Mycobacteria owe their success as pathogens to their ability to persist for long periods within host cells in asymptomatic, latent forms before they opportunistically switch to the virulent state. The molecular mechanisms underlying the transition into dormancy and emergence from it are not clear. Here we show that old cultures of Mycobacterium marinum contained spores that, upon exposure to fresh medium, germinated into vegetative cells and reappeared again in stationary phase via endospore formation. They showed many of the usual characteristics of well-known endospores. Homologues of well-known sporulation genes of Bacillus subtilis and Streptomyces coelicolor were detected in mycobacteria genomes, some of which were verified to be transcribed during appropriate life-cycle stages. We also provide data indicating that it is likely that old Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette–Guérin cultures form spores. Together, our data show sporulation as a lifestyle adapted by mycobacteria under stress and tempt us to suggest this as a possible mechanism for dormancy and/or persistent infection. If so, this might lead to new prophylactic strategies.


The overall context is that of the former Director of WHO, Dr Halfdan Mahler, at Ottawa in 1986. "...public health is reinstating itself as a collective effort, drawing together a wide range of actors, institutions and sectors within society towards a goal of 'socially-economically productive life. This social goal moves health from being the outcome measure of social development to being one of its major resources". For this major resource of health to be fully realised, the Ottawa Charter set out a number of fundamental pre-requisites--peace, shelter, food, income, a stable ecosystem, substantial resources, social justice and equity. Health promoters' roles are to: advocate the adoption of the pre-requisites enable all people to achieve their fullest possible health potential through: access to information opportunities to develop life skills possibilities to make healthy choices mediate among different sectors of society in favour of health. These roles underpin the five main interventions proposed by the Ottawa Charter: building healthy public policy; creating supportive environments; strengthening community action; developing personal skills; re-orienting health services. Clearly, each individual health promoter is not expected to do all of these things all of the time. But they are likely to be dependent for their success to a large extent on the roles of other people and those people's ability and willingness to undertake appropriate actions which lie within their power.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


We have identified two encoded proteins with an antiserum raised against a synthetic oligopeptide corresponding to amino acids 671 to 684 of the predicted protein product of gene UL47 of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1). They have apparent Mrs of 82,000 and 81,000 and are both major virion components located in the tegument. The 82/81K proteins were first detected in infected cells in minor amounts 6 h after infection at 37 degrees C but were later (from 10 h until 24 h after infection) present in large amounts. UL47 regulation was investigated using phosphonoacetic acid (PAA), an inhibitor of DNA synthesis: the amounts of the 82/81K protein synthesized were compared with those of 65KDBP, an early gene product, and 21K/22K, a true late gene product. The data showed that UL47 is regulated as a true late gene.


A method is developed for calculation of single-particle occupation numbers in finite Fermi systems of interacting particles. It is more accurate than the canonical distribution method and gives the Fermi-Dirac distribution in the limit of large number of particles. It is shown that statistical effects of the interaction are absorbed by an increase of the effective temperature. Criteria for quantum chaos and statistical equilibrium are considered. All results are confirmed by numerical experiments in the two-body random interaction model. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}


Ultrafast laser measurements probe the nonequilibrium dynamics of excited electrons in metals with increasing temporal resolution. Electronic structure calculations can provide a detailed microscopic understanding of hot electron dynamics, but a parameter-free description of pump-probe measurements has not yet been possible, despite intensive research, because of the phenomenological treatment of electron-phonon interactions. We present ab initio predictions of the electron-temperature dependent heat capacities and electron-phonon coupling coefficients of plasmonic metals. We find substantial differences from free-electron and semiempirical estimates, especially in noble metals above transient electron temperatures of 2000 K, because of the previously neglected strong dependence of electron-phonon matrix elements on electron energy. We also present first-principles calculations of the electron-temperature dependent dielectric response of hot electrons in plasmonic metals, including direct interband and phonon-assisted intraband transitions, facilitating complete theoretical predictions of the time-resolved optical probe signatures in ultrafast laser experiments.


In light of the growing burden of dementia, continued research into risk factors and potential contributors to disease development is essential. Clearly established risk factors can not only inform our understanding of disease pathophysiology and treatments but also identify potential preventive strategies. While age and the ApoE4 allele have consistently been shown to increase risk of developing dementia (Kukull et al., 2002), other risk factors have been less studied or have had inconsistent findings. The study by Booker and colleagues (Booker et al., 2016) re-examines proposed late-life medical risk factors for incident dementia in a large population-based case-control study. This important contribution is best interpreted in the context of existing research.


Down & Out: Parallels and divergences in structure and method between the theological responses of Martin Luther and contextual theologies to their times. by Detlev Ludwig Tonsing The thesis compares the structure of the theological responses of Martin Luther and contextual theologies , especially those of Juan Luis Segundo and Albert Nolan. The structure of the theologies are described using concepts derived from the methodologies of research programmes developed by Imre Lakatos. The social and ideological background of the ruling ideology of Luther's time (medieval Catholicism) and that of contextual theologies (neo-colonial capitalism) are presented . Parallels are found in that the ruling ideology utilises a monopoly on legitimating authority to orientate the life energies of people to achieving legitimation in terms of norms set up by the ruling class. These norms result in a an exchange of work for legitimation, and so exploit people. This constitutes an 'in and up' theology: Resources are drawn in in order to climb up to a position of legitimation . Both Luther and contextual theologies respond by reversing this pattern, decoupling legitimation from the norms of the ruling class and the work of people. They constitute 'down and out' theologies: God, the legitimator, is down with people, and because legitimation is given freely to people down where they are, energies flow out to serve the common good. Dissimilarities between Luther and Contextual Theologies are found in the locus of legitimation (individual vs . social), the role of faith, and the negative heuristic (dialectic of the cross vs. transformation of the system). It is argued that the difference in negative heuristic is mainly responsible for the perennial nature and conservatism of Lutheran Theology versus the rapid demise of South African contextual theology. The results of the investigation show that the conceptual structure of Lakatos' epistemology, coupled with an analysis of the flow of legitimation and orientation, is useful in structuring and evaluating theological systems on the questions where does legitimation come from, where to does the theology orientate, and how are orientation and legitimation linked. These questions may be seen as a new way of formulating the lawl gospel distinction of classical Lutheran theology.


This study investigates the role firm characteristics plays in explaining gender wage inequality. Prior research has mainly explored two strands to explain inequality in the labour market. The first, carried out primarily by sociologists and feminists, attempts to explain gender discrimination by showing that females are segregated into lower paying occupations while higher paying occupations are being dominated by males. This strand usually does not consider the workers' endowment. The second strand, mainly by econo-mists, measures discrimination based on wage differentials after accounting for workers endowment. Recent evidence worldwide shows that females are outstripping males in the pursuit of higher education, suggesting that females find greater opportunities in high paying occupations. Hence, it becomes important to relook segregation using more current data. While studies have shown that firm characteristics do play a significant role in determining workers' wages, researchers generally disregard these variables in their analysis thereby resulting in a lack of studies that attempt to show how individual firm-related characteristics can affect wage inequality. Besides relooking at the distribution of occupations, this study also looks at the impact of the firm-related characteristics on gender wage inequality, and attempts to asses if studies that do not include firm-related variables in the analysis possibly suffer from bias as a result of this exclusion.
The research framework blends the relevant literatures to create an empirically testable methodology for investigating the roles played by occupational segregation, worker endowment and various firm characteristic in explaining gender wage inequality. The analysis is conducted on a large primary employer-employee linked dataset from Malaysia.
iii
The results, firstly, indicate that females in the dataset have a superior occupational distri-bution in Malaysia which is reflective of their superior educational attainment. Secondly, the inclusion of firm characteristics in the Mincerian earnings equation provided a different set of coefficients for the human capital variables as compared to when only the latter were used as the explanatory variables. With the inclusion of the firm-related variables, the coefficients of the human capital variables became significantly smaller. This suggests that the widely used form of Mincer's equation is incorrectly specified for it over-estimates the coefficients to compensate for missing variables.
The study finds that gender composition at a workplace affects female and male workers' wages differently. It also finds that while the larger firms generally offer higher wages, the gender wage differentials are also larger. The greatest differentials are among firms with foreign equity. Also, more than half of the employees in the firms with foreign sharehold-ing are female. While it may be argued that the results suggest that large firms and FDI recipient firms may be more discriminatory against females, a significant portion of these differentials can be explained by analysing the firm and industry specific human capital of workers. Larger firms and FDI recipient firms have higher capital-labour ratios, and as such demand more skilled workers. Female workers should develop and upgrade their firm or industry specific skills to reduce wage differentials.


Since Meese and Rogoff (1983) results showed that no model could outperform a random walk in predicting exchange rates. Many papers have tried to find a forecasting methodology that could beat the random walk, at least for certain forecasting periods. This Element compares the Purchasing Power Parity, the Uncovered Interest Rate, the Sticky Price, the Bayesian Model Averaging, and the Bayesian Vector Autoregression models to the random walk benchmark in forecasting exchange rates between most South American currencies and the US Dollar, and between the Paraguayan Guarani and the Brazilian Real and the Argentinian Peso. Forecasts are evaluated under the criteria of Root Mean Square Error, Direction of Change, and the Diebold-Mariano statistic. The results indicate that the two Bayesian models have greater forecasting power and that there is little evidence in favor of using the other three fundamentals models, except Purchasing Power Parity at longer forecasting horizons.


