To study the deep structure of El Hierro Island, Canary Archipelago, we used a new microseismic sounding method based on the fact that Earth's crust heterogeneities disturb in their vicinity the spectrum of low-frequency microseismic field. At the Earth's surface above the high-velocity heterogeneities the spectral amplitudes of definite frequency f are decreasing, and above the low-velocity ones they are increasing. The frequency f is connected with depth of heterogeneity deposition H and velocity of fundamental Rayleigh mode VR(f) by the following relation H = K*VR(f) /f, here К- is numerical factor close to 0.4. From microseismic data two large intrusive bodies were revealed beneath El Hierro Island. Joint interpretation of microseismic and gravimetric data and their comparison with previously obtained geological and geochemical data by other authors enables supposing that the eastern intrusive body relates to the early stage of the island formation. In the western body at the depths ~15 km the area with lowest seismic velocities could be revealed. We suggest that a modern magmatic chamber is located there.


Public key cryptography can introduce significant processing delays in vehicular communication platforms. This can lead to serious performance issues, especially in the case of multi-hop Inter-Vehicle Communication. In this paper we propose Adaptive Message Authentication (AMA), a lightweight filtering scheme that reduces the number of cryptographic operations performed by the nodes. Based only on local observations and with no additional communication channel, our scheme achieves global improvement of network performance. We show through simulation that the scheme successfully adapts the number of cryptographic operations to the locally observed number of adversaries.


Author(s): Saravia, Paula Francisca | Abstract: Along both sides of the Bolivian-Chilean border, the indigenous Aymara suffer from tuberculosis at much higher rates than white-mestizos. They also experience the illness differently. In this comparative and multi-sited study, I use qualitative methods to highlight these differences and demonstrate that they emerge from processes of structural violence, in particular institutional racism and precarity. I show that in Chile, while the Aymara face economic instability and political exclusion due to the state's neoliberal multicultural approach, they are also highly medicalized. In Bolivia, they benefit from an ongoing process of sociopolitical transformation towards decolonization which values their political membership, yet the state is structurally constrained from fully delivering biomedical antituberculosis treatment to Aymara communities. This produces contrasting ways of interpreting and signifying pain associated with tuberculosis. In Chile, patients engage with the biomedical treatment while in Bolivia, I argue that Aymara patients are able to contest treatment and resist medicalization by integrating the indigenous concept of suma qamana (to live well) to their everyday struggles for achieving prosperity and health.Considering ethnopsychological theorization of emotions, I underline the role of both emotions and cultural conceptions of health in shaping the illness experience. I analyze Aymara notions of salir adelante (to come through) and prosperidad (prosperity) in relation to notions of health, economic prosperity, and emotional well-being. I discuss the particular associations that Aymara make between the individual illness experience and indigenous identity in both countries by looking at the traditional hydraulic- topographic model of the body, and the importance of wari (fat) in relation to samana (breath), and ch'ama (physical energy), sweat, and work as key features of the framing of ujuk usu. I argue that renegar (bitterness/sadness) and compartir (community engagement) are linked to larger indigenous discourses of suma qamana, which are currently decoded and enforced through decolonization policies in Bolivia and neoliberal multiculturalism in Chile. This dissertation advances the political dimension of the medicalization process and its relevance in understanding the embodiment of structural inequalities that transcend national borders


In order to learn about the dynamic characteristics of the oil storage tank, detect and identify the damaged oil storage tank, based on the basic principle of the experimental modal analysis, the modal test was maken on the vertical dome roof steel oil storage tank model with the hammer method of multi-point input and output on single point, and the identification ability of the modal parameter was studied when the oil storage tank model is damaged. At the same time, we carried out the model's simulation calculation with FEA, considering the effects of the structural physical parameters and the foundation parameters of the oil storage tank. The calculated results of modal test are in accordance with test values, the analysis results provides certain basis for the damage identification and health monitoring work of the oil storage tank structure.


