Background: This survey aims to determine medication compliance among hypertension patients and discover factors influencing medication compliance. Methods: This study incorporated a cross-sectional study design. The Hill-Bone Compliance to High Blood Pressure Therapy Scale was used in this study to evaluate medication adherence in hypertensive individuals. Additionally, this scale aids in monitoring sodium intake control and appointment-keeping habits. Results: 69 (77%) of 90 hypertension patients comply with their antihypertensive therapy, whereas 21 (23%) are non-compliant. The average score of patients on the Hill-Bone Compliance to High Blood Pressure Therapy Scale is 20.21 ± 4.21. Subsequently, the medication-taking score is 11.97 ± 3.44, the sodium reduction score is 4.37 ± 1.4, and the appointment-keeping score is 3.88 ± 1.34. Simultaneously, studying the impact of patients' socio-demographic characteristics and medical history on medication adherence. There was a considerable drop in the overall score of patients having more than five children by 5.59 (P-value < .05), thus improving medication adherence. In contrast, the total score of patients with hypertension from 6 to 10 years shot up by 2.4 (P-value < .05), whereas the total score of patients with comorbidities more than 5 have a sharp rise of 3.4 (P-value < .05). Therefore, reducing medication adherence. Conclusion: According to this survey, only 77% of patients are adherent to their antihypertensive medicines. Additionally, this study reveals that individuals with more than five children positively affect medication adherence. However, patients with long-term hypertension and many comorbidities have a detrimental effect.


We present a new near infrared optical probe for the sentinel lymph node detection, based on the recording of scattered photons. A two wavelengths setup was developed to improve the detection threshold of an injected dye: the Patent Blue V dye. The method used consists in modulating each laser diode at a given frequency. A Fast Fourier Transform of the recorded signal separates both components. The signal amplitudes are used to compute relative Patent Blue V concentration. Results on the probe using phantoms model and small animal experimentation exhibit a sensitivity threshold of 3.2 µmol/L, which is thirty fold better than the eye visible threshold.


Abstract An assessment of Varuna river basin of India was performed to study the various drainage parameters in GIS platform. The delineation of drainage network is possible either physically from topographic sheets or with the help data of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) by methods for calculation techniques. Extraction of the basin and sub-basins, stream network has been produced to evaluate the drainage characteristics in the study zone. The entire Varuna river basin has been subdivided into 3 sub-watersheds and 41 morphometric parameters have been computed under four broad categories i.e. drainage network, basin geometry, drainage texture, and relief characteristics. The morphometric analysis has been performed and different parameters have been correlated with each other to understand their underlying connection and their role over the basin hydro geomorphology. The study discloses different types of morphometric analysis and how they influence the soil and topography of the basin. The investigation and estimation of basin morphometry and relief parameters in GIS will be of massive utility in catchment area advancement, understanding the watershed for natural resource evaluation, planning and administration at any scale. The outcomes thus generated equip us with significant knowledge and may also provide an input that are essential in decision making for watershed planning and drainage development of the watershed.


Digital Image Watermarking, in recent times has seen a huge surge of professional work due to the skyrocketing usage of digital media. In this paper we present a competitive survey of existing watermarking techniques. This paper surveys the features and concepts pertaining to the two popular watermarking algorithm types and analyzes them to evaluate with metrics such as Time complexity, PSNR values and similarity measure of watermarks based on implementation i.e. A) Spatial based techniques (under which we analyzes LSB modification, correlation based and CDMA based techniques) and b) Transform based techniques (DCT and DWT based techniques).We have also studied the effects of different types of noises on each method.


Habitat fragmentation threatens plant and pollinator communities, as well as their interactions. However, the effects of landscape fragmentation on the pollination of wild plant species are not well-understood yet, partly because in fragmented landscapes there are many correlated features (e.g. decreased patch size, increased isolation and patch complexity) whose influences are difficult to disentangle. Using a SEM approach, we assessed the direct and indirect effects of landscape fragmentation (patch size, isolation and complexity, percentage of surrounding forest) on the abundance, functional-group richness and evenness of pollinators of 24 habitat fragments within an agricultural landscape in Southern Norway. In addition, we studied how these variables affected visitation rates (visits/flower) and seed production (seed set, seed weight) in the four most abundant plant species in the area. Flower abundance was higher in larger and complex patches and decreased with the percentage of forest in the surroundings, while flower richness increased with patch complexity. We found a direct negative relationship between patch complexity and the overall number of pollinator visits that the habitat fragments received. Apart from this direct landscape effect, pollinator visits were mostly affected by the floral communities, with overall flower abundance and richness increasing both total number of pollinator visits and pollinator-group richness, and flower richness having an additional negative influence on pollinator-group evenness. Interestingly, we did not find any direct link between visitation rates and reproductive success for any of the study plant species. Instead, several landscape variables directly affected species seed production, although the effects of landscape on seed production were highly species-specific. Patch complexity, had a negative effect on seed production in two of the four focal species, while other components of the landscape had species-specific effects. Increasing fragmentation of agricultural landscapes affects pollination interactions at the community level and the reproduction of wild plants. However, understanding the effects of fragmentation on seed production requires going beyond estimating visitation rates, since landscape effects on plant reproduction are not always related to overall interaction frequencies.


Background: This study aims to identify factors influencing burnout in nurses during COVID-19 disaster situations. Methods: The research subjects were 131 nurses who had the experience of nursing patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and were selected through convenience sampling. The collected data were subjected to percentage, mean and standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analysis using the SPSS version 24.0 program. Results: Burnout in nurses showed a statistically significant correlation with anxiety, PTSD, and depression. It was also confirmed that nurses' depression and shift work were important factors that had significant effects on burnout. Conclusions: In preparation for new infectious diseases that are expected to become more frequent in the future, a policy to supply nursing manpower and prevent burnout is necessary. In addition, it is necessary to introduce various work systems and develop and disseminate intervention programs for depression and burnout.


Legal education in the early twentieth century was divided into three concurrent paths-study at one of the "elite" law schools, consisting of mostly full-time students already possessing a college degree; study at one of the other mostly part-time practice based schools; and a course of study with a practitioner/mentor outside of formal educational institutions. Graduation was a serious event, as students were already thinking about passing the bar exam. Some of the reasons that law schools can deliver legal education to elementary and secondary students, obviously apply to junior college, college, and non-law school graduate and professional education as well. A law-school based Legal Education Center could become responsible for teaching all such law-related courses. It would seem not a big jump to ask the law school to be the responsible entity to coordinate legal education in an entire University or provide legal education to those colleges and Universities without a law school. The academic leadership role of a dean can be used to assess the skills of individual faculty and staff to see which individuals would be best for working with new technology, with non-lawyer, with non-law students, and with other outside entities.


The hypothesis underlying this article is that new documentary practices potentially enable new forms of mediation allowing all interactors to experience complexity and deal with contingency in a world of polyvocality through multilayered configurations. An exploration of the Korsakow documentary Racing Home (Marianne McMahon and Phil Hoffman, 2014) brings into focus the epistemological and ontological status of these assemblages. A central issue is the question of how significantly specific modes of editing in Korsakow affect the overall experience for both the authoring instances and for the user-interactor: not only the authorship is shared between the interrelated agents, but also the heterogeneity of materials from various sources adds to the complexity of the assemblages. Central research questions include the role that polyvocality and algorithmic editing play in Korsakow, its specific embracement of contingency and its probing of nonlinear narratives. The answers provided through the analysis of the case study lead to the conclusion that Korsakow is more than just a tool to promote a special purpose and/or a platform to distribute material. Rather, Korsakow is best seen as a methodology to approach complex matters and provide multiple affective and cognitive ways to respond to them.


: About 70% of the maternity patients obtain their information from magazines. About 75% of the patients stated that they had sufficient knowledge of breast feeding and care for the newborn. But only 56% had sufficient information on the nutrition of infants. The preferred films had contents on the correct behaviour in pregnancy, on the recognition of hereditary disease and congenital anomalies during pregnancy and on the normal delivery. The maternity patients wanted to be informed by the physician on the above subjects. Cassette television has proven to be valuable but it not as much requested as other methods of information.


If organogenesis were a completely deterministic process, then the amount of information required to store the spatial position and fate of every cell in vertebrate organisms would be larger than the total information that could be contained in their genomes. This suggests that the instructions of developmental mechanisms involved in organogenesis, coded in DNA, must be at least in part procedural or algorithmically based. Chimeric mosaic patterns in rat livers have been shown to be isotropic and to have fractal profiles (D—1.3) whereas adrenal gland mosaics show a less irregular radial pattern, with lower fractal dimension (D—1.2) than in the liver. These findings suggested a possible model of parenchyma generation. We propose that during organogenesis in both liver and adrenal cortex, the same basic mechanism is directed to organ mass enlargement, whereas the differences observed in mosaic patterns between the organs could be due to the control of a single parameter, namely, a form of contact inhibition. Computer simulations in two dimensions returned comparable results in both the fractal dimension value of mosaic patches and appearance of the mosaic 'tissues', as observed histo‐logically in chimeras. This suggests that position information and locomotion of cells would not be required to produce the mosaic pattern observed in chimeras.—Landini, G., Iannaccone, P. M. Modeling of mosaic patterns in chimeric liver and adrenal cortex: algorithmic organogenesis? FASEB J. 14, 823–827 (2000)


The period after conflict is characterised with large-scale destruction that necessitates investments in post conflict reconstruction (PCR). It is important that the PCR strategy take a holistic approach to rebuild the economic, social and political structures while taking measures to prevent future conflict. On the other hand, individual PCR interventions may focus on reconstruction of a particular sector with specific objectives. Nevertheless, it is important to account for the consequences of these PCR interventions as negative consequences may fuel the conflicts. This paper is an analysis of the potential consequences of PCR interventions and the significance of understanding them prior to intervention. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual framework on consequences of PCR interventions that has been developed as part of a long-term study on PCR consequences. Using the conceptual analysis method, the framework was developed to demonstrate the causal linkages between the PCR intervention and its consequences relating them to the post conflict context and long-term outcomes.


