Ligaments are specialized connective tissues with very interesting biomechanical properties. They have the ability to adapt to the complex functions that each are required to perform. While ligaments were once thought to be inert, they are in fact responsive to many local and systemic factors that influence their function within the organism. Injury to a ligament results in a drastic change in its structure and physiology and creates a situation where ligament function is restored by the formation of scar tissue that is biologically and biomechanically inferior to the tissue it replaces. This article will briefly review the basic structure, physiology and function of normal versus healing knee ligaments, referring specifically to what is known about two of the most extensively studied and clinically relevant knee ligaments, the anterior cruciate (ACL) and medial collateral (MCL) ligaments of the knee. Those readers wishing for more comprehensive sources of information on ligament biology and biomechanics are referred to many excellent reviews on these topics.


Built landscapes are under relentless attack from both spontaneous urban vegetation (plants that colonise naturally without cultivation) and the gradual encroachment (spreading) of existing plantings onto adjacent surfaces. The location, spread and rate of this growth is highly influenced by microclimatic factors, the availability of soil and propagules, and the frequency of disturbance. Spontaneous urban plants are highly adapted to the harsh urban environment and colonise the built landscape both overground through seed dispersal and underground by means of regeneration from rhizomes. The encroachment of plantings beyond planned boundaries onto surrounding surfaces often occurs due to unrestrained growth and the insufficient removal of rooting substrate from the border area between soft and hard landscape. This paper discusses these conflicts by analysing the causes and effects of this growth over time, pinpointing areas of weakness and vulnerability, diagnosing the underlying issues, and developing optimisation strategies. Current research at the Technische Universität Berlin is focusing on analysing the processes of patination and subsequent deterioration of built landscapes over time. A low-threshold and non-destructive monitoring method to 'read' and decipher these traces of time is being developed in order to determine and analyse the agents of landscape transformation. The principles of construction pathology are used to identify relationships between the observed 'visual signs and symptoms' (effects) and 'pathological conditions' (causes). This enables causes to be determined and recommendations for the most appropriate course of action to be made. This paper will focus on developing optimisation strategies for the areas of weakness and vulnerability identified, and therefore aims to enhance the durability of our built works.


The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is the most widely used cryptosystem developed by a team of cryptographers working at IBM. DES has been cryptanalyzed intensively by researchers, but no efficient attack has been found on DES so far. This is mainly due to the lack of an obvious algebraic relation in the structure of S-boxes, which makes it impossible to use known methods to attack DES. S-boxes are the nonlinear part of DES with strong properties. This paper presents a semilinear relation between input and output of S-boxes that could be used to cryptanalyze DES. This is based on Differential Cryptanalysis method proposed by Biham and Shamir.


In this study with 161 elderly patients (mean age: 80 years), recently admitted to a psychogeriatric nursinghome, one-year survival was correlated with ratings derived from the Beoordelingsschaal voor Oudere Patiënten (BOP), i.e. Rating Scale for Elderly Patients. This rating scale, which has been adapted from the Stockton Geriatric Rating Scale and put into use in the Netherlands since 1971, has proven to be a reliable and valid method to study the behaviour of psychogeriatric patients. Variables associated with one-year survival (62 patients died within one year) were: helplessness, physical disability and inactivity. After partial correlation analysis controlling for the effects of sex and age, the following items showed a significant relationship to survival: eats without help, is not incontinent, does not need special support to prevent falling out of chair or bed, walks without aid, is cooperative, enters into conversation, is not incontinent and/or restless at night. In this study 78 patients could be tested by a newly devised method which consists of presenting a series of slides to assess spontaneous speech, naming, reading, comprehension, free recall, delayed recognition, visual perception and clockreading. These cognitive functions however did not show any, significant, relationship with survival, though the 25 patients dying within one year were significantly more disabled and more depressed than the 53 patients who survived more than one year. Ratings of psychomotor function thus proved to be of more prognostic value than assessments of cognitive functions.


BACKGROUND
We report the performance of an ultrasound-based portable spirometer (EasyOne) used in a population-based survey of the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, conducted in 5 Latin American cities: São Paulo, Brazil; México City, México; Montevideo, Uruguay; Santiago, Chile; and Caracas, Venezuela (the Latin American COPD Prevalence Study [PLATINO]).

METHODS
During the survey period (which ranged from 3 months to 6 months in the various locations) we collected daily calibration data from the 70 EasyOne spirometers used in the 5 survey cities. The calibrations were conducted with a 3-L syringe, and the calibration data were stored in the spirometer's database.

RESULTS
Ninety-seven percent of the calibration volumes were within +/- 64 mL (2.1%) of the 3-L calibration signal. Excluding data from the first city studied (São Paulo), where one calibration syringe had to be replaced, 98% of the calibration checks were within +/- 50 mL (1.7%). The measured volume was affected only minimally by the syringe's peak flow or emptying time.

CONCLUSION
In these 70 EasyOne spirometers neither calibration nor linearity changed during the study. Such calibration stability is a valuable feature in spirometry surveys and in the clinical setting.


Depression is one of the main psychiatric co-morbidities in HIV infection, presenting with a significantly higher prevalence than in the general population (around 35%). Its presence has been associated with poor quality of life, HIV disease progression and poor adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Although antidepressive treatment has demonstrated effectiveness on the management of depressive symptoms, improvement of clinical and laboratory parameters, and enhancement of antiretroviral adherence, depression is frequently under diagnosed and under treated in these patients. We analyzed the main international findings on depression prevalence, risk factors, con-sequences and management in people with HIV disease.


The public views salmon hatcheries as a lifeline for the species, at least in the Columbia Basin, which experienced near-extinction due to damming of the Columbia River during the first half of the 20th century. Jim Lichotowich's new book, "Salmon, People, and Place: A Biologist's Search for Salmon Recovery," is an indictment of reliance on hatcheries as a mitigation measure for habitat loss, such as that caused by dams and land management practices. Lichotowich, a respected salmon biologist, whose views have been sought by both governments and those who sue them, shows how hatcheries damage wild spawning salmon through competition for food and habitat, disease, genetic drift, and incentives to overharvest. In a very real sense, the fishery agencies charged with protecting wild runs of salmon have been captured by those who fund artificial mitigation measures in a misguided effort to maintain unsustainable sport and commercial harvest levels. Heavy reliance on hatcheries violates basic ecological principles first articulated over 60 years ago by the great wildlife scientist, Aldo Leopold. This review applauds the effort to expose the false promise of salmon hatcheries but cautions that Lichotowich might be misinterpreted to suggest that the basic problem with salmon recovery lies with the fishery agencies and their attachment to hatcheries. Although the "industrial model" of salmon recovery Lichotowich depicts is certainly a large part of the reason why salmon recovery efforts have proved both so expensive and so ineffective, the principal cause of salmon habitat loss -- at least in the Columbia Basin, home to the largest historic salmon runs in the Lower 48 -- is dam construction and operation, mostly federal dams. Developing a viable salmon recovery plan in the future will require not only reduced reliance on hatcheries but also changed hydroelectric operating practices and removal of some dams.


The influence of static and dynamic torsional disorder on the kinetics of charge transfer (CT) in donorbridge-acceptor (D-B-A) systems has been investigated theoretically using a simple tight-binding model. In such systems, variations of the torsion angle often give rise either to static changes in the magnitude of electronic coupling along the bridge length or to dynamic fluctuations of this quantity on the certain characteristic time scale τrot. These lead to the functional breakdown of the Condon approximation. Modeling of CT beyond the Condon approximation reveals two types of non-Condon (NC) effects. If τrot is much less than the characteristic time, τCT, of CT in the absence of disorder, the NC effects was shown to be static. Due to self-averaging of electronic coupling in this fast fluctuation limit, the breakdown of the Condon approximation manifests itself as a static correction to the time-independent rate coefficient calculated for the ordered bridge with the same time-averaged electronic coupling for all pairs of adjacent subunits. As a consequence, the CT process exponentially evolves with time and therefore can be characterized by a time-independent rate coefficient wa for the charge arrival on the acceptor (also termed the rate constant). For larger τrot, however, the NC effects become purely kinetic. In this case, the process of CT in the tunneling regime exhibits time scale invariance, the corresponding decay curves become dispersive, and the rate coefficient wa turns out to be time dependent. In the limit of very slow dynamic fluctuations, where τrot . τCT, the NC effects in kinetics of CT are found (as anticipated) to be very similar to the effects revealed for bridges with the static torsional disorder. Both analytical and numerical results obtained within this limit allow the conclusion that for very slow fluctuations and/or for static disorder, the nonexponential time evolution of the CT process is due to the configuration averaging of electronic coupling. Several consequences of our theoretical findings for the interpretation of experimentally observed transients are briefly discussed. In particular, we argue that the minimal value of the falloff parameter describing the distance dependence of the time-independent rate coefficient in tunneling regime can not be less than 0.2-0.3 A -1 and that the smaller experimental value of this parameter reported in the literature for several D-B-A systems must be attributed to the multistep hopping mechanism of charge motion rather than to the mechanism of single-step tunneling.