Knowledge Management (KM) and Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) have attracted attention over the past two decades and are meanwhile considered as important means to increase individual and organizational performance. There is, however, a wide agreement that traditional KM and TEL models have failed to cope with the fast-paced change and critical challenges of the new knowledge era. In this paper, we propose a vision for future KM/TEL approaches which aims to fulfill the needs of the new knowledge landscape by introducing the Learning as a Network (LaaN) theory as a new learning theory characterized by the convergence of KM and TEL within a learner-centric knowledge environment. We further discuss a possible implementation of the LaaN theory based on the personal learning environment (PLE) concept.


Alec John Jeffreys created a process called DNA fingerprinting in the UK during the twentieth century. For DNA fingerprinting, technicians identify a person as the source of a biological sample by comparing the genetic information contained in the person's DNA to the DNA contained in the sample. Jeffreys developed the technique in the 1980s while at the University of Leicester in Leicester, UK. Jeffreys ́s technique had immediate applications. In forensic science, DNA fingerprinting enabled police to identify suspects of crimes based on their genetic identities. Previous biologic techniques enabled only the exclusion of possible suspects, not the identification of individuals. Jeffreys's technique also enabled technicians to identify the father of a child in paternity testing.


Mine fire is one of the important aspect for the loss of production in coal mines. Once the coal catches fire, then it is challenging to defeat it. Spontaneous heating of coal causes due to auto-oxidation, when coal interacts with oxygen existing in the environment, then auto-oxidation process takes place. The interaction of coal and oxygen liberates heat, and the continuous accumulation of heat accelerate the rate of oxidation. If heat releases throughout the oxidation process are more than the heat dissipated, it causes to increase in the temperature. When the temperature of coal reaches up to the ignition point, then it catches fire it known as spontaneous heating. Spontaneous heating depends on the quality of coal. It is crucial to investigate their degree of proneness to the spontaneous heating; if we are able to find out, the nit helps the mine management to take action towards the mine fire to avoid loss of lives and property, coal reserves, environmental pollution and financial elements of mine.This M.Tech.work deals with designing of the prediction models using the various soft computing techniques. In my project, data collected from the previous researcher's work, it includes the data of South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL), Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL),Western Coalfields Limited (WCL),Eastern coalfield limited(ECL), North Eastern Coalfields (NEC), Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL), Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO), Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) and Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited (TISCO).Fifty-eight coal sample data have been used, which includes proximate analysis, ultimate analysis and susceptibility indices, i.e., crossing point temperature and wet oxidation potential difference of samples. This work deals with designing various soft computing models for prediction of spontaneous heating susceptibility indices of coal samples. To decide the input parameter for the various model statistical regression analysis carried out between the intrinsic parameters and the susceptibility indices and the parameters which shows a significant statistical result was taken as attributes for the models Further different soft computing techniques such as ANN Multilayer Perceptron Network (MLP),Fuzzy logic, Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS),support vector regression(SVR)and hybrid soft computing technique, i.e., an adaptive neuro-fuzzy interface system (ANFIS) applied for the prediction of susceptibility indices to assess the spontaneous heating of coal.Input parameters for the proposed models selected by regression analysis. After the successful completion of all the proposed models, comparative studies were made between the models iv based on the coefficient of regression and root mean square error. From the various designed models, it was observed that wet oxidation provided a better result with ANFIS model than MLP, SVR, MARS and Fuzzy logic


Stereo video inpainting aims to fill the missing regions on the left and right views of the stereo video with plausible content simultaneously. Compared with the single video inpainting that has achieved promising results using deep convolutional neural networks, inpainting the missing regions of stereo video has not been thoroughly explored. In essence, apart from the spatial and temporal consistency that single video inpainting needs to achieve, another key challenge for stereo video inpainting is to maintain the stereo consistency between left and right views and hence alleviate the 3D fatigue for viewers. In this paper, we propose a novel deep stereo video inpainting network named SVINet, which is the first attempt for stereo video inpainting task utilizing deep convolutional neural networks. SVINet first utilizes a self-supervised flow-guided deformable temporal alignment module to align the features on the left and right view branches, respectively. Then, the aligned features are fed into a shared adaptive feature aggregation module to generate missing contents of their respective branches. Finally, the parallax attention module (PAM) that uses the cross-view information to consider the significant stereo correlation is introduced to fuse the completed features of left and right views. Furthermore, we develop a stereo consistency loss to regularize the trained parameters, so that our model is able to yield high-quality stereo video inpainting results with better stereo consistency. Experimental results demonstrate that our SVINet outperforms state-of-the-art single video inpainting models.


The High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) program seeks a tenfold productivity improvement. Software Engineering has addressed this goal in other domains and identified many important principles that, when aligned with hardware and computer science technologies, do make dramatic improvements in productivity. Do these principles work for the HPC domain?This case study collects data on the potential benefits of perfective maintenance in which human productivity (programmability, readability, verifiability, maintainability) is paramount. An HPC professional rewrote four FORTRAN77/MPI benchmarks in Fortran 90, removing optimizations (many improving distributed memory performance) and emphasizing clarity.The code shrank by 5-10x and is significantly easier to read and relate to specifications. Run time performance slowed by about 2x. More studies are needed to confirm that the resulting code is easy to maintain and that the lost performance can be recovered with compiler optimization technologies, run time management techniques and scalable shared memory hardware.


A number of emerging Internet applications, such as video-conferencing and live multimedia broadcasts, must rely on scheduling algorithms in switches and routers to guarantee performance and an acceptable level of quality of service. Fairness in packet schedulers is an intuitively desirable property with practical value; fair schedulers are a critical component of QoS mechanisms that seek to guarantee end-to-end delay bounds. Popular measures of the fairness achieved by packet schedulers are based on bounds, such as the relative fairness bound which captures the maximum possible difference between the normalized service received by any two flows. We argue that such measures do not capture the actual fairness achieved at most instants of time, and therefore, do not represent a true measure of the ability of a scheduler to successfully deliver end-to-end quality for real-time applications. We borrow from the field of economics and propose a new measure of fairness based on the Gini index. This measure captures the instantaneous fairness of a scheduler and, unlike other measures based on bounds, also captures the fairness of the scheduler in its handling of flows during idle periods. Using real traces of gateway and video traffic, we present a simulation-based evaluation of several well-known schedulers based on the Gini index. We also present a qualitative analysis of the phenomena underlying the observed results.


Abstract The integration and normalization of multiple CALL systems with more traditional face-to-face learning, or blended learning, is an emerging trend of research. Evaluators are urged to investigate the processes involved in normalization of language learning tools in the classroom. Grounded in blended learning evaluation, this paper adopts an argument-based approach to interrogate the single claim: blended vocabulary learning systems can be normalized in English as a foreign language (EFL) programs. Using needs analysis, survey data, and document analysis, the authors examine what factors contribute to implementation and normalization of a blended language vocabulary program in a private Japanese university EFL program. Results reveal that transparency, constructive alignment, and coordinator's and teacher's knowledge, skills, and attitudes are important factors. Finally, it is argued that the normalization of blended learning programs seems to be predicated upon careful alignment with well-defined learning objectives, and on the availability of transparent analytics from online systems for the learner, teacher, and coordinator to ensure the diffusion of alignment from the meso to the micro level of the program.


The need to have a more secured ways of protecting sensitive images in this modern age of technology has become necessary
for ensuring that such images sent via the insecure public network called the Internet are protected from attacks. To this end, various
image encryption algorithms have been proposed by many researchers and RSA image encryption algorithm is one of them. Studies on
RSA image encryption algorithm reveal that some images when encrypted using the algorithm, gives encrypted images that do expose
some features of the plain images on visual inspection no matter the size of primes used. This is due to the fact that digital images have
high redundancy and high correlation of image data that make RSA algorithm image dependent. Cryptanalysis has been a major source
of concern (in particular the brute-force attack) when designing a cryptosystem since it is assumed that the cryptanalyst knows exactly
the design and working of the cryptosystem under study except the secret key. Thus, making the secret key access much more difficult to
the cryptanalyst makes the encryption algorithm a more reliable one. In view of these, an improved RSA image encryption algorithm
using 1-D logistic map was proposed. The proposed scheme has two stages. In the first stage, the plain-image is shuffled using the chaotic
properties of the map and in the second stage; the shuffled image is encryption using the RSA algorithm. The proposed algorithm and
the RSA algorithm were tested on two standard test gray scale images: cameraman.tif and clock.tif using four different set of keys. Security
analysis such as histogram analysis and correlation coefficient analysis were also carried out on the results obtained from the two
methods. The results of the analysis show that the proposed scheme is more secured and stronger against the brute-force attack ( encrypted
image which does not reveals any hint about the plain image to the attacker and also its key space has double: the two primes,
initial condition and control parameter) than the RSA image encryption scheme.


Is Metrical Foot a Phonetic Object? The assumption behind this pilot study is that metrical feet are not 'groups of syllables' or 'interstress intervals' but rather 'groups of vowels' extracted from the phonetic material contained between two stresses. We analysed the duration, pitch, intensity and acoustic energy of all vowels in isolated pronunciations of 72 initially stressed items (mono-, di- and trisyllables). The results reveal that pre-fortis clipping of the stressed vowel and final lengthening are interrelated, which suggests that stressed and unstressed final vowels are able to 'negotiate' their durations. Such 'communication' between the stressed vowels and the final unstressed ones is possible only if a mediating constituent (the foot) is postulated. Most importantly, we found no significant differences (p < .05) between the total acoustic energy and the total vowel duration in words having a different number of syllables, which supports the assumption of foot-level isochrony in English. It was also observed that the significant increase in vowel duration in stressed CVC monosyllables co-occurs with a significantly greater pitch slope, which we interpret to be a tonally driven implementation of minimal foot binarity requirement.