Pulmonary congestion is highly prevalent and often asymptomatic among patients with ESRD treated with hemodialysis, but whether its presence predicts clinical outcomes is unknown. Here, we tested the prognostic value of extravascular lung water measured by a simple, well validated ultrasound B-lines score (BL-US) in a multicenter study that enrolled 392 hemodialysis patients. We detected moderate-to-severe lung congestion in 45% and very severe congestion in 14% of the patients. Among those patients with moderate-to-severe lung congestion, 71% were asymptomatic or presented slight symptoms of heart failure. Compared with those patients having mild or no congestion, patients with very severe congestion had a 4.2-fold risk of death (HR=4.20, 95% CI=2.45-7.23) and a 3.2-fold risk of cardiac events (HR=3.20, 95% CI=1.75-5.88) adjusted for NYHA class and other risk factors. Including the degree of pulmonary congestion in the model significantly improved the risk reclassification for cardiac events by 10% (P<0.015). In summary, lung ultrasound can detect asymptomatic pulmonary congestion in hemodialysis patients, and the resulting BL-US score is a strong, independent predictor of death and cardiac events in this population.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the establishment of a GIS-based technology as a reliable delivery system in predicting the development impact assessment (DIA) due to proposed development. The paper highlights about the ability of the system that could anticipate the environmental quality due to any development within certain geographical setting. The system is a customised modelling system that integrates the strength of GIS in supporting planning decision making process via prediction of development impact assessment (DIA) for various projects. It is in this respect that a prototype of GIS-based modelling that enables to anticipate development-environmental impacts at an early stage of project planning has been established.

Design/methodology/approach – We propose an approach of integrating the selected various information and its series of pre-determined development impacts for the environment, social and economic dimensions. The framework of this system on predicting development impact assessment (DIA) relies on baseline data, models, spatial and statistical analyses, locating in a Planning Information Database (PID). Expert knowledge gathered in a 'what-if' scenario analysis is applied as it can help charting possible complex linkages between criteria in which planning database is derived by compiling data from multiple sources (Klosterman & Pettit, 2005; Swart, Raskin & Robinson, 2004) . The design principle used was the extension of the functionality of a GIS system in facilitating planning decision support making process. An integrated various sub-systems allows the analysis of environmental, social and economic dimensions to generate the results of impacts of proposed development in the form of spatial and textual data.

Originality/value – This methodology puts in evidence the strengths and ability of GIS as a planning and decision-making tool when it relates with complex situation in reality world (Drummond & French, 2008; Gocmen, 2009). The system has the value of incorporating the complexity of real world into a decision-making process system whereby it offers a workable mechanism for the local government.

Practical implications – The outcomes of the application of GIS-based technology facilitate local government in predicting the possible development impacts due to proposed developments. This can fasten the typical operation in regulating and controlling development changes by the local government who can now rely more on the IT advancement, i.e. via a customised development impact assessment (DIA). It is practical as it gives more information in terms of possible impacts (ranging from environment, social and economy) that would happen due to certain proposed development. This system can facilitate the government in shaping urban development sustainably. Consequently, we hope that the implication of this development impact assessment (DIA) can benefits the local government as the authority governing land matters in their jurisdiction.


In snakes there are two possible pheromonal sources: skin and cloacal glands. In this work, we tested both secretions in adults of Epicrates cenchria alvarezi as messages transmitters, trying to explain the role that plays this information in the social context of this species. Both secretions have shown to have pheromonal fimction. Conespecific odors elicited more tongue extrusions than other stimuli did. These results suggest that the snake is capable of discriminating conspecifics based on chemical cues alone.


Recent years have brought strong observational evidences for the standard LCDM cosmological model. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy and large scale structure (LSS) probes do not favour any extensions of the standard model. Nevertheless, in this framework, the prefered cosmological parameters may differ from probe to probe, from experiment to experiment. This is the well known case of the tension between CMB and Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SZ) galaxy clusters (GC) from Planck†. In 2013, the Planck team has shown that the prefered matter content (ΩM) and density fluctuation power spectrum amplitude (σ8), the two main cosmological parameters probed by the galaxy cluster number count, are different in the CMB analyses and in the SZ cluster analyses at more than 2 sigmas (a result confirmed in subsequent analyses). We present the results of our new analysis using more recent measurements of the CMB, SZ clusters and SZ power spectrum of 2016 and show that the tension on (ΩM ,σ8) is mostly releaved. The lower value of the reionisation optical depth and thus of σ8 in the recent Planck studies is the main reason. We also show that basic extensions of the standard model (massive neutrinos or non– lambda dark energy) do not help improving the agreement between the probes. In order to fully reconcile SZ clusters with CMB best model, the mass of the galaxy clusters should be 40% lower than derived from hydrostatic equilibrium estimates. While current numerical simulations and weak lensing measurements agree for a mass bias of 20%, investigations are still going on to explain such disagreement on the mass bias. We show that considering a mass bias evolving with redshift or mass does not help in eliminating the discrepancy.


AMONG THE SCANTY WRITINGS on the Hawaiian crow (Corvus tropicus Gmelin), there is no detailed record of its nest and eggs or of its habits associated with the breeding cycle. Berger (in press) lists and reviews the literature and reports that the current total population of this species may be as small as 25 birds. This present paper describes the final example of use by crows of a traditional nesting ground on the lower northeast flank of the Hualalai volcano, Hawaii County, Hawaii, in 1964. A nest discovered under construction on March 26 was observed at intervals of 6 to 9 days, through April 26, when it failed; a single infertile egg remained from the original clutch of five and the crows were then in the process of abandoning the nest.


Nanowire field-effect transistors (NWFETs) have emerged as promising candidates for realization of advanced CMOS technology nodes. Due to small nanowire dimensions, NWFETs are vulnerable to the impact of process-induced random local variations, such as the line edge roughness (LER) and random dopant fluctuation (RDF). NWFETs have three different device modes, namely, the inversion mode (IM), the accumulation mode (AM), and the junctionless (JL) mode. In this paper, a 3-D quasi-atomistic LER model is used for the analysis of LER-induced mismatch in JL, IM, and AM NWFETs. We have also compared the impact of 3-D LER with that of 2-D LER. In addition, another emerging simulation methodology known as statistical impedance field method is utilized to analyze the impact of RDF on the three flavors of NWFETs. We show that JL NWFETs have much higher mismatch due to both LER and RDF than their IM and AM NWFET counterparts with otherwise identical device structure.


Vibrio cholerae has long been reported as an important cause of death in developing countries. The study detected the virulence and antibiotic resistance gene of eight V. cholerae isolates through in silico tools. Cholera toxins, ctxA and ctxB were found in six isolates (75%). Seventy-five percent isolates were also found to be positive for zonula occludens toxin, zot which is known to increase the permeability by altering the tight junction of the small intestine. Accessory cholera enterotoxin ace , responsible for fluid accumulation, was detected in four V. cholerae strains. Seven isolates (87.5%) were positive for toxin-coregulated pilus, tcp which helps the bacteria to adhere to gut mucosa. Both ompW and toxR genes were found in 87.5% of the isolates. Twenty-five percent isolates harboured strA , strB, sulII, dfrA1, floR genes and SXT element demonstrating that they were multidrug-resistant (MDG) bacterium. One isolate was found to be positive for tetA gene while no erythromycin resistance gene, ermA and ermB was found. Virulence genes were found in all genotypes indicating that their distribution was not genotypeoriented while genotype 2 harboured no antibiotic resistance genes. This data helps to predict virulence genes associated with cholera and also demonstrates the presence of antibiotic resistance genes. Bacteria acquired the antibiotic resistance gene through natural process which cannot be stopped. So by analyzing the resistance pattern we can choose appropriate antibiotics. In silico study helps us to predict the antibiotic resistant genotypes and can easily identify antibiotic resistant strains which help us to treat cholera infections and reduce the morbidity and mortality rate of the infected individuals. Dhaka Univ. J. Pharm. Sci. 16(1): 77-85, 2017 (June)


Let $Z_n,n=0,1,\ldots,$ be a branching process evolving in the random environment generated by a sequence of iid generating functions $f_0(s),f_1(s),\ldots,$ and let $S_0=0$, $S_k=X_1+ \ldots +X_k,k \geq 1$, be the associated random walk with $X_i=\log f_{i-1}^{\prime}(1), \tau (m,n)$ be the left-most point of minimum of $\{S_k,k \geq 0 \}$ on the interval $[m,n]$, and $T=\min \{ k:Z_k=0\}$. Assuming that the associated random walk satisfies the Doney condition $P(S_n > 0) \to \rho \in (0,1), n \to \infty$, we prove (under the quenched approach) conditional limit theorems, as $n \to \infty$, for the distribution of $Z_{nt}, Z_{\tau (0,nt)}$, and $Z_{\tau (nt,n)}, t \in (0,1)$, given $T=n$. It is shown that the form of the limit distributions essentially depends on the location of $\tau (0,n)$ with respect to the point $nt$.