: A group of 155 puerperal volunteers were surveyed by anonymous questionnaire about personal and sexual histories before and during pregnancy. Results were viewed in regard to the influences of prior life experience and pregnancy itself upon attitudes, behavior, and response to sex in pregnancy. Although many differences among the population could be found the general trend of attitude, behavior, and response was to a progressive decline in coital frequency toward the end of pregnancy. Masturbation persisted or increased in inverse relationship to attitudes regarding coitus. Other past or present individual circumstances had no statistically significant effect on these trends. Poor conjugal relationships tended to deteriorate more rapidly than good ones. The author concludes that pregnancy strongly influences human behavior regardless of many individual or group characteristics. Sexually experienced and satisfied women compensate better in changed circumstances than inexperienced or sexually unfulfilled women. Rewarding sexual circumstances retard the rate of decline in interest and activity experienced by most women during late pregnancy, but do not avert this decline. Pregnancy is a potent influence over sexuality irrespective of an individual's conditioning.


The device is situated under this hood and has a lifting mechanism (2) of this hood. An actuator actuates with the aid of a gas generator (31), and a locking device of this lifting mechanism, this mechanism having a connecting link (20). The actuator is adapted to provoke a translation of the lifting mechanism for driving its unlocking, along a rotation of the connecting link of this mechanism to obtain the deployment of this lifting mechanism. The securing device for lifting the hood (1) of the vehicle in case of collision, this hood (1) having a permanent structure in normal functioning, its opening or closing about an axis (10) of rotation.


In this paper, limit state criteria for safety evaluation of historical buildings according to different target period of usage were introduced briefly. The effect of beam-column connection and the contribution of bricks surrounded columns and infill masonry walls on the seismic behavior of the historical buildings were identified based on calculation results. Main features of performance-based seismic evaluation method, including classification of importance of historical buildings, determination of target period of usage and performance index, were discussed. An engineering project was discussed to illustrate the evaluation procedures, and verify the effectiveness of the evaluation method.


Background:
 Age-standardized mortality and disability burden from stroke has been improving on a global level, but these improvements have been uneven across nations.

 Hypothesis:
 Higher gross national income per capita is strongly associated with relative improvements in stroke indicators on a national level.

 Methods:
 We conducted an ecological analysis using estimates of age-standardized stroke indicators (Global Burden of Disease Study 1990 and 2010), non-communicable disease risk factor data (WHO Global Health Observatory), and gross national income per capita estimates (World Bank). We generated choropleth maps to highlight outliers with changes that differed from global trends. We evaluated the association between gross national income per capita and changes in risk factors burden and age-standardized mortality, incidence, mortality incidence ratio, and DALY losses from stroke over 20 years.

 Results:
 Of the 186 countries with available data, most experienced a decrease in age-standardized stroke mortality (164; 88%; mean decrease 23%), mortality incidence ratio (175; 94%; mean decrease 25%), and stroke DALY losses (168; 90%; mean decrease 27%) but not stroke incidence (76; 40%; mean increase 10%) over 20 years (Figure). Relative improvements in mean systolic blood pressure (p<0.0001), mean serum cholesterol (p<0.0001) and smoking prevalence (p=0.006) were associated with higher gross national income, but not mean fasting serum glucose (p=0.43). Relative improvements in age-standardized mortality, incidence, mortality incidence ratio, and DALY losses for stroke tracked with higher income per capita (Cuzick's test of trend, p<0.001 for each indicator).

 Conclusion:
 Incidence, mortality, and DALY burdens from stroke are higher in low-income countries, but the greatest relative improvements in these indicators over the past 20 years have been in high-income countries.


We present an experimental study of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) using a parabolic shaped transducer and high speed photography (Ohl et al, 2015). The transducer (Sonic Concept Inc.) has a diameter of 60 mm, and a resonant frequency of 250kHz. When it is driven between 120 to 150 Volt peak-to-peak, concentrated rings of bubbles are formed on top of the transducer. The distance between the rings is about 3 mm, which is half the wavelength of the sound wave produced by the transducer at 250 kHz. The bubbles within the rings are not stable. They move or jump between the rings, or coalesce, or float toward the free surface. To stabilise the rings, we use a reflector which is made of stainless steel, and have the same shape and dimensions as the transducer. At lower driving voltages (80 to 100 Vpp), streams of bubbles are seen moving towards the free surface. This indicates that no standing waves are present. When driven in a burst mode (500 cycles), small bubble clouds are formed. We captured the nucleation and expansion of these clouds using the high speed photography and a long distance microscopic lens. In an attempt to understand some of these observed phenomena, we employed numerical simulations based on the Boundary Element Method (BEM). The Boundary Element Method is an established numerical method for the simulation of bubble dynamics (Blake et al, 1986, 1987). Recently Klaseboer et al (2012) and Sun et al (2014) have improved the numerical solution methodology by eliminating the singularities in the Boundary Integral equation. By using an analytical function, and subtracting this from the original Boundary Integral Method in a specific manner, the method is desingularized, with the added advantage of eliminating the solid angle. This breakthrough significantly reduces the computational complexity and cost, making the use of higher order elements becomes straight forward.The same analytics is applied then to develop a three-dimensional BEM code to solve the Helmholtz equation. The code is used to simulate the ultrasound field generated by the HIFU transducer which is used in the experiments previously mentioned. From the simulation, the focused ultrasound field is clearly described.


A new phosphoramidite ligand was used in the iridium-catalyzed allylic substitution reaction. This permitted high regio- and enantioselectivities on a wide variety of substrates and nucleophiles. Because of the stereospecificity of the reaction obtained by using branched substrates, a kinetic resolution reaction was attempted. The origin of the impressive efficiency of this ligand in terms of kinetics was explored in detail, as was the role of the substituent in the ortho-position of the amine moiety.


In studying the policy responses to economic crises in ASEAN and the EU, this paper addresses three issues: the financial crisis of 1997–98 in Southeast Asia, and the European Union's financial crisis of 2008 followed by the sovereign debt crisis; policy adjustment actions in both regions in the area of economic coordination; and areas of mutual policy inspiration for both regions.  Both crises studied were regionally risk-intensive. However, their natures were different. The Asian crisis was mainly externally driven by capital flows, while the EU one — especially the sovereign debt part of it — was predominantly of an internal nature due to imbalances in the euro area and a worsening of the situation in public finances in some euro members. On top of it, the pre-crisis economic governance structure differed with a light one in ASEAN and a deeper one in the EU; however, economic policy was still based dominantly on coordination.  The policy adjustment corresponds to the nature of the crisis and original governance structures. In ASEAN, it is characterized somewhat both by a deepening of regional cooperation and a widening of risk-pooling beyond the borders of the region (ASEAN Plus). On the EU side, the policy response privileges a strong deepening of policy cooperation coupled with more narrow-looking geographical coverage.  The crises offer a unique window for policy adjustment. ASEAN could consider: deepening multi-lateralization in the single market; a gradual and low-intensity monetary cooperation; and enhancing its institutional capacity. The EU can, on its side, fully implement its new rules and put them under the EU-27 roof. It can go beyond this and consider a broader economic partnership with some of the new instruments with the EFTA countries. Finally, it can also reflect on the ASEAN success with the enlargement of its regional influence — how to strengthen its leadership in its closest neighbourhood (Balkans, North Africa, Eastern Partnership) by ensuring an area of stability and prosperity.


In this article the implications of our nature as both autonomous and heteronomous beings is discussed. It is suggested that our condition as part-dependent creatures calls for a reconsideration of the nature of both freedom and liberalism, and the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jean-Paul Sartre is used to illustrate the natural and historical dimensions of our dependency. The conclusion reached is that neither deep ecological re-enchantment nor full-blooded cornucopianism are possible, and that we need to take our nature as semi-dependent creatures seriously as we seek ways of negotiating our way through our environmental problems.


Nutritional quality and microbial density of sweet potato based complementary food fortified with soybean and crayfish flours was investigated. Three different samples were produced from mixing sweet potato, soybean and crayfish at different formulation. Sample I, II, III are sweet potato: soybean: crayfish at ratio 80 : 15 : 5, 70 : 20 : 10 and 60 : 25 : 15 respectively. The formulated flours were analysed for proximate composition and microbial density. The result of proximate composition showed that the value of moisture content ranged between 6.50–8.50 %, while ash content, crude protein crude fat, crude fibre, carbohydrate and energy value ranged from 5.50–9.50 %, 25.10–28.50 %, 4.20–6.20 %, 0.13–0.27 %, 47.73–56.27% and 363.42–370.48 Kcal/100 g respectively. Its observed that as the level of inclusion of soybean and crayfish to sweet potato flour increases, there was increase in protein and crude fibre content but decrease in carbohydrate content. Also, the total bacteria count, coliform count, yeast and mould count ranged from 28 to 50×10–4, 18–37 x 10–4 and 40–62×10–4 (c.f.u./g) respectively which are within the recommended limit value for microbial density in food. Therefore, sweet potato flour fortified with soybean and crayfish flour can be recommended as weaning food to reduce the incidence of malnutrition in infants.


We combine experimentally elicited preferences with administrative micro data to study actual financial decision-making. Firstly, we estimate risk and (presentbiased) time preferences in a real-life context, with horizons up to 10 years, for a large group of pension fund participants. We estimate a present-bias factor of 0.88, an annual discount rate of 3.91% and a CRRA utility curvature of 0.97. Secondly, using a life-cycle framework, we show that the individually estimated preferences explain actual retirement decisions up to 83% of our sample. Freedom of choice creates annual welfare gains up to 4.8%, but realized welfare gains are lower or even negative.