Mealworm is the larva stage of Tenebrio molitor L. beetle which is used for pet feed. The aim of this research was to analyze the effect of feeding medias to support the growth of mealworm. The compared feeding media were 100% dry tofu by product as a control, 100% rice bran, 100% rice husk, 50% dry tofu by product + 50% rice bran, 50% dry tofu by product + 50% rice husk and 50% rice husk + 50% rice bran. Randomized Complete Design was used as the experimental design with 6 treatments with 3 replications for each treatment. The result showed that body weight and body length were not significantly different (P>0.05) among media, but mortality and pupation were significantly different (P<0.05). The feeding media with 50% dry tofu by product + 50% rice bran are better to use because it can increase feed consumption, percentage of pupation, and reduce mortality.


The politics of gender and feminist research have outlined the deprivations and unequal entitlements in the lives of women. This frame has also produced the view that understanding womens lives is incomplete without looking at their everyday locations within families that must include relations with men. This research has tried to bring into focus the way that mens support can be outlined and reflected upon in the context of gender equality and domestic democracy. Supportive practices are more than an alternative frame within which to place men. They enable us to hear an aspect of mens lives and expressions of their subjective positions in ways that have not so far been addressed. (authors)


INTRODUCTION
There is an increasing reliance on informal caregivers to continue the care of patients after discharge. This is a huge responsibility for caregivers and some may feel unprepared for the role. Without adequate support and understanding regarding their needs, patient care may be impeded. This study aimed to identify needs valued by caregivers and if there was agreement between acute care nurses and caregivers in the perception of whether caregiver needs were being met.

METHODS
We conducted face-to-face interviews with 100 pairs of acute care nurses and caregivers. Participants were recruited from inpatient wards through convenience sampling. Questionnaires included demographic data of nurses and caregivers, patients' activities of daily living, and perception of caregiver needs being met in six domains of care. Independent t-test was used to compare mean values in each domain, and intraclass correlation coefficient was used to compare agreement in perception.

RESULTS
Caregivers valued reassurance the most. Three domains of care needs showed significant differences in perception of caregiver needs being met: reassurance (p = 0.002), honesty and timeliness (p = 0.008), and kindness and genuine care (p = 0.026). There was poor agreement in all six domains of caregiver needs being met between nurses and caregivers.

CONCLUSION
Although caregivers valued reassurance the most, there was poor agreement between acute care nurses and caregivers in the perception of caregiver needs being met. Hence, more attention should be paid to the caregiver's needs. Further studies can examine reasons for unmet caregiver needs and interventions to improve support for them.


The objective of this article is to socialize some findings related to the understanding of the discourses that guide the teaching of entrepreneurship in Higher Education Institutions in Medellin city. It is explored through a qualitative approach and the Critical Discourse Analysis Methodology, its "construction" through the discursive practices with people in charge of the social praxis of the analyzed institutions. It identifies commonalities and differentiators that support the "discourse" (values, ideologies and discursive devices used in each). The information was gathered through semi structured interviews and textual analysis of the structure of institutional newspaper news. It also provided an institutional context in which students understand, memorize and use the entrepreneurship information for their social praxis. In the given discourse, the use of semantic macrostructures is evident, providing cohesion and coherence in each of the analyzed institutions.


The Department of Population Health was formed on July 1, 2019, upon the merger of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and the Department of Health Policy and Management. Our department, with faculty on all three campuses of the Kansas University Medical Center (Kansas City, Wichita and Salina), is focused on improving health and reducing health inequities for all people in Kansas. We think that the health of our communities is best served by integrating our efforts to improve public health with efforts to improve health systems, health policies, and health care delivery. We seek to understand the complex interplay of behavioral health and social determinants of health and identify the way these underlying determinants influence the delivery of health care services. We try to find ways in which health systems and health policies can better respond to the needs of the communities they serve.


Here we show, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) integration strategy of a low-cost paper sensor based flexible electronic system, using anisotropic conductive tape. The whole assembly is housed inside the cap of a prescription drug container to continuously monitor health of pills. These flexible modular decal sensors are connected with a central flexible decal electronic interface. Additionally, this simple easy-to-use DIY based integration strategy gives the flexibility to develop customized versions of the system depending on the requirements of different applications. This add-on system is easy to install or remove allowing easier implementation for practical use to monitor pill health using Internet-of-Things devices.


Report presents the results of an experimental and theoretical study made of the instantaneously sharp and irregular front which is always found to separate turbulent fluid from contiguous "nonturbulent" fluid at a free-stream boundary. This distinct demarcation is known to give an intermittent character to hot-wire signals in the boundary zone. The overall behavior of the front is described statistically in terms of its wrinkle-amplitude growth and its lateral propagation relative to the fluid as functions of downstream coordinate.


Introduction: Hypothyroidism is a common endocrinal disorder in which thyroid gland does not produce enough thyroid hormones. The disease mainly occurs in female and its prevalence rises with age. Hypothyroidism may be the underlying cause of dyslipidemia and alteration of plasma glucose levels as thyroid hormones plays a key role in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism. It also helps in the growth and development of kidney; hence hypothyroidism may alter the uric acid level in serum due to altered secretion of uric acid at renal tubules.
Aims and Objectives: To evaluate if there is any significant correlation between lipid parameters, uric acid, fasting plasma glucose with thyroid parameters in female.
Methodology: We included 35 cases and 35 controls (Aged between 20-45 years) and estimated their serum TSH, FT4 by ELISA method and total cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-c, HDL-c, VLDL-c, uric acid and fasting plasma glucose levels by chemical methods using random access auto-analyzer.
Results: Results showing positive and negative correlation of TSH and FT4 with TC, TG, LDL-C and VLDL-C in cases compared to controls, whereas, HDL-C, UA and FPG didn't show any positive/negative correlation with hypothyroid parameters in either cases or controls.
Conclusion: Hypothyroid status is associated with dyslipidemia. So, earlier biological screening for lipid profile can be done in those patients.


Delegation of signing is a working way common in oce automation work, and is also an important approach to establish trust. Proxy signature is an important cryptographic primitive for delegating the signing powers and it has found many real world applications. The existing proxy signature schemes from factorization assumption are either insecure or inecient. In this paper, we propose a novel, ecient and provably secure proxy signature scheme from factorization. Our construction makes use of a factorization based key-exposure free chameleon hash function in the delegation phase and the proxy signer needs only to nd a collision to a chameleon hash value to generate a valid proxy signature. As a result, our scheme is highly ecient in terms of the computation of a proxy signature. We also provide a formal security proof by classifying the adversaries into three categories. Comparisons demonstrate that the new scheme outperforms the known ones in terms of security, computational eciency and the length of the public key.


This chapter analyses the institutions of EU member state cooperation on issues such as asylum, refugee protection, migration, border controls, police cooperation, and judicial cooperation. Once seen as the prerogative of member states and as defining features of states' identities as sovereign, complex incremental institutional change established new ways of working on internal security issues and reconfigured the strategic setting from which these issues are viewed. The recent history of these developments provides insight into the EU's institutional and organizational development, while also demonstrating how, why, and with what effects these issues have become politicized in EU member states. The politicization of migration and asylum, in particular, complements this chapter's focus on institutional developments by identifying the source of key pressures and strains to which these institutions have been exposed. The most recent COVID-19 pandemic restricting the free movement of people across Europe, the 2020 fire that broke out at the Moria refugee camp at Lesbos, and the European Commission's 'New Pact on Migration and Asylum' of September 2020 raised serious questions about the content and viability of key components of the EU's approach to security and human rights. From being a policy arena that was not even mentioned in the Treaty of Rome or Single European Act (SEA), internal security within an 'area of freedom, security, and justice' (AFSJ) is now a key EU priority. This chapter pinpoints key developments, specifies institutional roles, and explores the relationships over time between changing conceptualizations of security and institutional developments.


Native birds may have been underestimated as pollinators of the New Zealand flora due to their early decline in abundance and diversity on the mainland. This paper reconsiders the relative importance of birds and insects as pollinators to eight native flowering plants, representing a range of pollination syndromes, on two offshore island refuges. Experimental manipulations were made on five of these plant species to assess the relative effectiveness of bird and insect visitors as pollinators. In addition, foraging behaviour and the respective morphologies of flowers and visitors were measured at all eight plants to identify the main pollinators. The experimental measures showed that percentage fruit set was significantly higher in flowers exposed to birds than flowers from which birds were excluded in all manipulated plants. The observational measures revealed that for six of the flowering species (Sophora microphylla, Vitex lucens, Pittosporum crassifolium, Pittosporum umbellatum, Pseudopanax arboreus and Dysoxylum spectabile) the endemic honeyeaters were most likely to meet the conditions necessary for successful pollination. For the remaining two species (Metrosideros excelsa and Geniostoma ligustrifolium) the contribution by honeyeaters and insects to pollination was equivalent. The results suggest that the role of the endemic honeyeaters in pollination of the New Zealand flora, and the subsequent regeneration of native forest ecosystems, should be important considerations in ecosystem management.