Background : The utilization of donkey's milk is increasing with regard to nutritional values and non-allergenic proteins. Donkey's milk microbiota, especially lactic acid bacteria (LAB) has not yet been fully identified. This study was conducted to identify and isolate LAB with probiotic properties.
Materials and Methods: Specific culture-dependent techniques and standard microbiology methods were used to identify LAB. 250 isolates were randomly picked from different donkey's milk samples different farms in Alashtar, north of Lorestan province, Iran. Gram-staining, catalase reaction, motility test, growth at different temperatures, pH 9.6 and in presence of 6.5% NaCl as well as the ability to ferment different sugars, sodium hippurate hydrolysis and light microscope analysis were investigated.
Results: Out of 250 isolates, 20 isolates were gram-positive, catalase-negative and cocci form. Enterococcus and Streptoccus genera were dominant LAB in donkey's milk. Entreococcus faecalis (55%) and Streptococcus devriesei (45%) were among the predominant species. The results of this experiment, for the first time, reported the occurrence of Streptococcus devriesei in donkey's milk in Iran.
Conclusion: Despite high lysozyme concentration, donkey's milk rich in probiotic LAB can be used to feed infants with allergy to cow's milk proteins. Both Entreococcus and Streptococcus bacteria produce different types of bacteriocins which are effective against a wide range of different type of infections. Occurrence of Streptococcus devriesei in donkey,s milk may provide new research field in Iran.
Keywords: Donkey's milk, Enterococcus, Lactic acid bacteria, Streptococcus deveriesei, probiotic


OBJECTIVES: Since last decade, Saudi Arabia has been swiftly moving ahead to promote an education and research in the coun - try.This study aimed to investigate the research outcome of Saudi Arabia in medical sciences during the period 1996-2012. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In this study, the research papers published in various global sci - ence journals during the period 1996-2012 were accessed. We recorded the total number of re - search documents having an affiliation with Sau - di Arabia.The main source for information was In - stitute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Sci - ence,Thomson Reuters and SCI-mago/Scopus. RESULTS: In global science data base, Saudi Arabia contributed 103804 documents in all sci - ence and social sciences. In medicine the total number of research papers from Saudi Arabia are 16196, citable documents 14732, total cita - tions 102827, citations per documents 6.36 and Hirsch index (h-index) is 92. However, in com - bined medical and allied health sciences the to - tal number of research papers are 27246, citable documents 25416, total citations 181999, mean citations per documents 7.07 and mean h-index is 41.44. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia contributed 40797 research documents in ISI indexed jour - nals only and also 151 research documents in highly reputable and towering science journals. CONCLUSIONS: Saudi Arabia's research per - formance in global medical sciences has ma rkedly increased during the period 2006- 2012.The research publications are continuous - ly on mounting path; however, the number of ci - tations has decreased.The country improved its regional as well as international research rank - ings and graded 45 in the world in year 2012.


Science communication efforts in the Netherlands started with exhibitions in national history museums in the 19th century and popular articles about science and technology in the media in the 1930s. From the 1950s onwards, the Dutch government stimulated popularisation of science and technology as a way to foster the science–society relationship. Democratic, and later economic and cultural considerations were the reasons for setting up one-way and two-way science communication. This may explain why attitudes towards science and technology have largely been positive compared to most other European countries, but at the same time not all new technologies are accepted. Genetic modification is an example of a topic that raised a lot of debate in the 1990s; today, opposing views on vaccination show that acceptance of science and technology is not straightforward in the Netherlands. Science communication efforts are visible in many ways in Dutch society via organisations, events and activities. These are supported or organised by both private and public partners. Nowadays, Dutch researchers are increasingly stimulated to engage with society—for instance, via the Dutch Research Agenda. Science communication in the Netherlands can build on a rich variety of expertise and inputs.


G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) sensitization and desensitization, served as mechanisms to turn the system on and off in response to various ligands, involves mainly the endocytosis and trafficking of receptors. In this study, I utilized a mathematical model to investigate the endocytosis and trafficking of cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2), a GPCR highly expressed in the immune system. Two published experimental studies have provided some quantitative data demonstrating the time course of receptor phosphorylation, internalization, dephosphorylation, and recycling under various conditions in transfected Chinese Hamster Ovary cells. Based on these datasets, I developed an ordinary differential equation (ODE)-based model with the assumption that ligands regulate receptor endocytosis and trafficking only by affecting the activation of receptors on the cell surface. Fitting of this model to the data using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method suggested that receptor constitutive trafficking is a fundamentally different process than the receptor trafficking under ligand treatment. The key difference between the two processes was shown to be the transfer of receptors from sorting endosome to recycling endosome, and the dephosphorylation of internalized receptors. The model was then modified according to this finding, and the subsequent fitting of the revised model showed a good accordance with the data.


Aims. We study the emission and absorption of CO ro-vibrational lines in the spectra of intermediate mass pre-main-sequence stars with the aim to determine both the spatial distribution of the CO gas and its physical properties. We also aim to correlate CO emission properties with disk geometry. Methods. Using high-resolution spectra containing fundamental and first overtone CO ro-vibrational emission, observed with CRIRES on the VLT, we probe the physical properties of the circumstellar gas by studying its kinematics and excitation conditions. Results. We detect and spectrally resolve CO fundamental ro-vibrational emission in 12 of the 13 stars observed, and in two cases in absorption. Conclusions. Keeping in mind that we studied a limited sample, we find that the physical properties and spatial distribution of the CO gas correlate with disk geometry. Flaring disks show highly excited CO fundamental emission up to vu = 5, while self-shadowed disks show CO emission that is not as highly excited. Rotational temperatures range between 250-2000 K. The 13CO rotational temperatures are lower than those of 12CO. The vibrational temperatures in self-shadowed disks are similar to or slightly below the rotational temperatures, suggesting that thermal excitation or IR pumping is important in these lines. In flaring disks the vibrational temperatures reach as high as 6000 K, suggesting fluorescent pumping. Using a simple kinematic model we show that the CO inner radius of the emitting region is ≈10 au for flaring disks and ≤1 au for self-shadowed disks. Comparison with hot dust and other gas tracers shows that CO emission from the disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars, in contrast to T Tauri stars, does not necessarily trace the circumstellar disk up to, or inside the dust sublimation radius, Rsubl. Rather, the onset of the CO emission starts from ≈Rsubl for self-shadowed disks, to tens of Rsubl for flaring disks. It has recently been postulated that group I Herbig stars may be transitional disks and have gaps. Our CO observations are qualitatively in agreement with this picture. We identify the location of the CO emission in these group I disks with the inner rim of the outer disk after such a gap, and suggest that the presence of highly vibrationally excited CO emission and a mismatch between the rotational and vibrational temperature may be a proxy for the presence of moderately sized disk gaps in Herbig Ae/Be disks.


Purpose: We report the results of a phase I/II stem cell rescue trial for patients with high risk neuroblastoma. Patients and Methods: Fifty-one patients with a median age of 2.3 years (range 1 to 20) who were in their first complete remission (CR) (n = 8), very good partial remission (VGPR) (n = 23), partial remission (PR) (n = 5), or subsequent CR/PR (n = 7) after receiving a platinum-based induction regimen were consolidated with high dose chemotherapy and stem cell rescue. They received an ablative regimen of thiotepa (300 mg/m2/day for 3 days) and cyclophosphamide (1500 mg/m2/day for 4 days) followed by either purged marrow (n = 16), unpurged bone marrow (BM) (n = 23), or peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) rescue (n = 13). The median nucleated cell doses administered were 2.7×108/kg for unpurged marrow (range 1.1 to 13), 1.7×108/kg for purged marrow (range 0.8 to 6.4), and 2.1×108/kg for the PBSC (range 1.1 to 13). Results: Engraftment was achieved for all patients. The time to achieve an absolute neutrophil count (ANC) >500×109/1 was 19 days for patients who received purged BM (range 13 to 18), 17.5 days for patients who received unpurged BM (range 9 to 38), and 13 days for patients who received PBSC (range 9 to 25). An unsustained platelet count >20×109/1 was attained in 33.5 days by patients who received purged BM (range 13 to 100), 35 days for patients who received unpurged BM (range 14 to 128), and 20 days for patients who received PBSC (range 11 to 64). There was one infectious death in the unpurged marrow group caused by aspergillosis pneumonia, but none in the other two groups. Progressive disease (PD) developed in 21 patients at a median of 271 days (range 31 to 1230). The remaining 29 patients are progression-free at a median follow-up of 1190 days (range 530 to 2383). Conclusion: We conclude that this regimen is well tolerated, and that progression-free survival (PFS) with this chemotherapy-only regimen compares favorably with regimens containing total body irradiation (TBI).


Australian research on intercountry adoption in Australia is reported with particular reference to social work, divergent and competing interests of various stakeholders, and the highly political and contested nature of its practice in Australia. The practice of intercountry adoption in Australia is examined from its diffusion into Australia in the 1970s to contemporary times. Government approved Australian intercountry adoption programs began operation in the 1970s and although always small in number, the recent decline is consistent with global trends. Intercountry adoption in Australia is regulated by state and federal governments and social workers are integral to its practice. Controversies surrounding intercountry adoption in Australia have historically been linked to pressure from lobbyists and the support of some politicians. In 2014, Australia was at a crucial juncture with changes to how intercountry adoption is structured under review by the federal government.


Co-located mobile users have found several useful and real-world applications in proximity-based services. Aiming at unleashing the potential of these proximity-based services, it is essential to devise robust techniques enabling smart devices to know their proximity close neighbors and be able to communicate with each other. To this end, we propose, design, and evaluate a robust framework capable to successfully co-localize walking groups of mobile users, in real-time and in a centralized manner. It leverages Bluetooth low energy technology to achieve a high degree of co-location accuracy. From the collected radio signals, we construct a graph network in which the distance between pairwise vertices represents the connection strength between mobile users. Then, we propose a modified version of edge betweenness techniques, with an average path length, as a key enabler for a high clustering accuracy. We analyze the performance in terms of clustering accuracy of the proposed scheme. First, we assess its performance numerically. Then, we conduct analysis on the experimental data set to demonstrate the feasibility and the efficiency of our method. Through obtained results, we have shown that our method can be successfully applied to co-localize people walking as part of the same group.