We investigate the effects of explaining anomalies (i.e., observations that conflict with current beliefs) on belief revision, and in particular how explaining contributes to the rejection of incorrect hypotheses, the generation of alternative hypotheses, and the selection of a hypothesis that can account for anomalous observations. Participants learned how to rank students across courses using statistical concepts of deviation, and did so while either explaining sample rankings or writing their thoughts during study. We additionally varied whether or not candidate hypotheses about the basis for ranking were presented to participants prior to learning, and the number of sample rankings that violated intuitive misconceptions about ranking. Measures of learning and coded responses suggest that prompting people to explain can increase the rate at which they entertain both correct and incorrect hypotheses, but that explaining promotes the selection of a hypothesis that can account for anomalous observations.


Abstract A method is presented for the accurate and efficient calculation of the dynamic Green9s functions for a layered viscoelastic solid under plane strain conditions. The method is based on the classical wavenumber integral representation and a delta matrix formulation of the elastodynamic field. The high efficiency is achieved through the introduction of a new quadrature scheme in which the kernels of the wavenumber integrals are represented by means of polynomials in finite and semi-infinite panels, and the resulting oscillatory integrals are evaluated analytically. The accuracy of the results are controlled through the use of an adaptive procedure whereby the number of panels are increased successively until the desired accuracy is reached, with no previous function evaluations wasted. The computer program currently runs on IBM PCs for all multi-layered structures at all finite frequencies.


The mammalian vomeronasal organ detects social information about gender, status, and individuality. The molecular cues carrying this information remain largely unknown. Here, we show that small peptides that serve as ligands for major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules function also as sensory stimuli for a subset of vomeronasal sensory neurons located in the basal Gao- and V2R receptor–expressing zone of the vomeronasal epithelium. In behaving mice, the same peptides function as individuality signals underlying mate recognition in the context of pregnancy block. MHC peptides constitute a previously unknown family of chemosensory stimuli by which MHC genotypic diversity can influence social behavior.


Although the highly proliferative, migratory, and multi-drug resistant phenotype of human pancreatic cancer stem cells (PCSCs) is well characterized, knowledge of their biological mechanisms is limited. We used CD44 and LIN28B as markers to screen, isolate, and enrich CSCs from human primary pancreatic cancer. Using flow cytometry, we identified a human primary pancreatic cancer cell (PCC) subpopulation expressing high levels of both CD44 and LIN28B. CD44+/LIN28B+ PCSCs expressed high levels of stemness marker genes and possessed higher migratory and invasive ability than CD44-/LIN28BPCCs. CD44+/LIN28B+ PCSCs were more resistant to growth inhibition induced by the chemotherapeutic drugs cisplatin and gemcitabine hydrochloride, and readily established tumors in vivo in a relatively short time. Moreover, microarray analysis revealed significant differences between the cDNA expression patterns of CD44+/LIN28B+ PCSCs and CD44-/LIN28BPCCs. Following siRNA interference of endogenous LIn28b gene expression in CD44+/LIN28B+ PCSCs, not only was their proliferation decreased, there was also cell cycle arrest due to suppression of cyclin D1 expression following the stimulation of miRNA let-7b expression. In conclusion, CD44+/LIN28B+ cells, which possess CSC characteristics, can be reliably sorted from human primary PCCs and represent a valuable model for studying cancer cell physiology and multi-drug resistance.


Seeking to understand play as part of a more general theory of human relationships, the author defines play as one of four fundamental categories of behavior, the others being work, ritual, and communitas. He discusses how each of these behaviors is organized as a "pathway" that offers distinctive opportunities for experiencing life and for discovering "self-locations," specifically privilege, subordination, engagement, and marginality. These pathways and self-locations are understood to be key elements in the formation of experience. Associating play, ritual, work, and communitas with either ascending (self-directed) meaning or descending (other-directed) meaning, he describes their related "emotion sequences," essentially chains of emotions that lead from feelings of anticipation to those addressing occurrences in the present to remembrances. For example, work leads from self-confidence to pride; play, from curiosity to gratitude; communitas, from hope to blessedness; and ritual, from faith to reverence. Each of the four pathways is a profoundly important, but also a limited format for action and experience.


The reliance on firewood leads people to be affected by indoor air pollution, which has negative impact on human health. Hence, a reduction on households using traditional fuels, through providing cleaner fuels, is imperative. Indonesia was before 2007 one of the Asian countries with a high proportion of people relying on traditional energy for cooking. However, in 2007, the government of Indonesia aimed to increase the usage of LPG for cooking through the Energy Conversion Program from Kerosene to LPG (ECPKL) policy. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of the policy on the development of access to modern energy between 2007 and 2011. Data from Statistics Indonesia and interviews with government and members of the public were collected. The statistical data was obtained to analyse the broader pattern of use of modern energy and traditional fuel in Indonesia over 2007-2011. Thematic maps of fuel use were produced and analysed in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The effect of the policy on the change of fuel use in Indonesia was investigated through non-parametric statistical analyses. The effects of household income and rural-urban location on change in fuel use were also investigated. Interviews with central government and local government were conducted to identify the role of government in ECPKL policy and their aims in instigating the change in fuel use from kerosene to LPG. Interviews with members of society were also conducted to investigate societal acceptance of LPG and the factors that influence willingness or reluctance to use LPG.
Results of the study show that, in terms of quantity of energy, share of expenditure and source of energy measures, the number of households using firewood in Indonesia from 2007 to 2011 was reduced. In 2011, more households had access to LPG in comparison to 2007, and households using kerosene in 2011 were in smaller number than those in 2007. This indicates that the implementation of policy to replace kerosene with LPG had achieved the target of improving LPG use and reducing kerosene on one hand and only had a small influence on the reduction of traditional fuel for cooking use on the other hand, because there was no attempt from the government through the ECPKL to reduce firewood and other traditional fuel use. It was also found that injustice in the distribution of cleaner fuel for cooking use in Indonesia was apparent, but it reduced from 2007 to 2011. Similarly, the policy implementation led to a reduction in the difference between rural and urban areas in proportions of modern and traditional users, between 2007 and 2011. Interview analysis revealed that there are three levels of adoption of LPG, i.e. full adopters, partial adopters and non-adopters. The factors affecting adoption of LPG include price and the market for LPG and kerosene; trust; the tangible and intangible characteristics of appliances; the campaign for LPG by family and neighbours, and kitchen architecture. Some people decided not to adopt LPG and continued to rely on firewood. There are four main factors that were connected with continuing firewood use: behaviour and life style, economic reasons, being elderly in a rural area, and living in a location that had plentiful firewood resources.


As demand for food and energy continues to grow, so, too, does the importance of understanding agricultural systems and technologies. There is a need to prepare a science-literate citizenry capable of making informed decisions related to food, energy, and water in a world of rapid technological advancement. Outdoor learning spaces, such as school and community gardens, offer a compelling venue for K-12 students to engage in place-based, interdisciplinary STEM learning. While these spaces often support science instruction, technology and engineering learning opportunities are limited. To address this need, Garden TOOLS (Technology Opportunities in Outdoor Learning Spaces) engages upper elementary students (grades 3-5) in coding programmable BBC micro:bit microcontrollers as environmental sensors to facilitate exploration and technology-rich engineering projects in outdoor learning spaces. This program aims to cultivate learners' 21st-century skill development in preparation for a modernizing agricultural workforce and encourage learners to pursue career pathways related to agricultural engineering. During Garden TOOLS programming, youth begin by using BBC micro:bits pre-coded as outdoor technology tools including a compass, counter, thermometer, light level meter, and soil moisture probe. Students then engage in basic tutorials to learn to code the BBC micro:bit using a block-based programming platform. A series of coding projects expand student understanding of circuits, sensors, and fundamental coding concepts. As youth gain computational thinking skills through programming experiences, they eventually apply their understanding to address student-identified garden challenges particular to their site. For example, students may program the BBC micro:bit to monitor soil moisture levels to establish an irrigation schedule. Garden TOOLS has received an enthusiastic reception from participants including youth and formal and informal educators. Development efforts have focused on designing and piloting multiple instructional supports including standards-aligned curriculum materials suitable for use in formal or informal education settings and professional development training for after-school staff, pre-service and in-service elementary teachers, and Nebraska Extension personnel. So far, professional development training has been conducted with 93 informal educators and 178 formal educators.


Suppliers play a critical role in the success of any organisation. A complex product such as an automobile often involves a large number of suppliers. The need for high supplier quality especially gets highlighted at the time when automobile manufacturers launch new vehicles. A new vehicle launch involves enormous coordination efforts among the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and suppliers distributed across the globe. In such situations, supplier audits are used for minimising associated launch risk. However, allocating limited qualified engineers to supplier plants for an audit becomes a challenging task. This research proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to allocate engineers to supplier plant locations and create an optimal audit schedule by incorporating the level of risk involved.


OBJECTIVE
To estimate the frequency and pattern of sugar intake among Pakistani school going children and its association with early carious lesion and caries history.

METHODS
The cross-sectional study was conducted from January to May 2016 in seven schools of Bhakkar district in the Punjab province of Pakistan, and comprised of school children aged 11-12 years. Diet diaries were used to assess the frequency of sugar intake while caries was assessed using the Modified International Caries Detection and Assessment System. Bivariate analysis was used to assess the association of sugar consumption and early carious lesion with selected sociodemographic variables, and regression analysis was performed to evaluate the factor that matters most in caries occurrence.

RESULTS
Of the 226 subjects, 115(51%) had early carious lesion. Mean frequency of sugar intake was 5.2±3.2 times per day. Children who consumed sugar between main meals (p=0.01) and within two hours before bedtime (p=0.04) had significantly higher history of having caries. Cariogenic intake before bedtime was significantly associated with overall caries risk (p=0.02).