Uterine contractions in labor result in a 60% reduction in uteroplacental perfusion, causing transient fetal and placental hypoxia. A healthy term fetus with a normally developed placenta is able to accommodate this transient hypoxia by activation of the peripheral chemoreflex, resulting in a reduction in oxygen consumption and a centralisation of oxygenated blood to critical organs, namely the heart, brain and adrenals. Providing there is adequate time for placental and fetal re-perfusion between contractions, these fetuses will be able to withstand prolonged periods of intermittent hypoxia and avoid severe hypoxic injury. However, there exists a cohort of fetuses where abnormal placental development in the first half of pregnancy results in failure of endovascular invasion of the spiral arteries by the cytotrophoblastic cells and inadequate placental angiogenesis. This produces a high-resistance, low flow circulation predisposing to hypo-perfusion, hypoxia, re-perfusion injury and oxidative stress within the placenta. Furthermore, this renders the placenta susceptible to fluctuations and reduction in uteroplacental perfusion in response to external compression and stimuli (as occurs in labor), further reducing fetal capillary perfusion, placing the fetus at risk of inadequate gas/nutrient exchange. This placental dysfunction predisposes the fetus to intrapartum fetal compromise. In the absence of a rare catastrophic event, intrapartum fetal compromise occurs as a gradual process when there is an inability of the fetal heart to respond to the peripheral chemoreflex to maintain cardiac output. This may arise as a consequence of placental dysfunction reducing pre-labor myocardial glycogen stores necessary for anaerobic metabolism or due to an inadequate placental perfusion between contractions to restore fetal oxygen and nutrient exchange. If the hypoxic insult is severe enough and long enough, profound multi-organ injury and even death may occur. This review provides a detailed synopsis of the events that can result in placental dysfunction, how this may predispose to intrapartum fetal hypoxia and what protective mechanisms are in place to avoid hypoxic injury.


Background Antenatal care (ANC) is a key strategy to improve maternal and infant health. However, survey data from sub-Saharan Africa indicate that women often only initiate ANC after the first trimester and do not achieve the recommended number of ANC visits. Drawing on qualitative data, this article comparatively explores the factors that influence ANC attendance across four sub-Saharan African sites in three countries (Ghana, Kenya and Malawi) with varying levels of ANC attendance. Methods Data were collected as part of a programme of qualitative research investigating the social and cultural context of malaria in pregnancy. A range of methods was employed interviews, focus groups with diverse respondents and observations in local communities and health facilities. Results Across the sites, women attended ANC at least once. However, their descriptions of ANC were often vague. General ideas about pregnancy care – checking the foetus' position or monitoring its progress – motivated women to attend ANC; as did, especially in Kenya, obtaining the ANC card to avoid reprimands from health workers. Women's timing of ANC initiation was influenced by reproductive concerns and pregnancy uncertainties, particularly during the first trimester, and how ANC services responded to this uncertainty; age, parity and the associated implications for pregnancy disclosure; interactions with healthcare workers, particularly messages about timing of ANC; and the cost of ANC, including charges levied for ANC procedures – in spite of policies of free ANC – combined with ideas about the compulsory nature of follow-up appointments. Conclusion In these socially and culturally diverse sites, the findings suggest that 'supply' side factors have an important influence on ANC attendance: the design of ANC and particularly how ANC deals with the needs and concerns of women during the first trimester has implications for timing of initiation.


Thirty-one patients (17 males and 14 females aged 30-74 years, mean age 61 years) with depression were examined 3-6 months after ischemic stroke. Control group included 10 sex- and age-matched healthy subjects. Neurological, psychological and psychometric tests (the Hamilton, Beck, Spilberger, mini mental scales and Quality of Life questionnaire) were conducted. A mean depression level in patients with stroke did not differ from that in the controls and did not depend on lesion size, location, neurological deficit degree. Clinically pronounced, i.e. relatively severe, post-stroke depression was detected in 22% of the patients and its severity was higher in cases of right-hemisphere stroke. Psychosocial factors were found to be the most significant in post-stroke depression. Depression occurred more often in patients, who were single, in women, in preserved intelligence and higher level of personality anxiety. Loss of job as a result of the vascular disaster proved to be not a very important psycho-traumatizing factor in the group studied.


Background: Inattention to the principles of writing prescriptions might give rise to ineffective or hazardous treatment and inflict injuries to the patient. The aim of this study was to evaluate the last-year dental students' skill in writing prescription at the Tabriz Faculty of Dentistry in2016-2017.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all last-year dental students (92 students) at the Tabriz Faculty of Dentistry were asked to write separate prescription for 3 patients. The level of compliance with the principles of writing prescriptions was evaluated based on the WHO checklist, which consists of the following items: patient's name, gender and age; date of prescription; Rx symbol; the form and name of the drug; the dose of the medication; the number of the drugs to be filled; administration interval; the strength of the drug; route of administration;the signature and seal of the physician; and the refill order. Each correct item was given a positive score and each incorrect item received no score (score range: 0-45).
Results: 10.9%, 43.5% and 45.6% of the students exhibited high, moderate and low skill.The mean score was 27.75 (SD 8.75) of a total possible score of 45. There were no significant differences between male and female students (P = 0.7, CI = -4.5 to 3.2, effect size = -0.035).
Conclusion: Overall, final-year dental students' skill in writing prescriptions was at a moderate level and no student fully observed all the principles for the correct method of writing prescriptions.


Aim: This work aims to explore the biological role of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) in the treatment of diabetic ulcer. Materials & methods: Full-thickness skin defects were created in diabetic (db/db) and non diabetic (db/m) mice to create wound models. The mice were received NPWT or rapamycin injection. Mouse macrophage cells (Raw264.7) were treated with lipopolysaccharide to induce inflammatory response, and then received negative pressure treatment. We observed the wound healing of mice and examined gene and protein expression and CD68+ macrophage levels. Results: NPWT notably enhanced the wound closure ratio, and inhibited the LC3-II/LC3-I ratio and Beclin-1 expression in diabetes mellitus (DM) mice. NPWT decreased CD68+ macrophage levels in wound tissues of DM mice. The influence conferred by NPWT was abolished by rapamycin treatment. Negative pressure repressed the LC3-II/LC3-I ratio and the expression of Beclin-1, TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β in the Raw264.7 cells. Conclusion: NPWT promotes wound healing by suppressing autophagy and macrophage inflammation in DM.


Conceiving of stock options as providing CEOs with cues for the possibility of both greater prospective wealth and losses to current wealth, we revisit predictions of the behavioral effects of equity-based pay using the behavioral agency model (BAM). We refine the BAM's original formulation and provide an explanation for previous conflicting empirical results by theorizing that the anticipation of prospective wealth attenuates the negative effect of accumulated current equity wealth upon CEO strategic risk taking. In doing so, we offer an advancement of the dialectic between: (1) classical agency scholars, arguing that equity-based pay leads to more risk taking, and (2) behavioral scholars, arguing that equity wealth creates risk bearing, leading to less risk taking. We also suggest that the influences of prospective wealth and current wealth on strategic risk taking depend on the extent to which agents can manage the risk inherent in their compensation package and agent vulnerability to losses. Formal hypotheses to test these expectations are made by focusing on equity-based compensation. Our findings offer strong support for these theoretical expectations.


A PHASE III STUDY OF CETRORELIX PAMOATE INTERMITTENT IM DOSAGE REGIMENS IN PATIENTS WITH SYMPTOMATIC BPH: A 1-YEAR PLACEBO-CONTROLLED EFFICACY STUDY AND LONG-TERM SAFETY ASSESSMENT Trial ID: D-20762-Z033 Coordination: CMX Research Trial design: To develop a safe and tolerable intermittent dosage regimen of cetrorelix pamoate, that provides prolonged improvement in BPH-related signs and symptoms. Patient population: Benign prostatic hyperplasia, voiding symptoms: IPSS ≥ 13. Sample size & endpoint: n = 594, primary endpoint: absolute change in IPSS between baseline (week -1) and week 52. Primary safety endpoint: incidence of treatment-emergent AEs.


BACKGROUND   Herpes simplex virus infection is common with an estimated global prevalence of over 90%. Of those harbouring the dormant virus, around one third suffer from recurrent episodic reactivation on the vermillion border of the lip, leading to herpes simplex la- bialis (HSL), or a 'cold sore'. The painful lesions associated with HSL are treated with a range of therapeutic approaches globally, from pharmaceuticals to complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), many of which have a limited or absent evidence base for efficacy and safety. Honey is one such CAM product with growing evidence for efficacy in wound healing, often applied topically for various dermatological ailments and of interest in the management of HSL.   Obtaining robust evidence of the efficacy and safety of novel therapies for HSL is a complex and costly undertaking, traditionally requiring large randomised controlled trials (RCT), and as such has been limited to pharmaceutical funded drug development programmes. Given the paucity of high-quality evidence for many CAM therapies there is a clear need for a novel research methodology to overcome the existing barriers and ensure the timely recruitment of participants with an acute episode of HSL and the collection of valid, standardised outcome data at a modest cost.   RESEARCH AIMS   The primary aim was to investigate the effectiveness, safety and tolerability of a kānuka honey/glycerin cream compared to 5% aciclovir cream in the treatment of HSL. The secondary aim was to establish whether it was feasible to conduct an adequately powered, interventional RCT which includes electronic capture and transmission of data within a New Zealand wide network of community pharmacies, the Pharmacy Research Network (PRN).   METHODS   A phase III, open label, RCT of adults aged 16 and over presenting to a community pharmacy with an acute episode of HSL was conducted between September 2015 and December 2017. Participants were recruited within 72 hours of the onset of symptoms, and randomly allocated to either the kānuka honey/glycerin formulation or 5% aciclovir cream, to be applied five times daily until skin returned to normal or study day 14, whichever occurred first. All outcome data were collected remotely using a customised digital system. The primary outcome was time taken for skin to return to nor- mal at the site of the HSL lesion, analysed by Kaplan-Meier estimates with 95% Confidence Internal (CI). The PRN was established for the purpose of undertaking this trial.   FINDINGS   952 participants with HSL presenting to one of the 76 pharmacies within the PRN were randomised. For the primary outcome variable of time for skin to return to normal, there was no significant difference between kānuka honey/glycerin and 5% aciclovir cream, 9 (95% CI 8 to 9) vs 8 (95% CI 8 to 9) days respectively, Hazard Ratio (HR) (95% CI) 1.06 (0.92 to 1.22) P=0.56. There was no difference between treatments for all secondary outcomes, including healing time to ulceration, healing time from ulceration to resolution, time to resolution of pain, maximal pain, acceptability and adverse events.  The PRN was shown to be a robust clinical research infrastructure, able to fully recruit a large-scale randomised trial at fractional cost of traditional models with acceptable recruitment, attrition and deviation rates.   CONCLUSION   In one of the largest RCTs of a therapy in HSL, there was no evidence of superior effectiveness for either kānuka honey/glycerin or 5% aciclovir cream. This unique, real- world PRN using electronic capture and transmission of data provides a model for future research of CAM in the community setting.