(hypercholesterolaemia, hypertension, smoking, obesity, lack of exercise, and diabetes mellitus) and ischaemic heart disease I concluded that, for each factor, the association is largely or wholly genetic in origin. Trends in the sexand age-specific mortality from ischaemic heart disease in US whites and non-whites during the period of falling rates, 1968-75, were also studied. They were compared with those for mortality from all causes-which are uncomplicated by errors of death certification. From the close parallels between the two sets of trends we can be reasonably confident that the recorded fall in mortality from ischaemic heart disease is largely genuine.' The special characteristics of the fall, especially in whites, imply that changes in the conventional "risk factors"-which on independent grounds appear to be non-causal-are most unlikely to have made any appreciable contribution. However, the trends are consistent with the hypothesis that the impact of one or more extrinsic precipitators of ischaemic heart disease has fallen.' (Mortality statistics for the Australian population2 show that a similar interpretation can be given to the fall in ischaemic heart disease recorded over the period from 1965-7 to 1977-8.) Agents that can act as precipitators include allergens and micro-organisms of all kinds, although viruses must be regarded as promising candidates for the precipitation of ischaemic heart disease because of the apparent exacerbating action3 4 of influenza viruses. (Precipitators start the active disease process by freeing "forbidden clones" of lymphocytes from the host's defence system; pathogenic forbidden clones proliferate and attack endothelial cells of coronary arteries. Exacerbators increase the severity of attack by already active forbidden clones.) If this interpretation is substantially correct then changes in diet, smoking, and exercise will have no appreciable influence on mortality from ischaemic heart disease unless they happen to change the prevalence, transmissibility, or effectiveness of the hypothetical precipitators. Confirmation and identification of these precipitating agents is much to be desired if we are to prevent ischaemic heart disease through planned control.


Applying the linearized equations of motion, projection on the complex plane and a representation of the velocity vector and the forcing sea surface elevation gradient in function of the eigenvectors of the homogeneous system, we developed a theory that explains essential properties of tidal currents. We found the existence of a fundamental vector which we call sense of rotation s. The ellipticity, until now defined as a scalar quantity, results from the theory as a vector ɛ, normalized from s. ɛ is a measure of the eccentricity and sense of rotation of tidal ellipses and has some properties that are similar to those of the angular velocity. We derived an expression for the major and minor semi‐axis in function of physical properties and characteristics of amphidromic systems. These and other results of the theory allow the analysis of important aspects of tidal currents.


Continuous discharge from a combined sewer overflow (CSO) into a tidal wetland creek in the New York City urban area was analyzed to assess the extent of water quality degradation during both dry and wet weather. A combination of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), total suspended solids, and dissolved metals were used to infer the presence of sewage and fecal pollution from the CSO discharge and to constrain the spatial and temporal impact on water quality and dry season creek flows. Upstream of the CSO, creek flow was dominated by groundwater input, and FIB levels were very low or undetected, indicating the absence of contamination. Low-volume loading was detected in dry weather, in contrast to the expected impact when a CSO is operating as designed (flowing only following wet weather). In wet weather, a "first flush" peak was detected for some contaminants, followed by diluted contaminant concentrations due to increased flow volume but resulting in greater total loading that affected a larger area. The correlation of bacteriological and metal indicators in paired spatial and temporal samples revealed a positive relationship between the concentration of some metals (e.g. Na, Fe) and FIB. Variable patterns of peak metal concentration in the creek, with respect to precipitation and FIB level, also suggest changes in contaminant source and the influence of tidal backwater. Permanent URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20003377