CONCLUSIONS
The frequency of sugar intake among the subjects was slightly higher than the recommended level. .


Dusky dolphin Lagenorhynchus obscurus is distributed primarily in cool coastal waters at several continental margins and island borders in the Southern Hemisphere. Off Peru, the northernmost record of this species has been in front of the coast of Salaverry (ca., 6°S). In this paper, we report for the first-time a pod of dusky dolphin at the coast of Los Órganos (4°9.517'S; 81°11.958'W) northern Peru, thus extending the potential distributional range ca., 350 km towards the equator. A group of between 10 to 20 adult individuals was sighted on 17 October 2017, during a whale-watching excursion. Digital photographs and film allowed us to confirm the species based on body morphology and coloration. The sighted group was moving around the area without heading to a given direction. This record constitutes the northernmost record of dusky dolphin in Peru and arguably in the Southern Hemisphere.


: The interest in separation anxiety is nowadays increasing: this disorder appearing during childhood may predispose to the occurrence of anxiety disorders (such as panic disorder and agoraphobia) and major depression into adulthood. Psychoanalytic theories differ on the nature of separation anxiety and its place in child development. For some authors, separation anxiety must be understood as resulting from the unconscious internal conflicts inherent in the individuation process and gradual attainment of autonomy. From this point of view, the fear of loss of mother by separation is not regarded as resulting from a real danger. However, Freud considers the primary experience of separation from protecting mother as the prototype situation of anxiety and compares the situations generating fear to separation experiences. For him, anxiety originates from two factors: the physiological fact is initiated at the time of birth but the primary traumatic situation is the separation from mother. This point of view may be compared with behavioral theories. Behavioral theories suggest that separation anxiety may be conditioned or learned from innate fears. In Freud's theory, the primary situation of anxiety resulting from the separation from mother plays a role comparable to innate fears. Grappling with the problem of separation anxiety, Bowlby emphasizes then the importance of the child's attachment to one person (mother or primary caregiver) and the fact that this attachment is instinctive. This point of view, based on the watch of infants, is akin to ethological theories on behaviour of non human primates. Bowlby especially shows that the reactions of infant separated from mother evolve on three stages: the phase of protestation which may constitute the prototype of adulthood anxiety, the phase of desperation which may be the prototype of depression, and the phase of detachment. He emphasizes so the role of early separations in the development of vulnerability to depression. For Bowlby, these reactions are not acquired but genetically programmed and biologically determined.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Social–Emotional Learning (SEL) programs are school-based preventive interventions that aim to improve children's social–emotional skills and behavioral development. Although meta-analytic research has shown that SEL programs can improve academic and behavioral outcomes in the short term, few studies have examined program effects on receipt of special education services and grade retention in the longer term. Using an experimental design, the current study leveraged administrative data available through students' school records (N = 1,634) to examine the impacts of one SEL program implemented in kindergarten and first grade on receipt of special education and grade retention in fifth grade. The study further considered whether impacts varied for low- versus high-income students. Findings revealed no difference between treatment and control group students in grade retention. However, treatment group students were less likely to ever receive special education services by the end of fifth grade, with low-income students appearing to drive this effect. Implications are discussed.


This paper considers the support of real-time applications to mobile hosts in an Integrated Services Packet Network. We have proposed a service model for mobile hosts that can support adaptive applications which can withstand wide range of available bandwidth, as well as applications which require mobility independent service guarantees. We describe an admission control scheme and a reservation protocol for implementing this service model. Our admission control scheme achieves high utilization of network resources.


While substantial research on trajectory planning for large scale vessels on maritime environment has been conducted, the research on inland waterways has been limited to small vessels. For large scale vessels in ship canals, the narrow canal width in comparison to the large geometries of inland vessels require a dynamically feasible trajectory planning to avoid collisions with static and dynamic obstacles. Thus, the use of an accurate vessel model for motion planning to ensure the dynamical feasibility is desirable. In this regard, the Abkowitz model is one of the classic models used in the study of ship maneuvring, especially in calm water environments. However, the nonlinear model structure makes the model-based trajectory planning challenging, as most trajectory planning methods either rely on specific model structures or require fully-actuated vessels. In this paper, we introduce an incremental sampling method for the trajectory planning of rudder-steered and therefore underactuated surface vessels when sailing in ship canals. The trajectory planning is based on an heuristic tree search along the tubular geometry of ship canals. The discretization of input value and the prediction horizon transforms the trajectory planning into a minimum-cost graph search on a tree structure, which is partially explored using weighted A*-search. Efficient collision detection is added by applying computer graphic strategies. An evaluation for a large scale vessel is shown in a simulation study on the Dortmund-Ems-Canal. The proposed method finds a dynamic feasible local trajectory with a horizon of several hundred meter, avoiding both dynamic and static obstacles. This opens the possibility to extend autonomous driving to commercial vessel operations in inland waterways.


Although it is known that alkalinized sewage sludge raises the pH of acid soils, there is limited knowledge regarding its effects on other soil fertility indicators, such as P and K availability and soil organic C content. Thus, the goal of this study was to evaluate how the application of alkalinized sewage sludge affects the fertility of acid soil. Twenty sewage treatment plants were selected throughout Paraná State (Brazil), and samples of alkalinized sewage sludge and samples of the most representative agricultural soil of the region were collected (covering soils with medium, clayey or very clayey texture). Each soil was incubated for 60 days with doses of sewage sludge (0, 10, 20, 40, and 80 Mg ha-1) from its region and equivalent doses of limestone. The alkalinized sewage sludge was superior to limestone in the correction of soil acidity (pH, Al3+, and H + Al3+) and P and Ca2+ availability. The sludge also increased Mg2+ availability in all soils, K+ in seven soils and organic C in three soils. The very clayey soils (higher buffering capacity) supported higher sludge doses than did clayey and medium texture soils. The alkalinized sewage sludge application in acid soils proved to be an interesting alternative to recycling this type of waste, because it improved soil fertility and could reduce costs associated with soil management and crop fertilization.


Research has been conducted on individual's knowledge and attitudes toward older adult sexuality. This includes investigating attitudes and knowledge of nursing home staff, college students, and the elderly themselves. The current experiment sought to replicate previous research findings by comparing college students' attitudes and knowledge of older adult sexuality to previous research findings with retirement home residents and the community of aged individuals. In addition, the current study added to this line of research by examining the relationship between college students' attitudes and knowledge of older adult sexuality and their degree of religiosity. Results indicated that degree of religiosity did indeed influence attitudes and knowledge of older adult sexuality. Implications of these findings are discussed. ********** It is not a new idea that young people view sexual activity in older adults as virtually non-existent (West, 1975). However, research (e.g., White, 1982a) and reports from physicians (e.g., West, 1975) provide a different picture indicating that older adults have both sexual needs and engage in sexual activities. Therefore, social scientists have examined what people know and what people think about elderly sexuality. This includes investigating attitudes and knowledge of nursing home staff, college students, and the elderly themselves. Research consistently notes the negative attitudes that nursing home staff have toward sexual activity of elderly (e.g., Brown, 1989; Deacon, Minichiello, & Plummer, 1995; Szasz, 1983). Recent scholarly findings indicated that having less experience working with older people and being of a younger age were predictive of more negative and restrictive attitudes toward later life sexuality (Bouman, Archelus, & Benbow, 2007). However, if individuals receive educational training, improvements in knowledge and attitudes have been noted (Goldstein-Lohman & Aitken, 1995). Research has also focused on how the elderly themselves perceive older adult sexuality and how much they actually know about sexuality in general. Bond and Tramer (1983) found that individuals between the ages of 56 and 75 reported that younger individuals would perceive older adult sexuality less favorable and that doctors and spouses were perceived as more supportive of older adult sexuality than friends, clergy, or adult children. Walker (1999) reports that older adults scored a 67% on knowledge of sexuality and Story (1989) found that college students had more knowledge and more positive attitudes toward older adult sexuality than retirement home elderly residents. In addition, college students attitudes toward older adult sexuality become more permissive when there is the perception of closeness with at least one grandparent (Hillman & Stricker, 1996). Although there is limited research directly examining the relationship between degree of religiousness and attitudes toward elderly sexual activity, research has been conducted on how religion influences general attitudes toward sex and marriage. This line of research with college students has found that degree of religiosity and how often college students attend church services were significantly related to attitudes toward premarital sex. In addition, degree of religiosity and specific type of religious affiliation were related to the type of contraceptive method used by college students who were engaging in sexual activities (Pluhar, Frongillo, Stycos, & Dempster-McClain, 1998). A recent study on college students in London found that the more religious students reported being the more conservative their attitudes toward sex were and the lower their sexual health knowledge was (Coleman & Testa, 2008). Finally, religion of college students has been found to influence students' attitudes towards people marrying at a later age (Stinnett & Montgomery, 1968). Research has also examined how religion influences attitudes and behaviors of adults in sexual relationships. …


: In the present article we report the revised microscopical features of serous borderline ovarian tumors (S-BOTs) in the context of a long personal experience, drawing parallels with the definitions and issues elaborated at the Borderline Ovarian Tumor Workshop held in August 2003 in Bethesda. In our opinion none of the histopathologic criteria of the primary tumor including micropapillary subtype of the S-BOT can be used yet as a prognostic marker. The most realistic assumption is that in the clinical course of the S-BOT dynamic transformation of different clones occurs and the process develops simultaneously with multicentric blastomogenesis in the peritoneal cavity. Hence the failure of our efforts to forecast the prognosis of the disease using the microscopical structure of the primary tumor as a point of issue. It is indispensable to control the course of the S-BOTs by performing repeated biopsies at each relapse and modify the treatment schedules according to the microscopic patterns revealed at a given stage of the disease. Relapses of the S-BOTS may occur up to 50 years later so the patient should be under surveillance especially by a urologist to detect the earliest symptoms of urinary tract obstruction. Much more attention should be paid to the local intraabdominal administration of drugs and the search for new systemic chemotherapy regimens.