This article argues that the African National Congress's (ANC) Geneva Conventions declaration and Code of Conduct were important precursors to the ANC's constitutional proposals and that they demonstrated an emerging, yet tentative, shift within the ANC toward thinking about rights in terms of human rights. The article situates the ANC's Geneva Conventions declaration and Code of Conduct against the background of internal debates about what constituted a just war and what foundation its days in exile should set for a postapartheid South Africa and the nature of the law that would shape the country. It considers these two moments in light of the organization's efforts to earn support internationally, protect its soldiers from the death penalty, and restrain its armed struggle. The article also addresses the discordances in these actions, namely, the human rights abuses of suspected informants perpetrated by some ANC members. Language: en


Is chronic illness in patients with Lyme disease caused by persistent infection? Three decades of basic and clinical research have yet to produce a definitive answer to this question. This review describes known and suspected mechanisms by which spirochetes of the Borrelia genus evade host immune defenses and survive antibiotic challenge. Accumulating evidence indicates that Lyme disease spirochetes are adapted to persist in immune competent hosts, and that they are able to remain infective despite aggressive antibiotic challenge. Advancing understanding of the survival mechanisms of the Lyme disease spirochete carry noteworthy implications for ongoing research and clinical practice.


Examining the use of new media in works by Ruben Komangapik, Kent Monkman and the Wikiup Indigenous Knowledge Network reveals the diverse ways in which technologies are used to disrupt linear time and Western visions of history. New media works challenge those misleading stories that have been told about Canada's indigenous peoples and assert indigenous presence in both the digital and physical landscape. These artists employ QR codes, video and augmented reality to push artistic boundaries and create representations of the past and present.


The ability to distinguish transgenic cells of untransformed cell mass is a key step for the production of transgenic plants. Thus, the use of selection marker genes for identification of genetically modified plants is necessary. The aim of this study was to determine the optimal concentration of four selective agents (kanamycin, hygromycin, phosphinothricin and mannose) to inhibit in vitro growth of Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu calli. Embryogenic calli were obtained from mature seeds inoculated in MS medium supplemented with 30 g/L sucrose, 3 mg/L 2,4 dichlorophenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D) and 300 mg/L hydrolysate casein and their growth rate was monitored for 74 days by measuring calli fresh weight. It was demonstrated that U. brizantha calli are more sensitive to low concentrations of hygromycin than kanamycin (25 and 50 mg/L, respectively). For the herbicide phosphinothricin, 5 mg/L was enough to prevent the calli growth, but allowed escape. Mannose should be used as the only carbon source on the plant tissue culture medium. All selective agents tested here, in the appropriate concentration, could be used in experiments aiming to produce transgenic signal grass. However, mannose selection might reduce environmental concerns about gene flow and development of herbicide resistance in escaped Urochloa populations. Keywords: Signal grass, transformation, marker genes, selection


Proper care and handling of electrosurgical equipment are essential to patient and personnel safety.  Burns that destroy layers of the patient's skin often linked to a medical mistake are largely preventable. This paper is dealing with the design of surgical electrodes as one of the extremely important factors for the formation of burns during standard procedures. Simulations have been performed by using the COMSOL simulation package for various electrode configurations (cylinder-cylinder, sphere-sphere, cylinder-sphere, cylinder-cone, sphere-cone, and cone-cone)  representing shapes of surgical electrodes. The primary goal was to determine the location and the voltage required for sparking . The obtained s imulation results agree well with the experimental data taken from literature revealing that the sparking formation is strongly affected by the electrode configuration. Sparking occurs most easily when both electrodes are cylindrical and the most difficult when one electrode is a cone. It was also found that the sparking mechanism is not the same in both directions between the active electrode and passive metal plate due to electrical asymmetries.  Electrical asymmetries may lead to differences in breakdown voltage even to 40%.  Since the asymmetry is the cause of undesirable direct current burns and neuromuscular electrostimulation, and the conformity process does not take into account the sparking phenomena, the certification process for this class of equipment must change. Results presented here can be used t o establish practices for the safe use of the electrocautery device and to prevent injury to patients and staff.


Estimation of value at risk in the case of emerging market bonds is not straightforward for several reasons. This study addresses estimation of VaR statistics for Brady bond portfolios using several versions of the GARCH(1, 1) framework, which explicitly models time-varying volatility. In a hybrid approach univariate ARCH models are used jointly with rolling correlation matrices. Variance-covariance and GARCH methodologies all produce reasonably accurate one-day VaR estimates. A GARCH(1, 1) model with stochastic shocks yields the most accurate VaR measures regardless of horizon, but variance-covariance, and two other GARCH variant models appear to underestimate portfolio risk, especially over longer horizons.


Photometric variability attributed to cloud phenomena is common in L/T transition brown dwarfs. Recent studies show that such variability may also trace aurorae, suggesting that localized magnetic heating may contribute to observed brown dwarf photometric variability. We assess this potential correlation with a survey of 17 photometrically variable brown dwarfs using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array at 4–8 GHz. We detect quiescent and highly circularly polarized flaring emission from one source, 2MASS J17502484-0016151, which we attribute to auroral electron cyclotron maser emission. The detected auroral emission extends throughout the frequency band at ∼5–25σ, and we do not detect evidence of a cutoff. Our detection confirms that 2MASS J17502484-0016151 hosts a magnetic field strength of ≥2.9 kG, similar to those of other radio-bright ultracool dwarfs. We show that Hα emission continues to be an accurate tracer of auroral activity in brown dwarfs. Supplementing our study with data from the literature, we calculate the occurrence rates of quiescent emission in L dwarfs with low- and high-amplitude variability and conclude that high-amplitude optical and infrared variability does not trace radio magnetic activity in L dwarfs.


Degenerate parametric amplifiers (DPAs) exhibit the unique property of phase-sensitive gain and can be used to noiselessly amplify small signals or squeeze field fluctuations beneath the vacuum level. In the microwave domain, these amplifiers have been utilized to measure qubits in elementary quantum processors, search for dark matter, facilitate high-sensitivity spin resonance spectroscopy and have even been proposed as the building blocks for a measurement based quantum computer. Until now, microwave DPAs have almost exclusively been made from nonlinear Josephson junctions, which exhibit high-order nonlinearities that limit their dynamic range and squeezing potential. In this work we investigate a new microwave DPA that exploits a nonlinearity engineered from kinetic inductance. The device has a simple design and displays a dynamic range that is four orders of magnitude greater than state-of-the-art Josephson DPAs. We measure phase sensitive gains up to 50 dB and demonstrate a near-quantum-limited noise performance. Additionally, we show that the higher-order nonlinearities that limit other microwave DPAs are almost non-existent for this amplifier, which allows us to demonstrate its exceptional squeezing potential by measuring the deamplification of coherent states by as much as 26 dB.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Abstract Background: Cellular energetics play an important role in Parkinsons disease etiology, but no treatments directly address this deficiency. Our past research showed that treatment with febuxostat and inosine increased blood hypoxanthine and ATP in healthy adults, and a preliminary trial in 3 Parkinson's disease patients suggested some symptomatic improvements with no adverse effects. Methods: To examine the efficacy on symptoms and safety in a larger group of Parkinsons disease patients, we conducted a single-arm, open-label trial at 5 Japanese neurology clinics and enrolled thirty patients (nmales = 11; nfemales = 19); 26 patients completed the study (nmales = 10; nfemales = 16). Each patient was administered febuxostat 20 mg and inosine 500 mg twice-per-day (after breakfast and dinner) for 8 weeks. The primary endpoint was the difference of MDS-UPDRS Part III score immediately before and after 57 days of treatment. Results: Serum hypoxanthine concentrations were raised significantly after treatment (Pre = 11.4 μM; Post = 38.1 μM; P < .0001). MDS-UPDRS Part III score was significantly lower after treatment (Pre = 28.1 ± 9.3; Post = 24.7 ± 10.8; mean ± SD; P = .0146). Sixteen adverse events occurred in 13/29 (44.8%) patients, including 1 serious adverse event (fracture of the second lumbar vertebra) that was considered not related to the treatment. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that co-administration of febuxostat and inosine is relatively safe and effective for improving symptoms of Parkinsons disease patients. Further controlled trials need to be performed to confirm the symptomatic improvement and to examine the disease-modifying effect in long-term trials.


Pseudotumor cerebri is a syndrome characterized by increased intracranial pressure (ICP) in the absence of mass or other causes. The most common presenting symptom is headache. Dizziness, nausea and vomiting, double vision and other visual symptoms are other common manifestations. Co-existence of the Chiari malformation and pseudotumor cerebri is reported especially after lumboperitoneal shunting procedures. Here, we report a Chiari malformation that developed secondary to recurrent lumbar punctures in an 11-month-old boy diagnosed with pseudotumor cerebri.