The UV-index is an international standard measurement of the strength of erythemogenic ultraviolet radiation. It is often published in the media and then refers to the highest expected UV radiation for that day. The highest UV-index value measured in Iceland is seven. Although this is similar to the maximum values from southern Scandinavia, the average UV-index is lower in Iceland compared to other Nordic countries. Around solar noon the UV index is roughly equivalent to the Standard Erythema Dose (SED). During a bright summer day in Iceland the number of Standard Erythema doses can go as high as 32, but is on average in June around twenty. The typical Icelander gets red after 4-6 SED and it is obvious that during solar noon it is easy to sunburn in Iceland if you stay outside without sun protection.


Campylobacter jejuni is often prevalent in turkey and poultry, but the effects of storage temperatures and storage periods and the interruption of the cooling chain on its survival have not been evaluated so far. In this study, 700 samples of turkey meat were artificially contaminated by inoculating their surface with 10(3) CFU of C. jejuni per sample, wrapped in airtight cellophane bags, and stored under different chilling and freezing conditions for various storage periods; this was followed by analysis of the cultures. Subsequent to incubation at 25 degrees C for 48 h, C. jejuni was reisolated in only 7% of the samples. When the samples were stored under refrigerator conditions at 4 degrees C, the organism was reisolated in 42% of the samples after 1 week, and in 28% of the samples after 2 weeks. The recovery rates in the samples that had been stored frozen at -20 degrees C without interruption of the cooling chain were 68% after 2 weeks and 24% after 4 weeks. Different storage conditions were simulated in order to examine the impact of an interruption of the cooling chain on the survival of Campylobacter.


STUDY QUESTION
Does a novel sperm vitrification device (SpermVD) provide an efficient method for freezing a small number of human spermatozoa from men suffering from non-obstructive azoospermia?

SUMMARY ANSWER
The novel SpermVD is an efficient and simple carrier method for freezing a small number of spermatozoa in low-volume droplets, reducing post-thaw search time from hours to minutes, allowing a 96% recovery rate and leading to successful use of sperm for fertilization.

WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY
Previous methods for cryopreservation of small numbers of human spermatozoa (e.g. mini-straws, ICSI pipette, alginate beads, cryoloop) have been proposed as a solution for cases of severe male infertility. Many drawbacks have prevented their widespread use, including cumbersome preparation and sperm retrieval procedures, and the fact that the thawed spermatozoa are not immediately available for micromanipulation and required additional treatment which posed excess risk of harm.

STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION
We conducted a feasibility experiment of the novel SpermVD and a prospective cohort study of ICSI cycles in men suffering from non-obstructive azoospermia in two outpatient fertility IVF clinics, from 2015 through 2017.

PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS
All patients underwent extended ejaculate search prior to the day of oocyte retrieval, and any single motile spermatozoa found was transferred to 0.8 μl droplets of 1:1 washing medium/cryoprotectant on the SpermVD, then plunged into liquid nitrogen for cryopreservation. In patients with non-obstructive azoospermia who underwent surgical TESE, both the motile and immotile spermatozoa found underwent cryopreservation using the SpermVD. On the day of oocyte retrieval, the SpermVD was thawed, directly transfered to the ICSI plate and retrieved spermatozoa were used for the ICSI procedure.

MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
The prospective cohort included 44 cases. We used the SpermVD to vitrify 631 spermatozoa, of which 540 (86%) were motile. The average number of frozen spermatozoa per patient was 14.3 ± 9.3. After thawing, we retrieved 607 spermatozoa, producing a recovery rate of 96%. The average number of thawed spermatozoa was 13.8 ± 9.2. The recovery of 180 thawed motile sperm accounted for 33% of all frozen motile spermatozoa. The fertilization rate was 59%. Of 44 oocyte retrieval procedures, 24 (55%) clinical pregnancies were achieved. The delivery rate (not including three ongoing pregnancies) was 32% and the miscarriage rate was 29%.

LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION
Although we presented the SpermVD on 44 cases, a larger cohort would provide more information. Moreover, we cryopreserved only motile sperm from the ejaculates and not immotile sperm, thus limiting the knowledge regarding the efficacy of the VD for immotile sperm from this source.

WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS
The novel SpermVD is a simple efficient carrier, optimizing the protocol for freezing a small number of spermatozoa. It may allow for the routine use of frozen spermatozoa after TESE for men suffering from non-obstructive azoospermia and thus avoid repeated TESE surgeries. Furthermore, in cases of non-obstructive azoospermia, routine cryopreservation of the retrieved spermatozoa prior to the IVF cycle may avoid the risk of cycle cancelation and thus decrease the number of unnecessary oocyte retrieval procedures.

STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S)
There was no external funding. There are no competing interests.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER
IRB no 00119-16-ASMC.


Topographic sensory representations often do not scale proportionally to the size of their input regions, with some expanded and others contracted. In vision, the foveal representation is magnified cortically, as are the fingertips in touch. What principles drive this allocation, and how should receptor density, e.g. the high innervation of the fovea or the fingertips, and stimulus statistics, e.g. the higher contact frequencies on the fingertips, contribute? Building on work in efficient coding, we address this problem using linear models that maximize information transmission through decorrelation. We introduce a sensory bottleneck to impose constraints on resource allocation and derive the optimal neural allocation. We find that bottleneck width is a crucial factor in resource allocation, inducing either expansion or contraction. Both receptor density and stimulus statistics affect allocation and jointly determine convergence for wider bottlenecks. Furthermore, we show a close match between the predicted and empirical cortical allocations in a well-studied model system, the star-nosed mole. Overall, our results suggest that the strength of cortical magnification depends on resource limits.


Over recent years the term sustainability has begun to mean all things to all people. There are now, for example, more than 60 definitions of sustainable development (Winpenny, 1990). But a central flaw is that sustainability is too often seen as an outcome - as something that exists, such as a sustainable farming system - rather than a process of change.

Such a process should involve the building of sustainable relationships between people and people, and between people and their environment. And to do this requires the development of learning societies, in which learning becomes an active verb, not an adjective. The problem is that a pre-occupation with teaching has left us largely ignorant of learning.

Yet society puts little premium on learning. It does not necessarily result from teaching, which is, of course, pervasive in all institutions associated with agriculture. It is the normal mode in many formal curricula; it underpins the transfer of technology model of agricultural research and development; and is central to many organisational structures. To my mind the teaching paradigm so differs from learning paradigms that it constrains our attempts to engage in a sustainable agriculture. Indeed, teaching appears to threaten sustainable agriculture.


Detailed longitudinal studies of speech perception, speech production and language acquisition have justified a significant change in the demographics of congenitally and prelingually deaf children who receive cochlear implants. A trend toward earlier cochlear implantation has been justified by improvements in measures assessing these areas. To assess the influence of age at implantation on performance, age 5 years was used as a benchmark. Thirty-one children who received a Nucleus cochlear implant and use the SPEAK speech processing strategy and two children who received a Clarion cochlear implant and use the CIS strategy served as subjects. The subjects were divided into three groups based on age at implantation. The groups comprised children implanted before the age of 3 years (n = 14), children implanted between 3 years and 3 years 11 months (n = 11) and those implanted between 4 years and 5 years 3 months (n = 8). The children were further divided according to whether they used oral or total communication. The earlier-implanted groups demonstrated statistically significant improvements on measures of speech perception. Improvements in speech intelligibility as a function of age at implant were seen but did not reach statistical significance. The results of the present study demonstrate that early implantation promotes the acquisition of speaking and listening skills.


Aim: Two bacterial strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes, A13 and 9534 were evaluated for induction of transformed hairy roots in Linum mucronatum ssp. mucronatum, a high value medicinal plant. Materials and Methods: The hairy roots were successfully initiated, through infecting the hypocotyl and root explants and the A13 strain performed a high transformation frequency for hairy roots induction. Transgenic status of hairy roots was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the rol genes. Growth kinetics of transgenic roots induced by two strains indicated a similar pattern of growth, with maximum growth occurring between 42 to 56 days. The lignan contents in hairy roots were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method. Results: Transformed cultures showed significant differences (P < 0.05) in lignan content. The highest amount of Podophyllotoxin (PTOX, 5.78 mg/g DW) and 6-methoxy podophyllotoxin (MPTOX, 49.19 mg/g DW) was found in transformed lines induced by strain A13, which was four times higher than those of non-transformed roots. The results showed that hairy root cultures of L. mucronatum are rich sources of MPTOX. Conclusion: hairy root cultures from L. mucronatum can be used as a useful system for scale-up producing MPTOX and precursors for the production of antitumor agents in substitution with PTOX by considering the appropriate optimizations in future studies.