Transfer learning improves the performance of the target task by leveraging the data of a specific source task: the closer the relationship between the source and the target tasks, the greater the performance improvement by transfer learning. In neuroscience, the relationship between cognitive tasks is usually represented by similarity of activated brain regions or neural representation. However, no study has linked transfer learning and neuroscience to reveal the relationship between cognitive tasks. In this study, we propose a transfer learning framework to reflect the relationship between cognitive tasks, and compare the task relations reflected by transfer learning and by the overlaps of brain regions ( e.g. , neurosynth). Our results of transfer learning create cognitive taskonomy to reflect the relationship between cognitive tasks which is well in line with the task relations derived from neurosynth. Transfer learning performs better in task decoding with fMRI data if the source and target cognitive tasks activate similar brain regions. Our study uncovers the relationship of multiple cognitive tasks and provides guidance for source task selection in transfer learning for neural decoding based on small-sample data.


The learning process of a multilayered feedforward neural network involves extracting a desired function from the training data presented through an appropriate training algorithm. To achieve the desired function, the generation of good training data is necessary. A closed-loop methodology for neural network training for control of drives with nonlinearities is presented. Problems associated with the more common open-loop training scheme, and how these are addressed by the proposed closed-loop method, are discussed. An inverse nonlinear control using a neural network (INC/NN), a control strategy which incorporates the neural network for control of nonlinear systems, is described and used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the closed-loop training scheme. Simulation studies and experimental results are presented to verify the improvement achieved by the closed-loop training methodology. >


A cross-sectional survey of 794 referrals from 41 general practices working in a defined catchment area is reported. The outcomes studied were the proportion of patients (1) declined on the basis of a referral letter, (2) not attending, (3) considered 'appropriate' by clinicians carrying out assessments and (4) judged to meet 'severity' criteria based upon risk or role impairment. Forty-one (5%) referrals were declined on the basis of their referral letter and 221 (27%) did not attend. Of the remainder, 125 (28%) were considered as inappropriate referrals. There was an inconsistent relationship between clinicians' opinions about 'appropriateness' and judgements in the four domains of severity: 66 (52%) of the 'inappropriate' referrals were judged to meet at least one of four severity criteria, whereas, conversely, of the referrals considered 'appropriate', 64 (20%) did not meet any risk or severity criteria. Nearly half (47%) of all referrals to psychiatric services either fail to attend or are considered 'inappropriate' when seen, findings which highlight serious inefficiencies at the interface between primary care and secondary mental health services. The policy of 'prioritisation' on the basis of severity has proved difficult to implement consistently. In order to reduce these inefficiencies, structured referral criteria are needed involving users, general practitioners and mental health service providers.


We describe the case of a 74-year-old patient with structural valve deterioration of a Carpentier-Edwards porcine mitral valve. He was referred to our institution for a murmur noted about 1 week before. Transthoracic echocardiography showed the presence of severe mitral regurgitation, without disclosing the mechanism of failure. A tear cusp was identified with transesophageal echocardiography that resulted in a lack of coaptation of the leaflets causing mitral insufficiency. The diagnosis was confirmed at surgery.


Objectives:  Thyroid disorders are commonly observed in pregnancy. Thyroid hormones play an important role in embryogenesis and fetal development. The fetus is completely dependent on the mother for thyroid hormone in first trimester. About 10% of all pregnant women can be affected by thyroid disorders during pregnancy. Thyroid function abnormalities in pregnancy are a challenge for the concerned physicians.  The objective of this study was to assess the maternal thyroid function in first trimester of pregnancy. Patients and Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out at the Combined Military Hospital (CMH), Dhaka over a period of one year from January 2013 to December 2013 to see the serum FT 3 , FT 4 , TSH, thyroid antibodies level and common thyroid disorders in pregnancy. A total of 138 pregnant women in their first trimester (up to 12 weeks) of pregnancy with an age range of 18-35 years were enrolled in this study. Pregnant women with known thyroid disorder and on treatment and pregnancy more than three months were excluded. Measurement of serum FT 3 , FT 4 , TSH, Anti TPO-Ab and Anti TG-Ab were done in each patient at the time of enrolment. Ultrasonography of each patient was done for confirmation of pregnancy and correlation of gestational age. Results: Among 138 pregnant women, subclinical hypothyroidism was detected in 10 (7.2%) patients and subclinical hyperthyroidism was detected in 3 (2.2%) patients. Mean difference of the investigation findings were not statistically significant among primi and multi gravida. TPO-Ab and TG-Ab difference were statistically significant between two age groups. Conclusion: Subclinical thyroid disorders are fairly high among pregnant women. Correct diagnosis in early pregnancy and prompt treatment will bring an excellent prognosis for both mother and offspring. Bangladesh J. Nuclear Med. 19(2): 98-102, July 2016


Objectives: Few data is available comparing Edwards SAPIEN XT - SXT (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, California) with Medtronic CoreValve - CoV (Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota) in patients with severe aortic stenosis undergoing transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). Methods: We selected consecutive patients undergoing transfemoral TAVR with SXT or CoV at our Institution. Main outcomes were Valve Academic Research Consortium (VARC)-combined safety endpoints. Results: A total of 100 patients (SXT, n=50 versus CoV, n=50) were analyzed. Both SXT and CoV showed good device success rates (98% versus 90%, p=0.20). SXT versus CoV reduced the occurrence of paravalvular regurgitation after TAVR (26% versus 90%, p 0.99), life- threatening bleedings (2% versus 4%, p>0.99), stroke (4% versus 6%, p>0.99) and death (6% versus 2%, p>0.99) did not differ between SXT and CoV. However, safety endpoints favored SXT (17% versus 34.6%, p=0.01), due to a numerically higher incidence of ischemic stroke and Acute Kidney Injury Stage 3 after CoV. At multivariate analysis, TAVR with SXT (odds ratio=0.21, 95% confidence intervals (0.05-0.84), p=0.03) was predictive of fewer adverse events. Conclusions: Transcatheter valve implantation with Edwards SAPIEN XT was associated with lower VARC- combined safety endpoints as compared with Medtronic CoreValve. More extensive cohorts are needed to confirm these results.


This paper analyzes how zero-rate output (ZRO) arises in the response signal of a MEMS gyroscope. ZRO challenges the performance of MEMS gyroscopes, and in order to avoid it by design, knowledge of its cause is important. In this paper, the most relevant error sources are analyzed at the signal path level, which is a more general approach than focusing on specific designs. An analysis underscores the general understanding, which is necessary in order to improve the overall performance and the robustness of MEMS gyroscopes. A method to approximate nonlinear models through the coupling of two linear models is presented. The quality of the approximation and the necessary preconditions are shown. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulations. An extension of the model to other nonlinearities is also discussed. With this approximation, the signal paths in the system, and especially those caused by the nonlinearity, lend themselves to an analysis.


Educational posters are used to enhance knowledge, attitudes and self-confidence of patients. Little is known on their effectiveness for educating health care professionals. As these professionals may play an important role in suicide prevention, the effects of a poster and accompanying evaluation and triage guide on knowledge, self-confidence and attitudes regarding suicidal thoughts and behaviours, were studied in a multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial, involving staff from 39 emergency and 38 psychiatric departments throughout Flanders (n = 1171). Structured self-report questionnaires assessed the knowledge, confidence and beliefs regarding suicidal behaviour management, and attitudes. Data were analysed through a Solomon four-group design, with random assignment to the different conditions. Baseline scores for knowledge and provider confidence were high. The poster and accompanying evaluation and triage guide did not have an effect on knowledge about suicide and self-confidence in suicidal behaviour management. However, the poster campaign appeared to be beneficial for attitudes towards suicidal patients, but only among staff from mental health departments that were assigned to the un-pretested condition. Given the limited effects of the poster campaign in the studied population with a relatively high baseline knowledge, the evaluation of this poster as part of a multimodal educational programme in a more heterogeneous sample of health care professionals is recommended.


Hypertension is highly prevalent and remains poorly controlled. The purpose of this study was to evaluate blood pressure (BP) control in patients with uncontrolled hypertension 1 year after referral to a hypertension specialist. A retrospective chart review was performed on 158 patients evaluated by a single hypertension specialist between 2005 and 2010 at the Penn Hypertension Program. Patients were included if they had at least 1 year of follow‐up and had baseline plasma renin activity and plasma aldosterone concentration measured. Drug regimens were adjusted with particular attention to results of renin‐aldosterone profiling. Mean BP of the entire cohort decreased from 149/87 mm Hg to 129/78 mm Hg at 1 year (P<.0001), without a significant change in the number of antihypertensive medications. The authors observed that referral to a hypertension specialist was worthwhile and associated with a significant reduction in BP without an increase in the number of BP medications used at 1 year.