Coopetition, the simultaneous pursuit of cooperation and competition, is a growing force in the innovation landscape. For some organizations, the primary mode of innovation continues to be deeply secretive and highly competitive, but for others, a new style of shared challenges, shared purpose, and shared development has become a superior, more efficient way of working to accelerate innovation capabilities and capacity. Over the last 2 decades, the literature base devoted to coopetition has gradually expanded. However, the field is still in its infancy. The majority of coopetition research is qualitative, primarily consisting of case studies. Few studies have addressed the nonprofit sector or service industries such as health care. The authors believe that this article may offer a unique perspective on coopetition in the context of a US-based national health care learning alliance designed to accelerate innovation, the Innovation Learning Network or ILN. The mission of the ILN is to "Share the joy and pain of innovation," accelerating innovation by sharing solutions, teaching techniques, and cultivating friendships. These 3 pillars (sharing, teaching, and cultivating) form the foundation for coopetition within the ILN. Through the lens of coopetition, we examine the experience of the ILN over the last 10 years and provide case examples that illustrate the benefits and challenges of coopetition in accelerating innovation in health care.


Typically, applications are run with available system resources leading to over-provisioning of resources which can lead to high energy consumption. If the computational demand is specified, in terms of a Quality of Service (QoS) contract, it is possible to devote just enough resources to applications and thereby reduce energy consumption. Modern heterogeneous multicore platforms, such as ARM big.LITTLE, typically provide a multidimensional space of resources, called configuration space, such as Voltage-Frequency (V-F) settings, thread count and processor types, which can be configured at run-time to open up new opportunities for resource management. This thesis presents techniques to improve energy efficiency under the constraint of QoS by managing the resource allocation at run-time for applications run on heterogeneous multicore platforms. The applications considered are iterative with a computational deadline associated with each loop iteration. The proposed techniques apply to a framework that uses applications' outer loop iterations as a means for progress-tracking and prediction of the execution time. A first contribution of the thesis is a resource management technique for single-threaded applications that uses core type (e.g. big or little cores) and V-F settings as a configuration space to select a configuration, for each iteration, based on the execution-time prediction of future iterations and computational deadlines. The thesis shows that an energy saving of 25% over the race-to-idle state-of-the-art technique is achieved without missing any deadlines. This scheme incurs only 0.6% and 0.8% of timing and energy overheads, respectively. A second contribution of the thesis is a novel resource-management policy for multi-threaded applications. Here, the configuration space is extended to also consider the thread count, i.e., the number of cores assigned to multi-threaded applications. The proposed technique first chooses the most energy-efficient configuration that meets the computational deadline. Since an iteration typically finishes before the deadline, the proposed technique collects the generated execution-time slack over subsequent iterations with the goal of selecting a configuration that can save more energy. To allow for on-line exploration of the configuration space, at low overhead, a third contribution of the thesis is an online, low-overhead prediction method based on interpolation, that measures the execution statistics at end points of each configuration-space dimension and interpolates the values at intermediate configurations. Overall, the proposed technique saves 61% energy compared to the state-of-the-art race-to-idle technique without missing any deadlines. Further, it only incurs 0.6% and 0.7% of timing and energy overheads, respectively.


The purpose of this study is to construct the latent structure models of physicians' opinions on National Health Insurance (NHI). The data for the analysis came from a mail survey of 1619 physicians in January of 1990. Five latent structure models were established as follows: Structure 1. Physicians' viewpoint on NHI. Hospital physicians: Steady, 69%; Turn-Over, 26%; Career-change, 5%. Clinic physicians: Steady-with Insurance Contract, 55%; Steady-without Insurance Contract, 41%; Career-Change, 4%. Structure 2. Physicians' expected impact of NHI. Hospital physicians: Pessimistic, 45%; Disadvantaged, 38%; Constant, 17%. Clinic physicians: Pessimistic, 72%; Constant, 12%; Ambitious, 16%. Structure 3. Physicians' expected workload change due to the implement of NHI. Hospital physicians: Decreasing, 30%; No-Change, 18%; Increasing, 52%. Clinic physicians: Decreasing, 30%; Non-Change, 23%; Increasing, 48%. Structure 4. Ideal practice pattern. Hospital physicians: Traditional, 47%; Transitional, 42%; Practice Abandoned, 12%. Clinic physicians: Traditional, 20%; Transitional, 21%; Rural-Orientated 59%. Structure 5. Expected payment methods for physicians. Hospital physicians: Credentiality-Specialty-based, 44%; Specialty-Equal Pay-based, 11%; Equal Pay-Specialty-based, 42%; Equal Pay-Credentiality-based, 4%. Clinic physicians: Credentiality-based, 24%; Mixed, 11%; Equal Service-Equal Pay-based, 60%; Urbanization Level-based, 5%.


One of the major challenges of training Natural Language Understanding (NLU) production models lies in the discrepancy between the distributions of the offline training data and of the online live data, due to, e.g., biased sampling scheme, cyclic seasonality shifts, annotated training data coming from a variety of different sources, and a changing pool of users. Consequently, the model trained by the offline data is biased. We often observe this problem especially in task-oriented conversational systems, where topics of interest and the charac-teristics of users using the system change over time. In this paper we propose an unsupervised approach to mitigate the offline training data sampling bias in multiple NLU tasks. We show that a local distribution approximation in the pre-trained embedding space enables the estimation of importance weights for training samples guiding resampling for an effective bias mitigation. We illustrate our novel approach using multiple NLU datasets and show improvements obtained without additional annotation, making this a general approach for mitigating effects of sampling bias.


IT HAS BECOME COMMONPLACE TO BEMOAN THE PASSING OF THE OLDfashioned good family doctor. There is widespread concern about the lack of attention paid to the art of medicine for, despite the evolution of scientific medicine, the human heart remains the same. Thus, there is a heightened awareness of the need for physicians to address not only the biological but also the psychological, social, and cultural factors that contribute to the development and continuation of disease. Is the growing attention paid to psychosocial issues a worthwhile endeavor, or is it, as some have argued, too much for one physician to undertake in these days of 15-minute office visits? In this issue, David Sobel gives us an answer, describing how attention to the whole patient not only yields better outcomes, but is also cost-effective. Most medical students are well-versed in pathology, but their familiarity with life on the other side of the stethoscope often lags behind their scientific knowledge. Beyond cell counts and viral loads, what does it mean to be the person with the illness? Jane van Dis, whose stark photographs of South Dakota grace the cover of this issue, introduces us to a woman who is living with the human immunodeficiency virus in this remote locale. More than two thirds of US citizens belong to a church or synagogue, and even more incorporate some spiritual practice into their lives. Yet the medical literature has only recently begun to include spiritual practices in its assessment of psychosocial issues. What is a physician's role in this arena? Harold G. Koenig offers some practical suggestions for how physicians might integrate what they know about their patients' religious beliefs into the effective practice of medicine. Managing patients with chronic disease is the single largest source of cost for the health care system, but despite its prevalence chronic disease often receives little attention in the medical classroom. How can tomorrow's physicians learn to share in the partnership that such patients will need? The answer, according to Martha Funnell and Robert Anderson, involves a change of perspective. Their work suggests an example of how addressing the psychosocial issues of patient care makes for better, more effective medicine. Reflecting on his own experience as a patient, essayist Anatole Broyard observed, "Not every patient can be saved, but his illness may be eased by the way the doctor responds to him—and in responding to him, the doctor may save himself." As they continue their training, medical students would be well advised to remember that treating a disease and caring for a patient are not necessarily the same activity.


This guide is a companion to a facultyThe LRC highlights resources to help support writing flag courses in the GC curriculum.


Objectives We investigated if psychosocial status, sociodemographics and smoking status affected non-attendance in the control group in the randomised Danish Lung Cancer Screening Trial (DLCST). Design and setting This study was an observational study nested in the DLCST. Due to large non-attendance in the control group in the second screening round we made an additional effort to collect questionnaire data from non-attenders in this group in the third screening round. We used a condition-specific questionnaire to assess psychosocial status. We analysed the differences in psychosocial status in the third and preceding rounds between non-attenders and attenders in the control group in multivariable linear regression models adjusted for sociodemographics and smoking status reported at baseline. Differences in sociodemographics and smoking status were analysed with χ2 tests (categorical variables) and t-tests (continuous variables). Primary outcome measure Primary outcome was psychosocial status. Participants All control persons participating in the third screening round in the DLCST were included. Results Non-attenders in the third round had significantly worse psychosocial status than attenders in the scales: 'behaviour' 0.77 (99% CI 0.18 to 1.36), 'self-blame' 0.59 (99% CI 0.14 to 1.04), 'focus on airway symptoms' 0.22 (99% CI 0.08 to 0.36), 'stigmatisation' 0.51 (99% CI 0.16 to 0.86), 'introvert' 0.56 (99% CI 0.23 to 0.89) and 'harms of smoking' 0.35 (99% CI 0.11 to 0.59). Moreover, non-attenders had worse scores than attendees in the preceding screening rounds. Non-attenders also reported worse sociodemographics at baseline. Conclusions Non-attenders had a significantly worse psychosocial status and worse sociodemographics compared with attenders. The results of our study contribute with evidence of non-response and attrition driven by psychosocial status, which in turn may be influenced by the screening intervention itself. This can be used to adjust cancer screening trial results for bias due to differential non-attendance. Trial registration number Clinicaltrials.gov Protocol Registration System (NCT00496977).