Management development requires an investment of time
and money and like other forms of investment, should be justified on the basis
of return from that investment. Rising
costs have not deterred organisations from increasing their investments in this
activity. However, at least in the
literature, there is little conclusive evidence of the contributions of
management development to corporate profitability. The purpose of the present
study was to obtain an in-depth understanding of evaluation approaches employed
in leading Australian business organisations to establish the contributions of
management development to the attainment of corporate goals. An exploratory-descriptive research design was
employed to elicit human resource practitioners' perceptions and
experiences. Data collection included a
questionnaire survey of 50 leading companies, in-depth semi-structured
interviews of senior human resource practitioners responsible for management
development in 10 of those organisations, and extensive document analysis. The
study found that evaluation was based mainly on immediate reactions and
feedback from participants some time after the programs, and focused almost
entirely on program design and implementation and not on the effects of the
management development activities on manager performance and the achievement of
corporate goals. The main contributory
factor to the lack of impact evaluation was found to be a lack of requisite
evaluation expertise. A number of factors emerge as crucial to an effective
evaluation process. First, it is essential
for all stakeholders in management development to upgrade their knowledge of
evaluation theory. Second, effective
evaluation can occur only if there is a strong culture of evaluation. Third, there is need for greater emphasis on
the integration of qualitative and quantitative evaluation procedures, and to
make the program participants and their line managers key players in the
evaluation process. Effectiveness in
management development evaluation practices can be attained through
Multi-Faceted Evaluation which facilitates ongoing generation of quantitative
and qualitative evaluative data by all key stakeholders via multiple formal and
informal data collection techniques for use by the stakeholders themselves,
researchers and other interested parties


Pristine Carbon Black (CB) has been first oxidised to introduce carboxylic acid functional group on the surface of CB, followed by treating with thionyl chloride. The presence of acyl chloride group in the resultant product has been ascertained by FTIR spectroscopy. The acyl chloride functionalized CB (CB-Ac) has been used as a filler in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS)/Polyaniline (PANI) blend to improve the mechanical and thermal properties. Further addition of Nanoclay (NC) in the blend has improved the dispersion of fillers in the polymer matrix as confirmed by FESEM images and XRD pattern. The Ultimate Tensile Analysis (UTA) and Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) have been studied. The Young modulus has shown increment of 48% and 66% in case of CB-Ac and CB-Ac/NC filled blend, respectively. The ultimate tensile strength has also been found to be increased in CB-Ac and CB-Ac/NC filled blends. DMA has given the insight about the excellent improvement in damping properties of the composites due to filler addition. Themo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been carried out to ascertain the thermal properties. TGA has revealed the excellent augmentation in the flame retardancy and heat resistance of the composites due to CB-Ac/NC loading. DSC study has further verified the improvement in degree of crystallinity due to interfacial attraction between fillers and polymer matrix.


BACKGROUND
Infective endocarditis is a severe infection arising in the lining of the chambers of the heart with a high mortality rate.Many dental procedures cause bacteraemia and it was believed that this may lead to bacterial endocarditis (BE) in a few people. Guidelines in many countries have recommended that prior to invasive dental procedures antibiotics are administered to people at high risk of endocarditis. However, recent guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales has recommended that antibiotics are not required.

OBJECTIVES
To determine whether prophylactic antibiotic administration, compared to no such administration or placebo, before invasive dental procedures in people at risk or at high risk of bacterial endocarditis influences mortality, serious illness or the incidence of endocarditis.

SEARCH METHODS
The following electronic databases were searched: the Cochrane Oral Health Group's Trials Register (to 21 January 2013), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2012, Issue 12), MEDLINE via OVID (1946 to 21 January 2013) and EMBASE via OVID (1980 to 21 January 2013). We searched for ongoing trials in the US National Institutes of Health Trials Register (http://clinicaltrials.gov) and the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (http://www.controlled-trials.com/mrct/). No restrictions were placed on the language or date of publication when searching the electronic databases.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Due to the low incidence of BE it was anticipated that few if any trials would be located. For this reason, cohort and case-control studies were included where suitably matched control or comparison groups had been studied. The intervention was the administration of antibiotic, compared to no such administration, before a dental procedure in people with an increased risk of BE. Cohort studies would need to follow those individuals at increased risk and assess outcomes following any invasive dental procedures, grouping by whether prophylaxis was received or not. Included case-control studies would need to match people who had developed endocarditis (and who were known to be at increased risk before undergoing an invasive dental procedure preceding the onset of endocarditis) with those at similar risk but who had not developed endocarditis. Outcomes of interest were mortality or serious adverse events requiring hospital admission; development of endocarditis following any dental procedure in a defined time period; development of endocarditis due to other non-dental causes; any recorded adverse events to the antibiotics; and cost implications of the antibiotic provision for the care of those patients who developed endocarditis.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors independently selected studies for inclusion then assessed risk of bias and extracted data from the included study.

MAIN RESULTS
No randomised controlled trials (RCTs), controlled clinical trials (CCTs) or cohort studies were included. One case-control study met the inclusion criteria. It collected all the cases of endocarditis in the Netherlands over two years, finding a total of 24 people who developed endocarditis within 180 days of an invasive dental procedure, definitely requiring prophylaxis according to current guidelines, and who were at increased risk of endocarditis due to a pre-existing cardiac problem. This study included participants who died because of the endocarditis (using proxies). Controls attended local cardiology outpatient clinics for similar cardiac problems, had undergone an invasive dental procedure within the past 180 days, and were matched by age with the cases. No significant effect of penicillin prophylaxis on the incidence of endocarditis could be seen. No data were found on other outcomes.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
There remains no evidence about whether antibiotic prophylaxis is effective or ineffective against bacterial endocarditis in people at risk who are about to undergo an invasive dental procedure. It is not clear whether the potential harms and costs of antibiotic administration outweigh any beneficial effect. Ethically, practitioners need to discuss the potential benefits and harms of antibiotic prophylaxis with their patients before a decision is made about administration.


: The effects of several benzodiazepines on a variety of nervous activities known or presumed to depend on GABA are presented and compared with those of agents that deplete or increase the level of endogenous GABA: antagonism of various convulsant agents in mice, enhancement of presynaptic inhibition in the spinal cord and the cuneate nucleus of cats, decrease of the spontaneous firing rate of cerebellar Purkinje cells in cats and rats, antagonism of bicuculine-induced depression of the strio-nigral-evoked potential in the cat, potentiation of haloperidol-induced catalepsy in rats, GABA-mimetic actions on drug-induced PGO-waves in cats and on eserine-induced circling in guinea pigs. Diazepam slightly increased the GABA level in the cat spinal cord and in the total brain of mice and rats; this increase does not seem to be due to an increase of GABA synthesis. It is concluded that benzodiazepines probably enhance presynaptic inhibition at all levels of the neuraxis and that this effect requires not only the presence of GABA but is also dependent on an activity of GABA-ergic neurons. Benzodiazepines also appear to enhance postsynaptic inhibition where this is mediated by GABA. Many actions of benzodiazepines can be tentatively explained by a stimulus-bound enhancement of GABA effects.


A novel fault grading heuristic is presented, based on the critical path tracing technique that tackles the problems associated with fan-out reconverging nodes (FORNs) without using forward propagation of the fault effects. To determine the criticality status of a fan-out reconverging node, which can differ from that of its fan-out branches (FOBs), the concepts of evidencing and masking paths are used. Using the statistics from exact fault simulations, heuristic rules are derived for the generation of masking and evidencing paths. The results obtained on benchmark circuits show good accuracy for fault coverage estimates and a computation time linear in the number of gates and comparable to that of the fault-free simulation. >


Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a heterogeneous chronic multisystemic autoimmune inflammatory disorder. Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) represents the first application of stem cell regenerative medicine in the treatment of drug-resistant SLE. The 5 year follow-up data showed that the overall survival was 84%, the probability of disease-free survival was 50% and treatment-related mortality was 4%. The European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) data showed that the 5 year overall survival was 81%±8% and disease-free survival was 29%±9%, with a non-relapse mortality of 15%±7%, suggesting a satisfactory clinical efficacy of autologous HSCT for lupus patients. However, The biggest challenge for HSCT is the high rate of disease relapse, as well as the serious side effects of the conditioning therapy. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are widely studied as an alternative cell source for their ability to differentiate into multiple mesenchymal lineages, as well as endoderm and neuroectoderm lineages. We have shown that bone marrow derived MSCs from SLE patients are defective structurally and functionally. Then from March 2007, we started to use allogeneic bone marrow and umbilical cord derived MSCs transplantation (MSCT) for refractory SLE patients, especially for those with drug resistant lupus nephritis. Allogenic MSCs were administered intravenously (one million cells per kilogram of bodyweight). The clinical manifestations and laboratory parameters were compared pre- and post-MSCT. During 4 years' follow up, complete remission was 28% at 1 year (23/83), 31% at 2 years (12/39), 42% at 3 years (5/12) and 50% at 4 years (3/6). Rates of relapse were 12% (10/83) at 1 year, 18% (7/39) at 2 years, 17% (2/12) at 3 years and 17% (1/6) at 4 years. Disease activity declined shown by significant changes in SLEDAI score, proteinuria, renal function, and levels of serum autoimmune antibodies, albumin and complement C3. Furthermore, we observed a long-term tissue repair effect by MSCs transplantation in our patients. Importantly, doses of corticosteroid and immunosuppressant were tampered or discontinued after MSCT. Taken together, allogeneic MSCT exerts a profound therapeutic effect in patients with severe and refractory SLE.


: We report a descriptive study and the evaluation of its results for 1987 from the program of attention to pregnancy, delivery and puerperium in the Maspalomas health center. Our data are based on 223 pregnant women with F.P.P. included throughout the year. Overall 16 parameters were evaluated, and comparisons with the preceding year were made. Antenatal recruitment was 52.85% of all pregnancies. 22.87% of them were due to failure of contraception and 36% were not desired. A mean number of 4.9 +/- 2.26 controls per pregnancy were made, and 82.96% had a correct follow-up. The postnatal control included 69.59% of all women and 67.80% of neonates. 22.42% of women received maternal education, and a significant improvement (p less than 0.005) was detected in the behavior during delivery. 63.73% of neonates received breastfeeding during the first postnatal control, and 100% underwent screening for metabolic abnormalities. 5.71% had low birth weight. We conclude that the program has improved, as compared with the preceding year, in coverage, follow up and quality indexes, although 100% of its initial aims have not been fulfilled.