This paper presents three new rapid prototyping tools to develop power electronic systems. The effectiveness of these tools is demonstrated by designing and building a shunt active power filter. First, a digital signal processor (DSP) model to embed complex control algorithms has been created for detailed offline simulations with PSpice. This DSP model emulates the discrete behavior of digital control circuits. The control algorithms in the DSP model are implemented in C-code. Secondly, the control C-code can be downloaded to the ISEADSP for real-time execution. The ISEADSP is a universal DSP control board based on two 80 SHARC processors which execute control algorithms of various nature and highest complexity at 80 MFLOP per second. Thirdly, power electronic building blocks (PEBBs) based on IGBT devices were developed to build and analyze quickly different converter topologies. Combining these three rapid prototyping tools led to a significant reduction of development time of power electronic applications.


&NA; Neonatal cerebral sinovenous thrombosis (CSVT) comprises approximately 50% of all pediatric-related CSVT. Although guidelines support anticoagulation in pediatric CSVT, the role of anticoagulation in neonatal CSVT remains controversial. This case report details the course of a neonate diagnosed with extensive CSVT and concurrent bilateral thalamic and intraventricular hemorrhage. Due to existing hemorrhage at the time of diagnosis, anticoagulation therapy was not administered. Despite coexisting protein C and antithrombin deficiency, CSVT resolved spontaneously, and neurodevelopmental follow-up after 13 years suggests a good prognosis. Although our case had a positive outcome, the association between the use of anticoagulation with concurrent hemorrhage and long-term outcome in neonatal CSVT has not been investigated in prospective studies to firmly guide optimum treatment. Current literature and guidelines for the treatment of neonatal CSVT are reviewed in this article. Until robust studies are available, expert opinion recommends anticoagulation in a stable neonate with CSVT.


PURPOSE: To evaluate the impact of the reorganization of an academic Veterans Affairs medical center toward primary and ambulatory care--including the implementation of a medical-center-wide interdisciplinary firm system and ambulatory care training program--on the quality of primary ambulatory care. METHOD: Randomly selected male veterans visiting the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Sepulveda, California, were surveyed in 1992, early in the implementation of the program, and in 1993, after the program had been fully implemented. Two surveys were used: one before the veterans saw their primary care providers (practice-based survey) and the other immediately after patient visits (visit-based survey). Survey-participant data were then linked to computerized utilization and mortality data. Survey topics were mapped to the medical center's strategic plan and goals for ambulatory care, and focused on patients' reports about the care they had received in terms of continuity, access, preventive care, and other aspects of the biopsychosocial model of care. Administrative computer data were then used to evaluate effects on medical center workload. Statistical analyses included analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, chi-square, and logistic regression. RESULTS: For practice-based comparisons, complete data were available for 1,262 veterans in 1992 and 1,373 in 1993. For visit-based comparisons, complete data were available for 1,407 veterans in 1992 and 643 in 1993. Results included statistically significant improvements in continuity of care and detection of depression as well as increased rates of preventive care counseling (smoking and exercise). The proportion of veterans reporting being seen by physicians increased, as did the proportion of patients seen for check-ups rather than for acute problems. Fewer patients were seen in subspecialty clinics than in general medicine clinics. Patient satisfaction increased, hospitalizations decreased, and death rates decreased. Alcohol counseling and access to care for acute symptoms declined. Workload shifted from subspecialists to generalists and from inpatient care to outpatient care. CONCLUSION: The institutional reorganization toward primary and ambulatory care succeeded in substantially improving the quality of ambulatory care, reflecting improvements in the system of care and of health care provider training in ambulatory care.


Snakes are a diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates of the order Squamata. Despite that, in the Amazonian biome, information about distribution and identification of snakes is limited when compared to other groups. Additionally, in Amazonia there is a sampling bias towards areas geographically close to urban centers and more densely populated areas. This in turn leads to false distribution gaps in poorly accessible areas of Amazonia. In this article we report the composition of snake assemblages in six areas of the Brazilian Amazonia, based on field sampling conducted over four years using standardized methods. We sampled 70 species from eight families: Typhlopidae (n=1), Leptotyphlopidae (n=1), Anillidae (n=1), Boidae (n=5), Colubridae (n=15), Dipsadidae (n=35), Elapidae (n=7), and Viperidae (n=5). The largest number of species was recorded in the Trombetas River area and the lowest in the Jatapu River area. The total beta diversity was 0.40 and the snake assemblages were structured mainly by replacement (72.5%). The time-limited search was the method that recorded the greatest number of individuals in the studied areas (44.1%) and also the greatest number of species (n=40). However, some species were recorded only by other methods such as interception by pitfall traps with directional fences. Despite the large number of species sampled in the study, no particular area comprised more than 40% of species registered in all the areas, indicating that snakes are poorly detected even with large sampling effort across multiple areas of a species distribution.


Abstract Aim: A series of dams along the course of a river forms a complex cascading reservoir system. The interconnectivity of the dams is perceived with the reduction of turbidity and phosphorus and the increase of specific richness throughout the system. Designing a management system that promotes the integration of biotic and abiotic data is essential to these resources of recognized importance for the population, the country's power generation and watersheds management. The Jacui River is an important water resource in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, along its upper course, five water reservoirs comprise a cascade system tapped for energy generation and agriculture, but the effects on the phytoplankton community of cascading dams are still unknown. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of phytoplankton associated with climatological and limnological characteristics of the Ernestina and Itauba water reservoirs, located in the upper Jacui River, RS, Brazil. Methods Sampling campaigns were carried out seasonally from January 2012 to February 2013, with four sampling stations within each dam and at three different depths. The sampling units were determined according to the three zones of the reservoir: river areas, transition and lake. Results: A total of 91 phytoplankton species were identified in Ernestina and 130 in Itauba. There was no significant difference between vertical and horizontal patterns, since the community responded to seasonal changes and the specific characteristics of each dam. Conclusions The specific richness and water transparency increased downstream of the system and changes in water retention time were important for cell density and composition.


Humans learn to trust new partners by evaluating the outcomes of repeated interpersonal interactions. However, available prior information concerning the reputation of these partners may alter the way in which outcomes affect learning. This thesis combines for the first time behavioral, computational, psychophysiological and neural models in a direct comparison of interaction-based and prior-based decision-to-trust mechanisms. Three studies are presented, in which participants played repeated and single trust games with anonymous counterparts. We manipulated several conditions: whether or not reputational priors were provided, the probability of reciprocation (trustworthiness) of each counterpart, and the time-horizon of the relationships.
The thesis addresses several challenges involved in understanding the complex behavior of people in social contexts, by investigating whether and how they integrate reputation into decisions to trust unfamiliar others, by designing ways to combine reputation information and
observed trustworthiness into unified models, and by providing insight into information on the brain processes underlying social cognition. Numerous models, algorithms, game theoretical and neuroscientific methods are used to examine these questions. The thesis presents several new reinforcement learning (RL) models and explores how well these models explain the behavioral and neural interactions between trust and reputation.
The performance of the new models was tested using experiments of varying complexity. These experiments showed that model-based algorithms correlate better with behavioral and neural responses than model-free RL algorithms. More specifically, when no prior information was available our results were consistent with previous studies in reporting the neural detection of parametric estimates of RL models within the bilateral caudate nuclei. However, our work additionally showed that this correlation was modified when reputational priors on counterparts are provided. Indeed participants continued to rely on priors even when experience shed doubt on their accuracy. Notably, violations of trust from counterparts with high pro-social reputations elicited both stronger electrodermal responses and caudate deactivations when priors were available than when they were not. However, tolerance to such violations appeared to be mediated by priors-enhanced connectivity between the caudate nucleus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which was anti-correlated with retaliation rates. Moreover, in addition to affecting learning mechanisms, violation of trust clearly influenced emotional arousal and increased subsequent recognition of partners who had betrayed trust.


This paper proposes a new way to detect the gas-leakage through PDMS. We use PDMS instead of Pyrex #7740 glass to seal the backside V-grooves of silicon pressure sensors. We put the packaged sensor into a pressurized chamber with CO2 at 300 psi. By observing the output voltage of the pressure sensor, the time history for CO2 permeating into the sensor cavity was easily found. In experiments, we use several PDMS membranes with different thickness, from 45 to 2000 μm, to package the pressure sensors and investigate the gas-leakage of PDMS. The gas leaking through PDMS is shown to be governed by diffusion mechanism, and the diffusion coefficients derived from CO2 leaking history is 2.2×10-9 m2/sec, matched with the previous work.


Despite the success of fine-tuning pretrained language encoders like BERT for downstream natural language understanding (NLU) tasks, it is still poorly understood how neural networks change after fine-tuning. In this work, we use centered kernel alignment (CKA), a method for comparing learned representations, to measure the similarity of representations in task-tuned models across layers. In experiments across twelve NLU tasks, we discover a consistent block diagonal structure in the similarity of representations within fine-tuned RoBERTa and ALBERT models, with strong similarity within clusters of earlier and later layers, but not between them. The similarity of later layer representations implies that later layers only marginally contribute to task performance, and we verify in experiments that the top few layers of fine-tuned Transformers can be discarded without hurting performance, even with no further tuning.


An innovative Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) code has been developed, which rules the post-implant kinetics of the defects system in the extremely far-from-the equilibrium conditions caused by the laser irradiation close to the liquid-solid interface. It considers defect diffusion, annihilation and clustering. The code properly implements, consistently to the stochastic formalism, the fast varying local event rates related to the thermal field T(r,t) evolution. This feature of our numerical method represents an important advancement with respect to current state of the art KMC codes. The reduction of the implantation damage and its reorganization in defect aggregates are studied as a function of the process conditions. Phosphorus activation efficiency, experimentally determined in similar conditions, has been related to the emerging damage scenario.