Oxide-Encapsulated Electrocatalysts for Solar Fuels Production Natalie Labrador As the cost of solar energy continues to drop, the major hurdle limiting the widespread use of intermittent renewable solar energy is the lack of efficient and cost-effective energy storage. Electrochemical technologies, such as electrolyzers, photoelectrochemical cells, and fuel cells, have the potential to compensate for solar energy intermittency on a large scale, by converting excess solar energy into storable solar fuels, such as hydrogen (H2), which can be converted back to electrical energy at a later time. However, improvements in the efficiency and lifetime of these technologies, in particular the electrocatalysts, are necessary for their commercialization. During operation, efficiency losses result from energetic penalties (overpotentials) associated with several processes occurring at or near the electrocatalyst/electrolyte (ohmic resistance, kinetic barriers, and mass transport limitations). These losses can be further exacerbated due to electrocatalyst durability issues such as dissolution, agglomeration, detachment, and poisoning. A major challenge in electrocatalysis field is developing methods to mitigate these losses without adversely affecting the electrocatalytic stability, selectivity, and/or activity. One promising solution is an oxide-encapsulated electrocatalyst architecture, which has been shown to improve electrocatalyst durability and provide mechanisms for controlling reaction pathways. Previous studies on oxide-encapsulated electrocatalysts, in which metal catalysts are fully or partially covered by ultrathin layers of permeable oxide films, have mostly focused on supported nanoparticles because of their high electrochemically active surface area per catalyst loading. However, these nanoparticle-based architectures tend to have poorly defined and/or nonuniform structures which make it difficult to understand and elucidate structure-propertyrelationships. This dissertation investigates well-defined oxide-coated electrocatalysts, which serve as model platforms for gaining a fundamental understanding of kinetic and transport phenomena that underlie their operation. This dissertation presents three studies which highlight the versatile functionalities of oxide-encapsulated electrocatalysts to improve the electrocatalyst stability, selectivity, and activity in different electrochemical systems. This dissertation demonstrates the ability of room temperature synthesized silicon oxide (SiOx)-encapsulated Pt electrocatalysts to: i) stabilize nanoparticles and improve electron transfer, ii) mitigate catalyst poisoning and control reaction pathways through selective transport, and iii) alter reaction energetics associated with catalysis at the buried interface. First, this dissertation establishes the ability of room temperature synthesized SiOx coatings to stabilize nanoparticle electrocatalysts by mitigating electrocatalyst migration, coalescence, and detachment on metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) photoelectrodes for solar-driven water splitting. Metallic Pt nanoparticles are inherently unstable on the insulating support due to poor physical adhesion and electronic coupling between Pt and SiO2. To overcome this issue, a room temperature UV ozone synthesis process was used to deposit 2-10 nm thick SiOx overlayers on top of electrodeposited Pt nanoparticles to stabilize Pt on the electrode surface. The photoelectrodes containing oxide-encapsulated electrocatalysts exhibit superior durability and electron transfer (ohmic) properties compared to the photoelectrode that lacked the SiOx encapsulation. While this study demonstrates that the oxide-encapsulated electrocatalyst architecture improves the stability of electrocatalytic nanoparticles deposited on insulating materials, it does not elucidate how reactants and products transport through the SiOx barrier to reach the Pt surface. In order to gain a better understanding of kinetic and transport phenomena that govern performance of oxide-encapsulated electrocatalysts, the following studies investigate model electrodes consisting of continuous SiOx overlayers of uniform thickness deposited onto smooth Pt thin films. This planar electrode geometry allows for simple and unambiguous characterization of structure-property relationships. The next study systematically evaluates the influence of SiOx thickness on the HER performance to understand species transport through SiOx. Through detailed characterization and electroanalytical tests, it is shown that proton and H2 transport occur primarily through the SiOx coating such that the HER occurs at the buried Pt|SiOx interface. Importantly, the SiOx nanomembranes were found to exhibit high selectivity for proton and H2 transport compared to Cu, a model HER poison. Leveraging this property, it is shown that SiOx–encapsulation can enable poison-resistant operation of Pt HER electrocatalysts. This oxide-encapsulated architecture offers a promising approach to enhancing electrocatalyst stability while incorporating advanced catalytic functionalities such as poison resistance or tunable reaction selectivity. The final study demonstrates ability of SiOx overlayers to alter reaction energetics associated with catalysis at the buried interface. Carbon monoxide (CO), methanol, and ethanol oxidation reactions are studied for their relevance in direct alcohol fuel cell applications. Oxidesupported catalysts have been shown to enhance alcohol oxidation by promoting CO oxidation at metal/oxide interfacial regions through the so-called bifunctional mechanism, in which hydroxyls on the oxide facilitate the removal of adsorbed CO−intermediates from active sites. A key advantage of the oxide-encapsulated electrocatalyst design compared to oxide–supported nanoparticles is that the former maximizes the density of metal/oxide interfacial sites. This study shows that the SiOx overlayer provides proximal hydroxyls, in the form of silanol groups, which can enhance CO and alcohol oxidation through unique interactions at the buried Pt|SiOx interface. Overall, this dissertation highlights the potential of using oxide-encapsulated electrocatalysts for stable, selective, and efficient electrochemical production and use of solar fuels.