A study was conducted in boys with bilateral cryptorchidism, who were to undergo surgical orchiopexy, to determine if target-organ androgen insensitivity might play a role in the failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum. Nine boys older than 1 year in whom bilateral undescended testes was the only genitourinary abnormality were evaluated. Each subject was administered a six-week course of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), 3000 U/m2 of body surface area, intramuscularly injected daily for five days and then twice per week. Basal and hCG-stimulated levels of testosterone were normal. However, hCG administration failed to induce testicular descent in all cases. At the time of surgery, scrotal skin and testicular biopsy specimens were obtained for propagation of cells in tissue culture. Androgen receptor levels and binding affinity were normal for the androgen-specific ligands dihydrotestosterone and metribolone in both skin fibroblasts and testicular cells. In addition, 5 alpha-reductase activity was normal in scrotal skin fibroblasts. Nine boys with bilateral cryptorchidism and normal testicular androgen biosynthesis had normal androgen receptor-binding activity and 5 alpha-reductase activity in cultured scrotal skin fibroblasts and testicular cells. Therefore, bilateral maldescent of the testes in these boys with cryptorchidism was not due to androgen insensitivity.


Outlier detection has been widely explored and applied to different real-world problems. However, outlier characterization that consists in finding and understanding the outlying aspects of the anomalous observations is still challenging. In this paper, we present a new approach to simultaneously detect subspace outliers and characterize them. We introduce the Dimension-wise Local Outlier Factor (DLOF) function to quantify the degree of outlierness of the data points in each feature dimension. The obtained DLOFs are used in an outlier ensemble so as to detect and rank the anomalous points. Subsequently, the same DLOFs are analyzed in order to characterize the detected outliers with their relevant subspace and their same-type anomalies. Experiments on various datasets show the efficacy of our method. Indeed, we demonstrate through an experimental evaluation that the proposed approach is competitive compared to the existing solutions in terms of both detection and characterization accuracy.


Schools are living in the past. "They are still modelled on a curious mix of the factory, the asylum and the prison!" They reflect old beliefs of an industrial age, now gone. The amazing number of attempts at changing schools have failed time and time again. In a society going through major changes, educators are immersed in the situation and find it difficult to visualise the future, plan ahead and change. Educators have to 'rethink' teaching, 're-invent' schooling. Urgently, schools need to play a leading role in providing youths with the skills and knowledge, necessary for a life of work, a life of worth, in a sustainable future. In this analysis, my goals are: * 1) To gain a broad understanding of the latest research on "Education beyond the 20th century" and translate the complex findings from this body of information into a simple, clear summary for teachers, parents and students. * 2) To suggest some options in order to change high schools within the new framework from the Northern Territory Department of Education and to propose some practical guidelines to bringing about these changes. These options could be used as a starting point for reflection, discussion and ultimately action. My overall aim is really to 'rediscover' teaching in a 'post industrial age', to be able to transform schools and systems into 'communities of inquiry and continuous learning' in which all students feel valued, empowered and free, become highly competent and develop personal mastery and ultimately wisdom.


The distribution of trees into diameter classes in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) plantations does not tend to produce the smooth distributions common to other southern pines. While these distributions are sometimes unimodal, they are frequently bior even tri-modal and for this reason may not be easily modeled with traditional diameter distribution models like the Weibull whose form is unimodal and monotonic. Neural networks, a development of artificial intelligence research, can take on any form that is found in the data, allowing the prediction of many phenomena without the assumption of a given model form. To see if this new technique has merit in forest modeling, the diameter distributions of several longleaf pine stands were modeled using a neural network process. Weibull distribution models were also fit to the data using regression and parameter recovery techniques. These approaches were then compared. The neural network procedure appeared to provide slightly better predictions than either of the traditional methods. Results of this comparison are presented in this poster. This early result indicates that this new technique is promising and deserves further investigation.


The explosive growth in sharing and consumption of the video content on the web creates a unique opportunity for scientific advances in video retrieval, recommendation and discovery. In this paper, we focus on the task of video suggestion, commonly found in many online applications. The current state-of-the-art video suggestion techniques are based on the collaborative filtering analysis, and suggest videos that are likely to be co-viewed with the watched video. In this paper, we propose augmenting the collaborative filtering analysis with the topical representation of the video content to suggest related videos. We propose two novel methods for topical video representation. The first method uses information retrieval heuristics such as tf-idf, while the second method learns the optimal topical representations based on the implicit user feedback available in the online scenario. We conduct a large scale live experiment on YouTube traffic, and demonstrate that augmenting collaborative filtering with topical representations significantly improves the quality of the related video suggestions in a live setting, especially for categories with fresh and topically-rich video content such as news videos. In addition, we show that employing user feedback for learning the optimal topical video representations can increase the user engagement by more than 80% over the standard information retrieval representation, when compared to the collaborative filtering baseline.


Dehydration of the blood plasma and interstitial body fluids is the outstanding bodily change caused by severe diarrheal disease in infants. The initial therapeutic indication is usually an energetic attempt to repair this condition by the administration of fluids. It is obvious that a convenient and dependable method of determining the degree of dehydration and the effect of therapeutic measures would be useful clinically. Measurement of change in the water content of the blood plasma would seem to be the most practicable index of dehydration. The blood plasma should exhibit a wider range of change in water content than whole blood for the reason that the circumstances producing dehydration cause a much more extensive withdrawal of water from the plasma than from the red cells. A number of rather time-consuming gravimetric procedures have been suggested for the purpose of ascertaining the degree of dehydration. Thus, the specific gravity of the


The performance gap for high performance applications has been widening over time. High level program transformations are critical to improve applications' performance, many of which concern the determination of optimal values for transformation parameters, such as loop unrolling and blocking. Static approaches achieve these values based on analytical models that are hard to achieve because of increasing architecture complexity and code structures. Recent iterative compilation approaches achieve it by executing different versions of the program on actual platforms and select the one that renders best performance, outperforming static compilation approaches significantly. But the expensive compilation cost has limited their application scope to embedded applications and a small group of math kernels. This paper proposes a combinative approach--Combining Model and Iterative Compilation for Program Performance Optimization (CMIC). Such an approach first constructs a program optimization transformation model based on hardware performance counters to decide how and when to apply transformations, and then selects the optimal transformation parameters using Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm. Experimental results show that our approach can effectively improve programs' floating-point performance, reducing programs' runtime, therefore, lessening the performance gap for high-performance applications.


Abstract Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine and describe levels of psychological health and well-being in a group of young people living in Dublin. Method: A sample of 97 young people (50 males, 47 females) were assessed for psychological status, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, contact with the law, self-esteem and locus of control as well as various social indicators such as educational attainment and social connectedness. A screening version of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis Diagnosis (SCID) was used to assess psychological functioning and the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation was employed to ascertain suicidal ideation. Self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and locus of control was measured using a scale devised by Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieberman and Mullan (1981). Results: Symptom levels were high and approximately one fifth of respondents had a probable psychiatric condition (most commonly depression or anxiety). Yet, only a small percentage was receiving treatment for psychiatric difficulties. Over half of the participants had used nonprescription drugs at some time. Alcohol consumption was high, especially amongst male respondents. Over half of those interviewed were categorised as misusing alcohol and/or drugs and participants greatly underestimated their level of alcohol use. Approximately one-quarter had had some contact with the law which was related to deficits in educational attainment and the latter variable was associated with childhood economic disadvantage. Conclusions: These findings suggest that among a sample of 97 young Irish people, a high level of psychiatric symptomatology and excessive use of alcohol is evident. This remains largely untreated as only a small percentage of the group had sought help for psychological difficulties which suggests a need to address the issues of mental health awareness, alcohol use and the accessibility of services. The paper also underlines the association between economic disadvantage and lack of educational attainment with associated linkages to offending.


The processes of energy/momentum exchange in rotating plasma flows placed into crossed magnetic and electric fields is an issue of importance. Such flows are capable of transforming the energy from different degrees of freedom into another. The resulting energy and momentum from one degree can be altered owing to the interaction of the coupled nonlinear radial, axial and azimuthal electron-ion oscillations. These processes may lead to the acceleration of flow in the axial direction with these stable effects. This technology can be instrumental for creating efficient thrusters employing pulse transformations manipulated by the electric and magnetic fields. This would be suitable for space propulsion and other environmental effects.


An interview in two sessions, July 2000, with John H. Schwarz, Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics in the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. Dr. Schwarz majored in mathematics at Harvard (BA, 1962) and then went to UC Berkeley for graduate work in theoretical physics. He offers recollections of his advisor, Geoffrey Chew; working on S-matrix theory; sharing an office with another future string theorist, David J. Gross. After receiving his PhD in 1966, he became an instructor at Princeton, where in 1969 he began work on string theory, prompted by 1968 paper by Gabriele Veneziano.
He comments on early years of string theory, his collaboration with Andre Neveu and JoA«l Scherk, Murray Gell-Mann's interest in the work, being denied tenure at Princeton and invited to come to Caltech as a research associate. General lack of interest in string theory in 1970s. Scherk and Schwarz continue working on it and note that the graviton shows up in the theory, suggesting a way to reconcile quantum theory and general relativity; they publish in 1974 and 1975, but papers are largely ignored. In August 1979, he begins collaboration with Michael Green at CERN and later at Caltech and the Aspen Center for Physics. By now there are several string theories, but all are plagued with anomalies; he describes their breakthrough elimination of anomalies in 1984 at Aspen and his announcement of it at the Aspen physics cabaret. Comments on sudden burst of interest in string theory, especially at Princeton, and the involvement of Edward Witten. Shortly thereafter, Schwarz is made a full professor at Caltech.
Comments on the antipathy of Sheldon Glashow toward string theory and on his own dislike of the phrase "theory of everything;" on the latter-day history of string theory; problem of existence of five consistent superstring theories; talk by Witten at strings conference, USC, 1995, when it was recognized that the five are part of one underlying theory; discussion of "M" theory and membranes. Comments on annual string conferences, on Witten's visit to Caltech, on joint Caltech-USC physics institute, on prospects for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the development of a Supersymmetric Standard Model, on his receipt of the Dirac Medal from the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste in 1989 and his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1997.