Robust mean estimation is the problem of estimating the mean $\mu \in \mathbb{R}^d$ of a $d$-dimensional distribution $D$ from a list of independent samples, an $\epsilon$-fraction of which have been arbitrarily corrupted by a malicious adversary. Recent algorithmic progress has resulted in the first polynomial-time algorithms which achieve \emph{dimension-independent} rates of error: for instance, if $D$ has covariance $I$, in polynomial-time one may find $\hat{\mu}$ with $\|\mu - \hat{\mu}\| \leq O(\sqrt{\epsilon})$. However, error rates achieved by current polynomial-time algorithms, while dimension-independent, are sub-optimal in many natural settings, such as when $D$ is sub-Gaussian, or has bounded $4$-th moments.
In this work we give worst-case complexity-theoretic evidence that improving on the error rates of current polynomial-time algorithms for robust mean estimation may be computationally intractable in natural settings. We show that several natural approaches to improving error rates of current polynomial-time robust mean estimation algorithms would imply efficient algorithms for the small-set expansion problem, refuting Raghavendra and Steurer's small-set expansion hypothesis (so long as $P \neq NP$). We also give the first direct reduction to the robust mean estimation problem, starting from a plausible but nonstandard variant of the small-set expansion problem.


Abstract Paleontological data frequently are extracted from genetically and stratigraphically complex shell beds. It is therefore important to recognize taphonomic biases that can lead to major errors in paleoecological interpretations (e.g., on ancient local biodiversity). The strong influence of transport-related shell-size sorting on diversity estimates from single samples was studied in a transect of the middle Miocene Grund Formation (Lower Austria), which contains allochthonous, psammitic event beds with channel structures, sharp erosional bases, and graded bedding. These event beds are interpreted as proximal tempestites, and contain densely packed, polytaxic molluscan assemblages. The faunal composition and taphonomic features of shells indicate that transport occurred from wave- or current-agitated nearshore habitats into a pelitic, inner-shelf environment. The different skeletal concentrations contain a highly diverse molluscan fauna with 130 species identified from more than 4200 individuals. Although the quantitatively most-important species are the same in standardized samples from five different shell beds, species richness differs significantly among the three samples from the base of the transect and the two samples from its top. Diversity depends on size-sorting and therefore reflects the transport history of the individual tempestites, not the species richness of the original paleocommunity. Poorly sorted samples (indicating relatively minor transport) approximate the diversity of single samples of that environment better than well-sorted samples (which indicate stronger transport). Diversities of shelly assemblages from parautochthonous and allochthonous assemblages cannot be compared directly. Even comparisons among tempestites are problematic because transport intensity governs diversity. The intensity of any taphonomic process, however, is difficult to predict without detailed investigations. The use of samples from taphonomically complex shell beds for diversity comparisons can bias results, especially on the fine-scale level of local diversity patterns. Studies at such fine scales of resolution should consider the taphonomic framework of assemblages, which is necessary to recognize the dominant taphonomic factors and their intensities.


The viability of using re-refined used lubricating oil (RULO) extracted with an aromatic selective normal methylpyrolidone (NMP) as base oil for the formulation of drilling mud was investigated. The rheological and other properties of this formulation were compared with formulations from three locally produced synthetic base oils. The synthetic base oils were Paradril® made from saturated linear ethylene polymer, Emcaid® manufactured from a blend of olefin isomers and Ty-Chem-Low Tox® made from catalytic dimerization of linear alpaolefins. RULO based mud, though alkaline in nature with a pH of 8.5 exhibits very poor filtration properties with the thickest filter cake when compared with the other formulations. It is also the least stable of the four formulations with an electrical stability (ES) of 480 volts. RULO formulation is very toxic as the cassava plant on which it was spilled survived for only 5 days compared to 15 days for Paradril®. It is therefore, not environmental friendly and may not also be cost effective as the cost of re-refining and extraction may far exceed the cost of producing synthetic base oil. RULO may not therefore be a viable alternative to existing base oils for the formulation of drilling mud.

 Key words: Used lubricating oil, base oil, drilling mud, rheological properties, emulsifier, environment


Purpose of reviewThis review updates the American Society of Hematology and British guidelines on immune thrombocytopenic purpura incidence, prevalence, and natural history, with recent observations from the peer-reviewed medical literature. Recent findingsThis analysis was conducted using literature-indexing systems to identify relevant articles. Information about the incidence and prevalence of immune thrombocytopenic purpura is limited, with nearly all data coming from Europe. Recent reports have confirmed earlier studies suggesting that the disease occurs in five out of 100 000 children per year, and that spontaneous recovery is typical. Intracranial hemorrhage occurs in 0.5–1.0% of affected children, and half are fatal. The incidence in adults is roughly two in 100 000 per year and may be more common in older adults than previously recognized. A female predominance occurs only among middle-aged patients, and there is no racial variation in incidence. Spontaneous remission rates vary by report and range from 5 to 11%. SummarySpontaneous remission occurs more frequently in children than in adults, and intracranial bleeding is uncommon. The incidence increases with age, with a female predominance only among middle-aged adults. Adult patients with chronic disease may have a better prognosis than previously recognized, although only a small minority recover spontaneously.


In this article, I address the embroilment of medical science in the lifeworlds of the urban poor in Brazil, particularly the place of psychopharmaceuticals within households. I explore how psychiatric diagnostics and treatments are integrated into a domestic "dramaturgy of the real" and how family members use them to assess human value and to mediate the disposal of persons considered unproductive or unsound. I focus on the life of Catarina, who was deemed mad and left by her family in an asylum in southern Brazil. Disabled and abandoned, Catarina began to compile a "dictionary" of words that have meaning for her. By tracing Catarina's words back to the people, households, and medical institutions that she had once been a part of, I illuminate the complex network in which her abandonment and pathology took form as well as the edges of human imagination that she keeps expanding. From this examination, one comes to understand how economic globalization, state and medical reform, and acceleration of claims over human rights and citizenship coincide with and impinge on a local production of social death. One also sees how mental disorders gain form at the juncture between the subject, her biology, and the technical and political coding of her sense of being alive. Hers is not just bare life, though: Thinking through her condition, Catarina anticipates social ties and one more chance. This is also a story of the methodological and ethical challenges I faced as I supported Catarina's search for consistency and her demands for continuity.


Mr. Prodi reviews some issues of political and industrial economics and considers the present state of the discipline. Among the issues are industrial districts, privatisation, and the role of large enterprises and SME's. The industrial district is the major innovation Italian business gave to the world; today it can solve some of the problems of globalisation thanks to its suitability in low technology and low capital intensity contexts. Privatisation should not be turned into an article of faith; in fact it is problematic if not accompanied by new competition rules and the demise of monopolistic and oligopolistic positions. Large companies have been struggling in Italy for a long time, but they can still play a vital role for development; some innovations, for instance, can only be born within large concerns. As to SME's, ways should be found to help them to invest in the least developed countries. The reflections on the discipline cover intellectual diversity and the task of economics. Ten years ago, many different industrial and social models existed; today, much of this diversity has been lost and something like intellectual single-crop farming is prevalent. Economist should aim at addressing real-life problems such as income imbalances, which have grown wider in the past decade. Instead, today's economists are mesmerised by models whose purpose coincides with their formal perfection. Economics should try to close the gap between itself and the real world.


We propose a method to infer causal structures containing both discrete and continuous variables. The idea is to select causal hypotheses for which the conditional density of every variable, given its causes, becomes smooth. We define a family of smooth densities and conditional densities by second order exponential models, i.e., by maximizing conditional entropy subject to first and second statistical moments. If some of the variables take only values in proper subsets of R^n, these conditionals can induce different families of joint distributions even for Markov-equivalent graphs.
We consider the case of one binary and one real-valued variable where the method can distinguish between cause and effect. Using this example, we describe that sometimes a causal hypothesis must be rejected because P(effect|cause) and P(cause) share algorithmic information (which is untypical if they are chosen independently). This way, our method is in the same spirit as faithfulness-based causal inference because it also rejects non-generic mutual adjustments among DAG-parameters.


Following the first isolation of Yersinia intermedia (Y. intermedia) in the Microbiology Branch of ICDDR, B from two postmortem cases, one of whom suffered from pneumonia and septicaemia and the other from enteric fever, an epidemiological investigation was carried out in the communities from where these postmortem cases had come. The stools from both postmortem cases were negative for Yersinia. One hundred and twenty five contacts of the first postmortem case and 135 contacts of the second postmortem case along with 175 animals of Dhaka Zoo were examined. Y. intermedia was isolated from only a five-year-old healthy contact of the first postmortem case. This was the first isolation of Y. intermedia from stool of a healthy child in Bangladesh.


Health care as any other public service is subject to many potentially conflicting objectives and many actors. Over time, the traditional goal of health care systems of distributive justice has been accompanied by other objectives and health care reforms have developed accordingly. One type of reform in countries with publicly funded health care has evolved around replacing monopolistic state providers with competition among providers and choice for individuals: quasi-markets have been introduced. This new structure of governance, involving a mix of mechanisms for corrective action, seems to be appropriate for achieving a mix of objectives. New accountability relationships between providers and citizens are appropriate for holding providers to account for new objectives related to accessibility, quality as perceived by patients and responsiveness of services towards individuals. These objectives are visible to individuals at their point of contact with the provider. Such accountability relationships are not enough to achieve all overall objectives. It is necessary to establish and maintain dual accountability relationships with providers. Accountability relationships between providers and governments have to be maintained to achieve traditional objectives related to other aspects of quality, efficient management of resources and equitable distribution of services (Less)


Plenoptic imaging allows a user to gain 3-D information from a single acquisition. A toolbox is presented with unified plenoptic simulation, rendering, and reconstruction, which allows the possibility for complete in silico exploration of potential designs and applications. The example of 3-D fluorescence microscopy is explored with plenoptic tomographic reconstruction.


Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a highly prevalent disease leading to irreversible air fl ow limitation and is characterized by chronic pulmonary in fl ammation, obstructive bronchiolitis and emphysema. Etiologically, COPD is mediated by toxic gases and particles, eg, cigarette smoke, while the pathogenesis of the disease is largely unknown. Several lines of evidence indicate a link between COPD and autoimmunity but comprehensive studies are lacking. Methods: By using a protein microarray assaying more than 19,000 human proteins we determined in this study the autoantibody pro fi les of COPD and non-COPD smokers. The discovery cohort included 5 COPD patients under acute exacerbation (AECOPD) and 5 age-and gender-matched non-COPD smokers. One putative candidate autoantibody, anti-lactoferrin IgG, was further investigated by using immunoblotting with a large validation cohort containing 124 healthy controls, 92 patients with AECOPD and 52 patients with stable COPD. Results: We show that i) autoantigens targeted by autoantibodies with higher titers in COPD patients were enriched in extracellular regions, while those with lower titers in COPD patients were enriched in intracellular compartments. ii) levels of IgG autoantibodies against many neutrophil granule proteins were signi fi cantly higher in COPD patients than in non-COPD smokers. Furthermore, increased levels of anti-lactoferrin antibodies in COPD patients were con fi rmed in a cohort with a large number of samples. Conclusion: The comprehensive autoantibody pro fi les from COPD patients established in this study demonstrated for the fi rst time a shift in the cellular localization of antigens targeted by autoantibodies in COPD.


As an initial approach to experiments directed toward effective adoptive immunotherapy for cancer using lymphokine genes, we transferred retrovirally a complementary DNA encoding mouse gamma-interferon (IFN-gamma) into a specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte clone, designated E-4, against 203 glioma cells (a 20-methylcholanthrene-induced mouse glioma line) and confirmed the efficacy of IFN-gamma production from the exogenous gene on augmentation of tumor targeting. Of five, two gene-transferred subclones constitutively produced 8 to 10 times the amount of IFN-gamma as compared with the parental E-4. Correspondingly, these two subclones exhibited 2 to 3 times higher killing activity against 203 glioma than the parental cells; the enhancement of the killing activities was abrogated by an adequate addition of anti-IFN-gamma antibody. No alteration was seen after the gene transfer in cell surface phenotypes, Thy-1+, Lyt-1-, Lyt-2+,3+, and asialo-GM1-. The surface expression of a major histocompatibility complex Class I antigen, H-2Kb, was not altered remarkably, but the Class II antigen, I-Ab, was partially and slightly enhanced on the two IFN-gamma-producing sublines mentioned above on fluorescence-activated cell sorter analysis. Since it is considered that in the vicinity of the constitutively IFN-gamma producing cytotoxic T-lymphocyte cells tumor cells are exposed to a high concentration of IFN-gamma, the cells may be stimulated to induce or enhance the expression of surface antigens including major histocompatibility complex antigens as well as tumor-associated antigens relevant to immune recognition. The 203 glioma cells pretreated with IFN-gamma were more efficiently killed by both the parental E-4 and the gene-transferred sublines. Taken together, the results suggested that the augmented specific tumor-killing activity of our gene-transferred cytotoxic T-lymphocytes was ascribed to the constitutive production of IFN-gamma derived from the exogenous gene.


Abstract Protein transduction domains (PTDs) have been shown to promote the delivery of therapeutic proteins or peptides into the living cells. In a previous study, we showed that the double mutant of TCTP-PTD 13, TCTP-PTD 13M2, was more effective in the delivery of insulin than the wild-type TCTP-PTD 13. In this study, we applied this approach to the nasal delivery of a different peptide, exendin-4, using as carriers, several modified TCTP-PTDs, such as TCTP-PTD 13M1, 13M2, and 13M3. Nasal co-administration of TCTP-PTD 13M2 with exendin-4 showed the highest exendin-4 uptake among the three analogs in normal rats, and also decreased blood glucose levels by 43.3% compared with that of exendin-4 alone and by 18.6% compared with that of exendin-4 plus TCTP-PTD 13 in diabetic mice. We also designed an additional covalently linked conjugate of TCTP-PTD 13M2 and exendin-4 and evaluated its hypoglycemic effect after subcutaneous or intranasal delivery. Subcutaneous administration of exendin-4 that its C-terminus is covalently linked to TCTP-PTD 13M2 showed hypoglycemic effect of 42.2% compared to that in untreated group, whereas intranasal delivery was not successful in diabetic mice. We conclude that a simple mixing TCTP-PTD 13M2 with peptide/protein drugs can be potentially a generally applicable approach for intranasal delivery into animals.


Restoration ecology is a deepening and diversifying field with current research incorporating multiple disciplines and infusing long‐standing ideas with fresh perspectives. We present a list of 10 recent pivotal papers exemplifying new directions in ecological restoration that were selected by students in a cross‐disciplinary graduate seminar at the University of California, Berkeley. We highlight research that applies ecological theory to improve restoration practice in the context of global change (e.g. climate modeling, evaluation of novel ecosystems) and discuss remaining knowledge gaps. We also discuss papers that recognize the social context of restoration and the coupled nature of social and ecological systems, ranging from the incorporation of cultural values and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into restoration, to the consideration of the broader impacts of markets on restoration practices. In addition, we include perspectives that focus on improving communication between social and natural scientists as well as between scientists and practitioners, developing effective ecological monitoring, and applying more integrated, whole‐landscape approaches to restoration. We conclude with insights on recurrent themes in the papers regarding planning restoration in human‐modified landscapes, application of ecological theory, improvements to restoration practice, and the social contexts of restoration. We share lessons from our cross‐disciplinary endeavor, and invite further discussion on the future directions of restoration ecology through contributions to our seminar blog site http://restecology.blogspot.com.


The aim of this study is, to deepen our understanding of what transitions within a preschool institution mean from the perspective of those involved. The issue is important to focus on, since an overview of research shows, that there are hardly any studies made on transitions within preschools. In the study presented nine preschool teachers were interviewed, representing two preschools differing in approach regarding how the transitions between different units were organised. One of the preschools had "marked" transitions between four units for groups of children strictly based on age. The transitions were perceived as a matter of course, as something natural. The other preschool with only two groups, one for younger children and one for older children, had "smoother" transitions based on individual considerations. Here, the maturity of the individual child was taken into account. In the interpretation of the results, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of the transitions for the people involved, using the concept of rites of passage, two approaches were revealed. The first regarded transitions to be a part of the pedagogy, supporting the natural development of the child, as a rite of passage, leaving one social stage in their life and move over to another. The second saw transitions as necessary due to external factors, trying to attain a pedagogical environment, where transitions were as smooth as possible, with no marked rites of passage, not for the individual, not for the collective.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this article is to report the CT findings of pathologically proven diaphragm disease in the small bowel.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A retrospective review identified 12 patients with pathologically proven small-bowel diaphragm disease who underwent CT within 6 months of surgical resection. Two radiologists, who were unblinded to pathologic and clinical findings, evaluated CT examinations for imaging findings of disease extent, appearance, and location. Clinical history and postoperative follow-up were also performed.

RESULTS
The most common presenting symptoms were abdominal pain (7/12 [58%]) and anemia (5/12 [42%]). Long-term use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs was documented in 58% (7/12) of patients. The most common location of small-bowel diaphragms was the ileum (8/12 [67%]). The CT findings were abnormal in 92% (11/12) of patients. The most common CT findings were small-bowel strictures (11/12 [92%]) and focal (median length, 1 cm) bowel wall thickening (8/12 [67%]). Other less common CT findings included mucosal hyperenhancement (6/12 [50%]), small-bowel dilatation (5/12 [42%]), and video capsule retention (6/9 [67%]). Postoperative follow-up in 11 patients found recurrent symptoms in four patients.

CONCLUSION
Small-bowel diaphragm disease should be considered in patients with a history of long-term use of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, chronic abdominal pain, and anemia who present with CT findings of short, symmetric ileal strictures and focal bowel wall thickening.


Possibilities of introduction of distance learning in medical curriculum are the title of project which has been realizing at Department of Medical Informatics, Medical Faculty since year 2002. The Project is approved by Federal and Cantonal ministries of science and education. The purpose of this project is to support improvement educational process at biomedical faculties using contemporary methods, methodologies and information technologies in accordance with strategy and objectives given by Bologna declaration. The pilot project is realized during three years, the theoretical and practical parts of the subject Medical Informatics are adapted to modern concepts of education using world trends of distance learning. One group of students from the Medical Faculty was involved in this project, which was finalized by electronic registration of an exam and electronic testing on 20 June 2005, in public in the Physiological amphitheatre of the Medical faculty in Sarajevo. In this article we have given description of the project and phases of its realization, and basic adventages and disadvantages we have noticed so far.


From the vantage point of comparative philosophy, this anthology explores how analytic and "Continental" approaches in the Western and other philosophical traditions can constructively engage each other and jointly contribute to the contemporary development of philosophy.