Normal B lymphopoiesis is dependent on a close relationship between B-cell precursors and the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment. To further understand the mechanisms regulating the proliferation of the malignant counterpart of B-cell precursors, namely precursor-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), we examined the adhesion to BM fibroblasts (BMF) of 19 cases of precursor-B ALL using a chromium labeling assay. Eleven of 19 cases showed greater than 10% binding to BMF (range 2.3% to 54.8%, mean 19.1%). Binding was increased approximately twofold by preincubation of BMF with tumor necrosis factor and interleukin-4, which also resulted in upregulation of expression of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) on BMF. The mechanism of attachment was investigated using murine monoclonal antibodies to leukocyte integrins, principally the beta, integrins VLA-4 and VLA-5, which were demonstrated to be present on most cases by flow cytometry. Statistically significant inhibition of adhesion was observed with antibodies to the beta 1 common subunit, VLA-4, and VLA-5, whereas little effect was seen with antibodies to VLA-6 or the beta 2 integrin subunit. Preincubation of fibroblasts with an antibody to VCAM-1 (a ligand of VLA-4) inhibited leukemic cell binding in the majority of cases, which was an effect also observed on cytokine-stimulated BMF. However, a minority of cases, as well as the pre-B lines NALM-6 and KM-3, showed no evidence of inhibition of adhesion with anti-VCAM-1 antibodies. Treatment of BMF with antifibronectin antibody alone had little effect on ALL adhesion and did not enhance the inhibitory effect of anti-VCAM-1. These data indicate that precursor-B ALL cells bind to BM stroma through the beta 1 integrins VLA-4 and VLA-5 and that this effect is partly mediated by VCAM-1 on stromal cells, although other undefined VLA ligands are also likely to be involved. Attachment of ALL cells to stroma is likely to play a key role in regulating the survival and growth of these cells through exposure to stromal cytokines.


Medical or scientific data are normally stored in relational databases in which data are stored in multiple tables. A data summarization approach to knowledge discovery in structured medical datasets is often limited due to the complexity of the database schema. Since most of these data are stored in multiple tables, designing a suitable data summarization method for each individual table that is associated with the target table is required in order to get the best result in summarizing the overall data stored in a multi-relational environment. A diversified data summarization ensemble method is best applied in the task of learning data stored in multiple tables since ensemble methods improve quality and robustness of the results. This research investigates the feasibility of combining a few types of data summarization methods ( e.g., DARA) in order to learn data stored in relational databases with high cardinality attributes (one-to-many relations between entities). The proposed algorithm is called a diversified data summarization ensemble method. With this new algorithm, one could facilitate the task of data modelling for data stored in a multi-relational setting by improving the predictive accuracy of the data modelling task. This can be achieved by summarizing each table that exists in the database by using a more appropriate data summarization method depending on the type of data stored in each individual table. This research helps the understandi'ng and development of a diversified data summarization ensemble method that is able to summarize relational data. By applying a subset of data summarization methods to summarize different sets of the relational datasets, more interpretable and useful information can be extracted.


We present the design of the extreme scale mote, a new sensor network platform for reliably detecting and classifying, and quickly reporting, rare, random, and ephemeral events in a large-scale, long-lived, and ret askable manner. This new mote was designed for the ExScal project which seeks to demonstrate a 10,000 node network capable of discriminating civilians, soldiers and vehicles, spread out over a 10 km/sup 2/ area, with node lifetimes approaching 1,000 hours of continuous operation on two AA alkaline batteries. This application posed unique functional, usability, scalability, and robustness requirements which could not be met with existing hardware, and therefore motivated the design of a new platform. The detection and classification requirements are met using infrared, magnetic, and acoustic sensors. The infrared and acoustic sensors are designed for low-power continuous operation and include asynchronous processor wakeup circuitry. The usability and scalability requirements are met by minimizing the frequency and cost of human-in-the-loop operations during node deployment, activation, and verification through improvements in the user interface, packaging, and configurability of the platform. Recoverable retasking is addressed by using a grenade timer that periodically forces a system reset. The key contributions of this work are a specific design point and general design methods for building sensor network platforms to detect exceptional events.


Men and women report having significantly different numbers of sexual partners, which is impossible in a large sample. Schmitt's target article is no exception. This focuses discussion on the nature of the samples, their heterogeneity, and the locale they are drawn from. Further, we query how humans determine, for example, sex ratio, in the context of large numbers.


Tardive dyskinesia is an extrapyramidal side effect that can occur after a prolonged use of antipsychotic medication, it appears to be about 0.4% to 4% worldwide. Prior reports suggest that clozapine may be effective in the management of tardive dyskinesia. We present the case of a patient with tardive dyskinesia induced by antipsychotics. After treatment failure with other psychotropic medications, clozapine medication was initiated; we used the "evaluation of tardive dyskinesia" scale to assess severity of tardive dyskinesia. We noticed a significant improvement in tardive dyskinesia from the fifth week of treatment with clozapine at the dose of 250 mg per day with a decrease in the scale score for "evaluation of tardive dyskinesia" from 70 to 22. Clozapine appears to be efficacious in the management of tardive dykinesia. Larger, randomized, blinded, and controlled prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings and to determine optimal dosage.


Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria (HGPS) and Werner syndromes are diseases that clinically resemble some aspects of accelerated aging. HGPS is caused by mutations in theLMNA gene resulting in post-translational processing defects that trigger Progeria in children. Werner syndrome, arising from mutations in the WRN helicase gene, causes premature aging in young adults. What are the molecular mechanism(s) underlying these disorders and what aspects of the diseases resemble physiological human aging? Much of what we know stems from the study of patient derived fibroblasts with both mutations resulting in increased DNA damage, primarily at telomeres. However, in vivo patients with Werner's develop arteriosclerosis, among other pathologies. In HGPS patients, including iPS derived cells from HGPS patients, as well as some mouse models for Progeria, vascular smooth muscle (VSM) appears to be among the most severely affected tissues. Defective Lamin processing, associated with DNA damage, is present in VSM from old individuals, indicating processing defects may be a factor in normal aging. Whether persistent DNA damage, particularly at telomeres, is the root cause for these pathologies remains to be established, since not all progeroid Lmna mutations result in DNA damage and genome instability.


Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has been recently found to act as a potent priming agent. This study explored the hypothesis that hydroponic pretreatment of strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa cv. Camarosa) roots with a H2S donor, sodium hydrosulfide (NaHS; 100 μM for 48h), could induce long-lasting priming effects and tolerance to subsequent exposure to 100mM NaCI or 10% (w/v) PEG-6000 for 7 d. Hydrogen sulfide pretreatment of roots resulted in increased leaf chlorophyll fluorescence, stomatal conductance and leaf relative water content as well as lower lipid peroxidation levels in comparison with plants directly subjected to salt and non-ionic osmotic stress, thus suggesting a systemic mitigating effect of H2S pretreatment to cellular damage derived from abiotic stress factors. In addition, root pretreatment with NaHS resulted in the minimization of oxidative and nitrosative stress in strawberry plants, manifested via lower levels of synthesis of NO and H2O2 in leaves and the maintenance of high ascorbate and glutathione redox states, following subsequent salt and non-ionic osmotic stresses. Quantitative real-time RT-PCR gene expression analysis of key antioxidant (cAPX, CAT, MnSOD, GR), ascorbate and glutathione biosynthesis (GCS, GDH, GS), transcription factor (DREB), and salt overly sensitive (SOS) pathway (SOS2-like, SOS3-like, SOS4) genes suggests that H2S plays a pivotal role in the coordinated regulation of multiple transcriptional pathways. The ameliorative effects of H2S were more pronounced in strawberry plants subjected to both stress conditions immediately after NaHS root pretreatment, rather than in plants subjected to stress conditions 3 d after root pretreatment. Overall, H2S-pretreated plants managed to overcome the deleterious effects of salt and non-ionic osmotic stress by controlling oxidative and nitrosative cellular damage through increased performance of antioxidant mechanisms and the coordinated regulation of the SOS pathway, thus proposing a novel role for H2S in plant priming, and in particular in a fruit crop such as strawberry.


The study explores the accountability implications of the increasingly privatized and marketized models of welfare governance. Privatization of public services radically destabilizes our concepts of accountability. While on the one hand, accountability deficits are created as traditional public accountability systems become less relevant; on the other hand, new market and results-based forms of accountability emerge. In order to examine how accountability is safeguarded under privatized activation, the study provides an in-depth look at private contractors' accountability in the case of activation, in Israel. It finds that results-based accountability mechanisms were perceived as insufficient to legitimize contractors' discretion; sometimes they even intensified accountability concerns. In practice, significant traditional public accountability requirements were extended to the private contractors, creating a hybrid public-private model of accountability. The article discusses the contradictory dynamics leading to the development of this hybrid accountability model and the tensions and instabilities it produces. It closes by stressing the need for more research into activation accountability regimes and their complexity.