Is The Death of Klinghoffer anti-Semitic? Performances of the opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September 1991 were at the epicentre of a controversy that continues to this day; the New York audience was – and remains – uniquely hostile to the work. A careful reception analysis shows that New York audiences reacted vehemently not so much to an ideological position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but to specific nuances in the satirical portrayal of American Jewish characters in one controversial scene later cut from the opera, a scene that must be read closely and in relation to specifically American-Jewish questions of ethnic humour, assimilation, identity and multiculturalism in the mass media. I understand the opera's negative reception in the larger context of the increasingly severe crises that beset American Jewish self-identity during the Reagan-Bush era. Ultimately the historical ability of Jews to assimilate through comedy, to 'enter the American culture on the stage laughing', in Leslie Fiedler's famous formulation, will have to be reconsidered. A close reading of contested moments from the opera shows librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams avoiding the romance of historical self-consciousness as they attempt to construct a powerful yet subtle defence of the ordinary and unassuming.


Background/Objective A growing number of health systems have implemented eConsults to improve access to specialty advice, but few studies have described their use in rheumatology or impact on visit wait times. We evaluated the uptake of an eConsult program and its impact on wait times for in-person rheumatology visits. Methods In this quality improvement project, we analyzed electronic health record data from 4 intervention clinics and 4 comparison clinics, 12 months before and after implementation of an eConsult program. We compared median wait time for rheumatology appointments using a pre-post difference-in-differences analysis and quantile regression, adjusting for patient age, race, sex, clinic pair, and primary insurance payer. We also interviewed 11 primary care providers from the intervention clinics and conducted a rheumatology provider focus group (n = 4) to elucidate experiences with the program. Results Rheumatologists recommended management in primary care or referral to another specialty for 41% of eConsults, reducing initial demand for in-person visits. The median wait times dropped in the intervention and the comparison clinics (42 and 25 days, respectively). Intervention clinic median wait time dropped 17 days more than comparison clinics, and this was nonstatistically significant (p = 0.089). eConsults fit provider care tasks best for triage or initial workup for diagnosis, and less well when tests required interpretation, or when back and forth communication was needed to manage the patient's condition. Conclusions Implementation of eConsults for rheumatology was associated with reduced wait times for rheumatology appointments and supported primary care providers in the triage and workup for a substantial portion of patients.


A population of Clethrionomys glareolus (bank vole) from a highly radioactive area within the Chornobyl, Ukraine exclusion zone was sampled in June 1997 and in June and October 1998. Internal radiation doses from radiocesium were estimated to be as high as 8 rads/d. Total dose, which takes into account the internal dose from radiostrontium and the surrounding environment, was estimated to be 15 to 20 rads/d. In contrast, individuals from a reference population lying outside of the exclusion zone registered negligible levels of contamination. We used the micronucleus test in a double‐blind study to analyze blood samples from 58 individuals. We scored more than 600,000 polychromatic erythrocytes (PCEs) but could not reject the null hypothesis that the frequency of micronucleated PCEs in voles exposed to radiation was equal to the frequency in unexposed voles. Results of our study stand in sharp contrast to earlier reports of increased frequencies of micronuclei in rodents exposed to fallout of the Chornobyl accident, but with radiation doses that were orders of magnitude lower than those reported here. Radioresistance and experimental methods are possible explanations for these differences in the results.


Background The University of Cape Verde (Uni-CV) was founded in 2006 and since then has developed an effective international strategy that is enhancing the teaching and research culture of the university. To build capacity in the public health field, Uni-CV has established collaborations with the University of Leicester (UoL), UK, and with the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHTM – NOVA University), Portugal. These follow different approaches. Methods Different type of capacity building initiatives focused on researchers and postgraduate students. Results The collaboration with UoL was established in 2016 and builds on funded research programmes in infectious disease and evolution of antimicrobial drug resistance (AMR). These programmes have allowed technology development and transfer, which offer the opportunity for undergraduate students to lead laboratory–based research projects at Uni-CV. In these two years, we have successfully characterised the epidemiology and patterns of AMR underlying Helicobacter pylori infections in Cape Verde. Beyond the research outputs, we have trained four undergraduates in laboratory-based microbiology at Uni-CV. From this experience, we are currently designing new sustainable higher education programmes aligned with the MSc in Public health at Uni-CV that aim to support Uni-CV lecturers in the supervision of postgraduate students, either independently or in collaboration with UoL researchers. The collaboration with IHTM was established in 2008 with the main aim of developing the research capacity of Cape Verde researchers and health professionals in infection and vector-born diseases and in bioethics. These activities have also led to collaborative research in these areas. Since then, six training courses were taught that benefited ∼20 Uni-CV lecturers and ∼100 government professionals. Conclusion Although these collaborative approaches are different in nature, they have been successful in the training of health professionals, researchers and technicians in Cape Verde and have contributed to the establishment of mutually beneficial research programmes.


In order to facilitate optimal plant DNA quantitation and identification, an assay has been developed that uses generic plant PCR primers that amplify a region in the chloroplast genome of plant samples. The assay uses the SYBR green detection dye to detect the PCR product with a universal PCR primer set to the large subunit of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase, rbcL, but can be used with any of the universal barcode primers for land plants (rbcL, matK, trnH, psbA). Standard dilutions of control wheat DNA of varying concentrations were tested to create a standard curve. Several plant DNA extractions of different species of unknown concentrations were also tested and the concentrations were quantified from the standard curve. This paper discusses the experimental procedures used to develop and optimize a real-time PCR assay for plants in order to detect plant species that is modeled after the human DNA detection system called Quantifiler for forensic applications. In principle, this can be used to quantitate DNA from any chloroplast containing plant species that is present as trace material at a crime scene, grass stains, or for food and drug analysis.


Parrondo's games were first constructed using a simple tossing scenario, which demonstrates the following paradoxical situation: in sequences of games, a winning expectation may be obtained by playing the games in a random order, although each game (game A or game B) in the sequence may result in losing when played individually. The available Parrondo's games based on the spatial niche (the neighboring environment) are applied in the regular networks. The neighbors of each node are the same in the regular graphs, whereas they are different in the complex networks. Here, Parrondo's model based on complex networks is proposed, and a structure of game B applied in arbitrary topologies is constructed. The results confirm that Parrondo's paradox occurs. Moreover, the size of the region of the parameter space that elicits Parrondo's paradox depends on the heterogeneity of the degree distributions of the networks. The higher heterogeneity yields a larger region of the parameter space where the strong paradox occurs. In addition, we use scale-free networks to show that the network size has no significant influence on the region of the parameter space where the strong or weak Parrondo's paradox occurs. The region of the parameter space where the strong Parrondo's paradox occurs reduces slightly when the average degree of the network increases.


OBJECTIVES
Quality-controlled mammography screening programs (MSP) have led to a reduction in breast cancer mortality. The purpose of this economic analysis was to assess the cost-effectiveness of MSP compared with an established opportunistic screening strategy (OS) in Switzerland, to identify the major factors influencing the economic outcome.

METHODS
Using cancer registries and clinical data, a Markov-based decision model was designed to compare MSP with OS in the Swiss female population, considering the main screening-specific performance parameters.

RESULTS
The discounted incremental life expectancy amounted to 0.022 life-years gained in favor of MSP when screening started at age 40 years and decreased to 0.008 years at the age of 70 years (number needed to screen to avoid one death over 10 years ranged from 10,000 to 2439 women depending on the baseline age). The total discounted life-time cost for screening, treatment at the baseline age of 40 years amounted in MSP to $4366 (OS: $2802) and decreased with the baseline age of 70 years to $2412 (OS: $1446). The discounted incremental cost-effectiveness ratio comparing MSP versus OS ranged from $73,018 (age 40 years) to $118,193 (age 70 years) per life-year gained. Testing all model variables confirmed that both incidence and mortality of breast cancer play the most important role in the health economic outcome, whereas cost and performances (sensitivity, specificity) of screening had a minor impact on the efficiency.

CONCLUSION
This analysis, performed under conservative assumptions, supports that MSP in Switzerland enables a relevant reduction of breast cancer mortality, at moderate additional cost, compared with OS.


