pair is mediated by the exchange of a single virtual photon. The probability amplitude found from second-order perturbation theory is a product of the electric moments located at each center and the resonant multipole-multipole interaction tensor. Using the Fermi golden rule, a general formula for the rate of energy transfer is obtained. As an illustration of the efficacy of the theory developed, rates of excitation energy exchange are calculated for systems interacting through dipole-quadrupole, dipole-octupole, quadrupole-quadrupole, and the familiar dipole-dipole coupling. For each of the cases examined, the near- and far-zone limits of the migration rate are calculated from the result valid for all donor-acceptor separations beyond wave function overlap. Expression of the octupole contribution to the transfer rate in terms of its irreducible components of weights 1 and 3 leads to new features. The octupole weight-1 term is found to contribute only when the interaction is retarded, while the dipole-octupole weight-1 contribution appears as a higher-order correction term to the dipole-dipole rate. Order of magnitude estimates are given for the contributions of dipole-quadrupole and dipole-octupole terms relative to the leading dipole-dipole rate for near-, intermediate-, and far-zone separations to further understand the role played by higher multipole moments in the transfer of excitation and the mechanism dominating the process.


Because idioms are ubiquitous in the authentic language to which learners are exposed, learners of a second or foreign language need to possess a good command of idioms and proficiency in idiom use to be able to comprehend and produce language effectively. A considerable body of research has sought ways to optimize learning and teaching of idioms. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of using movie clips containing idioms, as one method of teaching, on the quality of 60 intermediate EFL pupils' idiom learning. Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was implemented to ensure homogeneity of learners in proficiency. All the groups were given two standard idiom multiple-choice tests, one as the pre-test and the other one as the post-test. In the experimental group, idioms were taught by displaying movie clips containing the idioms, while the control group followed the traditional class activities using synonyms and antonyms. The results of both Scheffe Dependent variable Post-test and paired sample t-test revealed that the participants in the movie clips group had better performance in post-test than in pre-test. This study has theoretical as well as pedagogical implications in the fields of second/ foreign language teaching and learning which are discussed.


Background Low-dose oral azithromycin therapy is recommended as a preventive treatment for acute exacerbations of COPD. However, the overall benefit–harm balance of this treatment has not been well studied. Methods A probabilistic Markov model of COPD was created to simulate the course of COPD over 20 years. The model was populated with evidence from the literature and dedicated data analysis. The benefit of azithromycin was modelled as a reduction in exacerbation rates. Adverse events, including cardiovascular events, hearing loss, gastrointestinal symptoms and antimicrobial resistance (leading to a gradual decline in the effectiveness of azithromycin), were considered. All outcomes were assigned a health-related utility weight to estimate the overall net change in the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) associated with the use of azithromycin. Results In patients with a positive exacerbation history, azithromycin resulted in a net QALY gain of 17.9 per 100 patients (99.8% probability of expected QALY gain) over 20 years. The net benefit increased to 21.8 QALYs per 100 patients (99.9% probability of expected QALY gain) among the 'frequent exacerbator' subgroup. Azithromycin was not net beneficial among those without any moderate/severe exacerbations in the previous year. Findings were robust against series of sensitivity, scenario and threshold analyses. Conclusions Long-term therapy with azithromycin confers a net benefit to ex-smoker patients with COPD with a recent history of exacerbations and an even larger benefit to those who are frequent exacerbators.


As CUIs become more prevalent in both academic research and the commercial market, it becomes more essential to design usable and adoptable CUIs. Though research on the usability and design of CUIs has been growing greatly over the past decade, we see that many usability issues are still prevalent in current conversational voice interfaces, from issues in feedback and visibility, to learnability, to error correction, and more. These issues still exist in the most current conversational interfaces in the commercial market, like the Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Siri. The aim of this workshop therefore is to bring both academics and industry practitioners together to bridge the gaps of knowledge in regards to the tools, practices, and methods used in the design of CUIs. This workshop will bring together both the research performed by academics in the field, and the practical experience and needs from industry practitioners, in order to have deeper discussions about the resources that require more research and development, in order to build better and more usable CUIs.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of different solvents in sonication process on the formation of graphene from the electrochemical exfoliation of graphite. In short, graphite rod was exfoliated by electrochemical process with ammonium sulfate as saltelectrolyte. The exfoliated powder then sonicated under two different solvents, which are Dimethylformamide (DMF) and aqueous solution to form graphene. It was found that similar structure of graphene was obtained from both types of solvent. However, the amount of graphene produced was different due to the differences in graphene stability. Graphene is more stable in DMF solvents compared to the aqueous solution. The aqueous solution can allow the reversible reaction that can reform graphite oxide from graphene due to the existence of hydroxyl component in the aqueous solution.


Adaptive two-dimensional (2-D) fan filters based on least mean square algorithm and 2-D wave digital filter structure are presented. The weight updating equations as well as the equations for computing the gradient components of signals in two-dimensional wave digital filter adaptors are derived and specifically applied to wave digital quadrant and narrowband fan filters. Computer simulations are also conducted to show their potential applications to 2-D system identification and noise cancellation in noisy images.<<ETX>>


OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study was to compare mandibular linear distances measured from cone beam CT (CBCT) images produced by different radiographic parameter settings (peak kilovoltage and milliampere value).