China is not only one of the biggest countries, but the second economic giant in the world. For this reason, many countries preparing for a FTA with China, including the EU, express concerns about the domestic industry downfall, in particular, that of the labor-intensive such as agriculture industry. This study empirically assesses the impact of the China-Korea FTA on the industrial competitiveness and labor market of both countries. An econometric analysis was conducted on the impact of the China-Korea FTA, and the Fuzzy-Delphi analysis was performed on a panel of experts in order to complement the quantitative analysis. Further, the Fuzzy Decision-Making method was primarily used in the opinion survey. The method takes into consideration the uncertainties in the judgment of the panel of experts in the Delphi-Survey, which predicts the qualitative effect of the China-Korea FTA. Overall, our results reveal that the China-Korea FTA would have a positive impact on the industrial competitiveness or employment situation of China and Korea. If the Korea-China FTA is concluded, Korea will have the upper hand in the automobile, auto parts, and textile and clothing industries in terms of industrial production. However, there exits an underlying possibility that a production increase may not lead to effective job creation as production facilities may relocate to China where there is a relatively lower labor cost. Industries found to be in a weaker position based on the conclusion of the Korea-China FTA were agriculture, forestry, & fishery, mining, wooden furniture and processed foods; such industries were found to unlikely see the creation of jobs. This study also suggests negotiation strategies which can ensure a win-win for both parties. Further, it also discusses various institutional improvements for industries or workers impacted by the trade adjustment, which is required to maximize the effect of the China-Korea FTA. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.24.2.2836


ACTION AND CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY Description: BETASERON® (interferon beta-1 b) is a purified, sterile, fyophilized protein product produced by recombinant DNA techniques and formulated for use by injection. Interferon beta-1 b is manufactured by bacterial fermentation of a strain of Escherichia eo/Zthat bears a genetically engineered plasmid containing the gene for human interferon betaser,;.The native gene was obtained from human fibroblasts and altered in a way that substitutes serine for the cysteine residue found at position 17, Interferon beta-1 b is a flighty purified protein that has 165 amino acids and an approximate molecular weight of 18,500 daltons. It does not include the carbohydrate side chains found in the natural material.


Background: Gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN), despite its widespread metastases, is a very common cancer in women that is curable. Although the GTN cases show a good response to chemotherapy, in an effort to reduce toxic drug exposure, the second curettage has been suggested for some patients. In the current study, we have aimed to compare the benefits of the second curettage in comparison with single-agent chemotherapy for low-risk GTN patients. Methods: This retrospective observational study was carried out on GTN patients admitted to the gynecology department of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ahvaz. The demographic profile of all participants was extracted. Patients' hospitalization records were also extracted from the files. Patients with an endometrial thickness above 10 mm were treated with re-curettage. The β hCG clearance time was estimated by the Kaplan Meier plot. Results: In the present study, 148 patients with low-risk GTN stage 1 were studied. The time required for β-hCG clearance in patients undergoing re-curettage was significantly lower than the chemotherapy receiving group (7 months vs. 10 months, p <0.0001). More than 50% of patients treated by recurettage without needing chemotherapy. Moreover, the other 50% cases needed chemotherapy the number of courses was significantly lower than those received single-agent chemotherapy alone (p <0.0001). The baseline β-hCG levels were significantly lower in those who did not need chemotherapy (p = 0.012). β-hCG resolution occurred more rapidly in patients undergoing re-curettage alone, while, those who received only chemotherapy had a longer duration for β-hCG clearance. Conclusion: In general, the findings of this study showed that re-curettage could be used effectively in the treatment of GTN following molar pregnancy. This treatment reduces or eliminates the need for chemotherapy. Our findings also showed that the initial level of β-hCG could be considered as a predictive factor in response to curettage.


The cell cycle is regulated in part by cyclins and their associated serine/threonine cyclin-dependent kinases, or CDKs. CDK4, in conjunction with the D-type cyclins, mediates progression through the G1 phase when the cell prepares to initiate DNA synthesis. Although CDK4-null mutant mice are viable and cell proliferation is not significantly affected in vitro due to compensatory roles played by other CDKs, this gene plays a key role in mammalian development and cancer. This review discusses the role that CDK4 plays in cell cycle control, normal development, and tumorigenesis as well as how small molecule inhibitors of CDK4 can be used to treat disease.


By increasing the volume of telemedicine information, the need for medical image compression has become more important. In angiographic images, a small ratio of the entire image usually belongs to the vasculature that provides crucial information for diagnosis. Other parts of the image are diagnostically less important and can be compressed with higher compression ratio. However, the quality of those parts affects the overall understanding of the image as well. Existing methods compress foreground and background of angiographic images using different techniques. In this paper, we first utilize a convolutional neural network to segment vessels and then represent a hierarchical block processing algorithm capable of both eliminating the background redundancies and preserving the overall visual quality of angiograms.


The study is focused on the key factor in the structure of any organization – the human capital. The objective is to present the thesis of the author that it is possible to optimize the process of formation of human capital through consolidated administration of certain management and control concepts. The tasks are connected with accumulation of evidence that the concept of the audit of human resources can be and should be developed.


Ras GTPases act as "molecular switches", alternating between inactive GDP-bound and active GTP-bound conformation. Ras-oncogenes were discovered over three decades ago, but there are still no effective therapies for Ras-driven cancers. So far, drug discovery strategies have been unsuccessful, because of a lack of suitable screening methodologies and well-defined binding pockets on the Ras proteins. Here, we addressed the former by introducing a homogeneous quenching resonance energy transfer (QRET) technique-based screening strategy for Ras interfacial and competitive inhibitors. We demonstrate that using a unique GTP-specific antibody fragment to monitor GTPase cycling in the presence of a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) and a GTPase activating protein (GAP) is an efficient method for Ras inhibitor high-throughput screening. When compared to a conventional GEF-stimulated nucleotide exchange assay in a proof-of-concept screen, we identified an overlapping set of potential inhibitor compounds but also compounds found exclusively with the new GTP hydrolysis monitoring-based GTPase cycling assay.


Background: Health is unequally distributed across the Swedish population, even though it has ratified Human rights declarations pointing out The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health for all. The meaning of these declarations is condensed in The Right to Health-concept and specified in the so called AAAQ-framework, which highlights equal Accessibility, Acceptability, Availability and scientific Quality of care as indicators for analyzing a state's fulfillment of such declarations. Methods and findings: The aim of this qualitative interview study was to examine whether patient perspectives on health care encounters would shed new light on the focal points specified in the AAAQ-framework, i.e., complement macro analyses on a state's fulfilment of human rights declarations. Interviews were carried out with 55 patients in a socioeconomically challenged suburb, and analyzed in accordance with established standards for thematic content analysis. Two main themes with six subthemes were identified in this descriptive phase. The patient narratives centered on health care prerequisites for good care, but patients' own responsibility was also brought up. Most noticeable was the importance given to staff's ability to respectfully acknowledge the meaning of individual patient characteristics, and the negative effects on patients' wellbeing of its opposite (authoritarian and impersonal staff attitudes). The results from the descriptive phase were then deductively interpreted in relation to the AAAQ-framework. The interpretative analyses revealed that human rights inspired policies are not enough for the realization of The Right to Health as patients' experiences of different hospitals varied significantly, despite identical policies. In addition, it underlined the importance of all four AAAQ-indicators, i.e. that scientifically appropriate care (Availability and Quality) is vital, yet that the meaning of The Right to Health-concept is not realized unless a health care experience includes emphatic encounters adapted to the individual patient's capacities and disease experience (Accessibility and Acceptability). Conclusion: The analysis of patient perspectives on health care experiences highlighted the significance of respectful and personalized treatment. In addition to providing functioning health care facilities, a vital part of health care quality work is securing empowering care encounters. Even though human rights inspired state regulations and health care policies are imperative, specific strategies to secure their implementation on the health care micro level is needed, e.g. staff training in communication skills as well as follow up mechanisms measuring patient satisfaction and levels of participation.


This paper deals with the damage behavior of glass/epoxy composite laminates subjected to low-velocity impact at various temperatures. For this goal, the impact tests were performed by using an instrumented impact-testing machine at three temperatures: +20°C, -10°C and -40°C. And the resultant damages were inspected through the scanning acoustic microscope (SAM). Also, based on the impact force history and the damage configuration of the laminates, the impact resistance parameters were employed to evaluate damage resistance of glass/epoxy laminates. As results, it was found that the temperature changes affect the damage resistance capacity of glass/epoxy laminates.


The car loan market is rife with consumer abuses: inflated pricing, discriminatory lending, and a variety of deceptions and scams. These abuses all stem from the dealer-centric nature of the auto finance market that ties the vehicle purchase to the vehicle financing.

The overwhelming majority of consumers finance their purchases through the car dealer, but consumers cannot learn dealer financing terms in advance. They learn the offered financing terms only after spending substantial time and energy negotiating a car price, a trade-in price, warranties, insurance, and vehicle add-ons. At this point, because most consumers lack alternative financing options, they face a take-it-or-leave-it choice that leaves them especially vulnerable to dealer abuses.

Not only does the lack of alternative financing options deprive consumers of the protection of competition in auto loans, but competition in the dealer-based lending market also actually works against consumers. Dealers auction off loans to financial institutions based largely on which institution allows the dealer the greatest compensation in the form of a markup on the loan. These ultimate lenders compete for the dealers' business, not the consumers', which results in consumers paying supracompetitive rates because of the dealer markup. The discretionary nature of the markups also enables discriminatory lending, with minorities often charged more for car loans, as well as a number of outright frauds and scams that cannot occur with third-party financing.

This Article proposes to fix these auto lending abuses by requiring a three-business-day waiting period before delivery of the vehicle for con- sumers who do not have a bona fide third-party financing offer, as well as a prominently disclosed, penalty-free prepayment right for the loan during this period, and a system of mandatory data collection on auto loans to enable regulatory oversight. A penalty default waiting period would incentivize consumers to shop for financing separately from the vehicle purchase transaction, which will create positive competitive forces lowering dealers' supracompetitive markups of financing, reduce opportunities for discriminatory lending, and protect consumers from other deceptive practices.