The High-quality limestone resources decreased sharply worldwide, and MgO-rich limestone, as an important part of low-quality limestone, is widely used in the cement production because of its low cost. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of MgO (1-9 wt. %) on the composition and properties of belite-barium calcium sulphoaluminate cement with Na2O and K2O. The experimental results showed that 1 ~ 3 wt. % of MgO in the mineral composition was in favor of calcining and stabilizing the crystal structure of M3–C3S, R–C3S and β-C2S in the cement clinker. Furthermore, the addition of MgO evidently increased the content of R–C3S and β-C2S and goes up to the highest value of 14.47 % and 22.4 % when the addition of MgO reaches 7 wt. %, and the increment of R–C3S and β-C2S was beneficial to improve the mechanical strength of the clinker. The 3d, 7d and 28d compressive strength of the cement with 7 wt. % MgO increased by about 26 %, 7.3 % and 36.2 % than that without MgO. Meanwhile, since the addition of MgO also can promote the formation of C4AF, but has little effect on the formation of C2.75B1.25A3S – and C3A, the C3A/C4AF ratio present significantly reduction, which indicate that MgO can reduce the viscosity of the liquid phase in the process of calcination. So, the utilization of MgO in low-quality limestone has a great potential to develop low-carbon and sustainable society in producing the belite-barium calcium sulphoaluminate cement.


Authors examined 60 female and male patients (average age 25.8±2.7 years) with confirmed diagnosis - drug abuse. Average duration of drug abuse was approximately 9±3.3 years. At the moment of examination patients had been fully in remission for 3 weeks. The following non-invasive procedures were undertaken: stimulation electroneuromyogrphy and brain MRI. Received results showed that drug abuse leads to diffuse lesion of the nervous system, which manifests itself as vegetative disorders, scattered neurological symptoms, polyneuropathy. Authors gave recommendations in the field of military examination with the aim of detection of nervous disorders caused by drug abuse.


Pyomelanin is a reddish-brown pigment that provides bacteria and fungi protection from oxidative stress, and is reported to contribute to infection persistence. Production of this pigment can be inhibited by the anti-virulence agent 2-(2-nitro-4-trifluoromethylbenzoyl)-1,3-cyclohexanedione (NTBC). The Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate DKN343 exhibited high levels of resistance to NTBC, and the mechanism of pyomelanin production in this strain was uncharacterized. We determined that pyomelanin production in the clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolate DKN343 was due to a loss of function in homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase (HmgA). Several potential resistance mechanisms were investigated, and the MexAB-OprM efflux pump is required for resistance to NTBC. DKN343 has a frameshift mutation in NalC, which is a known indirect repressor of the mexAB-oprM operon. This frameshift mutation may contribute to the increased resistance of DKN343 to NTBC. Additional studies investigating the prevalence of resistance in pyomelanogenic microbes are necessary to determine the future applications of NTBC as an anti-virulence therapy.


: Epizootiologic studies were carried out on avian aegyptianellosis, especially with birds raised at poultry dressing combines and industrial poultry farms within the country. It was found that the mechanism of infection transmission was mediated not only by the role of Argas persicus ticks but also by bed bug insects of the Cimex genus, belonging to the Hemiptera order. Carriers of aegyptianellosis might also be migratory birds coming from tropical countries, such as swallows. It is concluded that avian aegyptianellosis can be referred to the group of the natural focal transmissive infections.


This thesis argues that vindicatory damages should be available in the child welfare tort cases against public authorities. These are cases in which the plaintiffs sue public authorities either for not protecting them from harm when they were children, or where it is alleged that the authority's employees abused the children while in its care. Vindicatory damages would be intended to mark the wrong to the plaintiff, rather than attempting to compensate the consequences. This thesis argues in support of the availability of a separate head of vindicatory damages in tort law, including negligence, and explores some of the liability issues which arise in these cases, including vicarious liability, liability for omissions and liability in negligence for the way in which a statutory power is exercised or for a breach of a statutory duty. New Zealand's accident compensation scheme is also discussed: it is argued that vindicatory damages in tort law should not be barred by the scheme.


We synthesized nonequilibrium (x = 0-0.95) alloy thin films by co-evaporation and studied their structural, magnetic and transport properties using x-ray diffraction (XRD), Mössbauer spectroscopy, a SQUID and a DC four-probe method. The XRD and Mössbauer spectroscopy suggested that Fe atoms supersaturate in the bcc-Eu phase up to approximately 30 at.% Fe. On the other hand, these methods gave no indication of an extension in the solubility limit of Eu in the bcc-Fe phase. These nonequilibrium films possess the following properties: in the Fe-rich side, they exhibit a ferrimagnetic behaviour characterized by compensation temperatures at which magnetization is nonzero. In the Eu-rich side, the magnetization curve at 4.2 K exhibits a small, irreversible kink at about 8 T. At the same applied field, the magnetoresistance ratio (MR) changes irreversibly from positive to negative values, while subsequent runs yield only reversible, decreasing MR curves. These observations on Eu-rich films suggest that the dissolved Fe atoms disturb the long-range helical order of the Eu spins, and that the spin structure changes irreversibly at about 8 T. At present, it remains unclear whether the above magnetic and transport behaviours are caused by the magnetic moments of Fe or simply by a structural disorder.


We have produced a model to define the linoleate-binding pocket of pea 9/13-lipoxygenase and have validated it by the construction and characterization of eight point mutants. Three of the mutations reduced, to varying degrees, the catalytic centre activity (kcat) of the enzyme with linoleate. In two of the mutants, reductions in turnover were associated with changes in iron-coordination. Multiple sequence alignments of recombinant plant and mammalian lipoxygenases of known positional specificity, and the results from numerous other mutagenesis and modelling studies, have been combined to discuss the possible role of the mutated residues in pea 9/13-lipoxygenase catalysis. A new nomenclature for recombinant plant lipoxygenases based on positional specificity has subsequently been proposed. The null-effect of mutating pea 9/13-lipoxygenase at the equivalent residue to that which controlled dual positional specificity in cucumber 13/9-lipoxygenase, strongly suggests that the mechanisms controlling dual positional specificity in pea 9/13-lipoxygenase and cucumber 13/9-lipoxygenase are different. This was supported from modelling of another isoform of pea lipoxygenase, pea 13/9-lipoxygenase. Dual positional specificity in pea lipoxygenases is more likely to be determined by the degree of penetration of the methyl terminus of linoleate and the volume of the linoleate-binding pocket rather than substrate orientation. A single model for positional specificity, that has proved to be inappropriate for arachidonate-binding to mammalian 5-, 12- and 15-lipoxygenases, would appear to be true also for linoleate-binding to plant 9- and 13-lipoxygenases.


Background: Cutaneous calcification results from deposition of insoluble calcium phosphorous salts in the cutaneous tissues. There are wide clinical presentations of calcinosis cutis and it's a rare dermatological problem. However serious implication may arise due to delayed diagnosis. Objective: To highlight and elaborate different clinical types of calcinosis cutis among Iraqi patients. Patients and Methods: This observational, descriptive, clinical and histopathological study was done in Department of DermatologyBaghdad Hospital-Medical City, Baghdad, Iraq during the period from January 1997-Decmber 2012.History, examination and complete investigations if needed were done for each patient including all demographic points related to the disease. Excisional or incisional biopsies from each patient for histopathological evaluation were done. Results: A total of 72 patients were included. They were 46 (63.01%) females and 27(38%) males. Their ages ranged from 3.5– 65(24.74±15.9) years. They were classified into 2 groups: Group A the dystrophic type with 65(89.04%) patients and was subdivided into calcinosis cutis universalis which constituted from 6(8.2%) cases. The 2 subtype is calcinosis cutis circumscriptum which consist of 58(79.7%) cases. Group B: 8 (11.11%) patients with idiopathic type, 1 (12.5%) with idiopathic scrotal calcinosis and 2(25%) with subepidermal calcified nodule. Conclusion: Calcinosis cutis is a rare medical problem with multiple etiological factors in which we see calcified deposits mainly in the skin. This is the first report appeared from Iraq.


Thermal conductivity of solids and liquids under pressure is covered in this review. Experimental techniques are critically considered and compared, and an introduction to theory is provided. Results are presented and discussed for ionic crystals, normal molecular crystals, plastic crystal phases, clathrate hydrates, polymers and glass-formers, liquids, covalent and semiconducting crystals, rocks and metals. Special attention is given to isochoric conditions, change of crystal structure and molecular orientational disorder. Available reliable measurements at pressures up to a few GPa indicate the need for theoretical development, especially in connection with molecular crystals and ferromagnetic metals.


Blood concentrations of penicillin were maintained at measurable levels for as long as seven or eight hours following single intramuscular injections of penicillin in the dog and in patients by means of vehicles containing 6 per cent. to 20 per cent. ossein gelatin and a long-acting vasoconstrictor drug. Intramuscular administration of penicillin can thus be carried on with three instead of eight injections per day with less variation in the extremes of penicillin blood levels.


Cardiac electrophysiology procedures are routinely used to treat patients with rhythm disorders. The success rates of ablation procedures and cardiac resynchronization therapy are still sub-optimal. Recent advances in medical imaging, image processing and cardiac biophysical modeling have the potential to improve patient outcome. This manuscript provides an overview of how these advances have been translated into the clinical environment.


Although the debate about the link between poverty and the incidence of urban crime in developing countries is complex, nowhere is the link more persuasive than in the urban low-income communities of these countries. Based on official police data, key informant interviews (KIIs), and focus group discussions (FGDs) from five low-income urban neighbourhoods in Ghana, we analyse the incidence and drivers of sexual crimes in urban low-income communities. The analysis revealed that sexual offences are one of the major crimes in Ghana, in spite of the legal and institutional frameworks to curb these acts. We argue that in urban low-income communities, poor housing (reflected in high room occupancy rates, overcrowding, and congestion) and poverty in general promote sexual crimes in such communities. Moreover, patriarchal attitudes serve to exacerbate particularly females' exposure and vulnerability to sexual crimes. We recommend that policy measures to reduce sexual crimes should not focus exclusively on education and institutionalization of legal frameworks but also extend to poverty reduction programmes that include urban planning and slum housing upgrading. Key words : gender; poverty; sexual crimes; urban low-income communities; Ghana