METHODS
20 cadaver hemimandibles with edentulous ridges posterior to the mental foramen were embedded in clear resin blocks and scanned by a CBCT machine (CB MercuRay(TM); Hitachi Medico Technology Corp., Chiba-ken, Japan). The radiographic parameters comprised four peak kilovoltage settings (60 kVp, 80 kVp, 100 kVp and 120 kVp) and two milliampere settings (10 mA and 15 mA). A 102.4 mm field of view was chosen. Each hemimandible was scanned 8 times with 8 different parameter combinations resulting in 160 CBCT data sets. On the cross-sectional images, six linear distances were measured. To assess the intraobserver variation, the 160 data sets were remeasured after 2 weeks. The measurement precision was calculated using Dahlberg's formula. With the same peak kilovoltage, the measurements yielded by different milliampere values were compared using the paired t-test. With the same milliampere value, the measurements yielded by different peak kilovoltage were compared using analysis of variance. A significant difference was considered when p < 0.05.

RESULTS
Measurement precision varied from 0.03 mm to 0.28 mm. No significant differences in the distances were found among the different radiographic parameter combinations.

CONCLUSIONS
Based upon the specific machine in the present study, low peak kilovoltage and milliampere value might be used for linear measurements in the posterior mandible.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Our case is that of a 62 year old male who underwent a robotic assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy complicated intraoperatively by a rectal injury. This injury was recognized at the time and repaired. However, he presented 1 week post op after catheter removal with leakage of urine per rectum. A CT scan con fi rmed a fi stula to his rectum, thus an indwelling foley was placed and a diverting colostomy was performed by colorectal surgery. The patient presented to our clinic at 3 months post op to discuss de fi nitive repair of his rectourethral fi stula. METHODS: The attached video highlights our experience with a transanal approach to robotic repair of a rectourethral fi stula. RESULTS: The patient was discharged home on post op day 1 with the catheter in place. At his 4 week follow up, his vcug was negative for leak and his catheter was removed. He follow up with colorectal surgery at 3 months, and barium enema at that time was negative for stricture or leak and he is currently awaiting ostomy reversal. CONCLUSIONS: In this video, we demonstrate the feasibility of an incisionless transanal approach to repairing a rectourethral fi stula using the multiport robot. Our approach is similar to a york-mason repair, but the use of the transanal port and robotic technology eliminate the need for any incision through the rectal sphincter. prostatectomy. The incidence reported is 1% and 0-17.5%, respectively. Different robotic surgical techniques have been reported for the individual repair of RVF and BNC after radical prostatectomy, but simultaneous repair remains a challenge. This video presents a step-by-step robotic surgical technique for simultaneous repair of RVF with BNC. METHODS: Four consecutive cases of RVF with concurrent BNC after radical prostatectomy were treated through a novel robotic transabdominal approach by a single surgeon. Surgical steps were performed as illustrated in the video. Perioperative and functional out-comes were examined and reported. Continuous variables were re- ported as median and quartiles, whereas categorical variables were presented as frequencies and percentages. RESULTS: Four cases with a median age of 70 (65-72) years were treated. Half of the patients had previous colostomy. One case had perineal urethral mobilization in order to reach healthy urethral margins and tension-free vesicourethral anastomosis. Surgeries were uneventful, with no intraoperative complications reported. Median operative time, estimated blood loss, and length of hospital stay were (249-378) minutes, 200 (163-250) mL, and 4 (3-4) days, respectively. Median Foley catheter removal was 32 (28-43) days. Median follow-up time was 23 (12-54) weeks. No postoperative complications and fi stula recurrence were reported. Successful repair criteria were met in all the patients. CONCLUSIONS: Robotic-assisted laparoscopic repair represent a safe and effective approach for the simultaneous management of rectovesical fi stula with bladder neck contracture. stulas. ingress Here, our adaptation of the surgical technique for repair of small, distal urethrocutaneous fi stulas and the results at our institution. METHODS: We performed a retrospective chart review on patients who underwent PATIO repair for distal urethrocutaneous fi stulas. RESULTS: Six patients were identi fi ed who met criteria. Four had prior penile piercings and two had undergone prior hypospadias repair. Median fi stula size was 8 fr (IQR 5.8-9.5). Median operative time was 47.5 minutes (IQR 49.8-132) and median blood loss was 5 ml (IQR 1.3-5). Three patients were cured after the fi rst attempt at repair. One patient was cured after a second PATIO revision with Dartos interpo- sition. Two patients had treatment failure and will require a more extensive repair. CONCLUSIONS: PATIO repair offers a method of urethrocutaneous fi stula repair with short operative time, minimal blood loss, no need for urethral catheterization, and a 66.6% success rate. Dartos interposition can be used to fortify the repair