This paper presents a DSGE model with banks that face moral hazard in management. Banks receive demand deposits and fund investment projects. Banks are subject to potential withdrawals by depositors which may force them into early liquidation of their investments. The likelihood of this happening depends on the bank management efforts to keep the bank financially sound and the degree of bank leverage. We study the properties of this model under different monetary and macro-prudential policy arrangements. Our model is able to replicate the pro-cyclicality of leverage, and provides insights on the interplay between bank leverage and bank management incentives as a result of monetary, productivity and financial shocks. We find that a combination of pro-cyclical capital requirements and a standard monetary policy are well suited to contain the effects on output and prices of a downturn, keeping the financial system in check. Yet, in an expansionary phase (i.e. a productivity shock) this policy combination may produce desirable results for some macro-variables but at the expense of a deterioration in other macro-financial indicators.


This paper undertakes a reliability study using both classical and Bayesian semi-parametric frameworks to explore the impact of a locomotive wheel's position on its service lifetime and to predict its other reliability characteristics. The goal is to illustrate how degradation data can be modeled and analyzed by using classical and Bayesian approaches. The adopted data in the case study have been collected from the Swedish company. The results show that: 1) an exponential degradation path is a better choice for the studied locomotive wheels; 2) both classical and Bayesian semi-parametric approaches are useful tools to analysis degradation data; 3) under given operation conditions, the position of the locomotive wheel could influence its reliability.


Academic understanding of legal interpretation in Lithuania encounters conceptual and doctrinal problems. General conceptual problems are those of differentiation and definition of legal interpretation as a phenomenon. Specific conceptual problems are related to misleading, logically inadequate or at least questionable naming and analysis of some concrete methods of legal interpretation. Doctrinal problems in Lithuania are related to the over-devaluation of the linguistic method of interpretation and, as a consequence, raising and propagating the doctrine of the active court to the detriment of the doctrine of the separation of powers. Democracy, however, requires that the doctrine of separation of powers be prioritized.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the anxiolytic effects of myristicin, a major compound found in nutmeg, and its potential interaction with the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA(A)) receptor in male Sprague-Dawley rats. Nutmeg has traditionally been used as a spice in food preparation and as an herbal remedy in the treatment of many medical conditions, including anxiety. Fifty-five rats were divided equally into 5 groups: control (vehicle); myristicin; midazolam (positive control); flumazenil and myristicin; and midazolam and myristicin. The behavioral component of anxiety was examined by using the elevated plus-maze (open-arm and closed-arm times) along with analysis of gross and fine motor movements. Data analysis was performed using a 2-tailed multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and least significant difference post-hoc test. Our data suggest that myristicin does not decrease anxiety by modulation of the GABA(A) receptor but may promote anxiogenesis. When myristicin was combined with midazolam, an antagonist-like effect similar to the flumazenil and myristicin combination was exhibited by a decrease in anxiolysis compared with the midazolam-only group. Myristicin may antagonize the anxiolytic effects of midazolam, increase anxiety, and affect motor movements.


We examine 111 mergers and acquisitions by public U.S. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) 1997-2005. We find that acquirer abnormal shareholder returns are significantly positive for mergers with private targets and significantly negative for public targets, a result that is consistent with findings for conventional firms. We examine the relationship between acquirer corporate governance and abnormal returns. Shareholder returns are lower for REITs wih larger and staggered boards, longer CEO tenure, lower percentage ownership by their CEO and management and when block holders are present. This is consistent with recent evidence form the conventional financial theory. Returns are positively related to the firm's operating performance prior to the merger announcement and negatively related to the leverage of the acquirer.


Information, resources, and community for transgender and other LGBTQ+ topics relating to St. Catherine University and its students and staff.


The paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-four replicator teams attempted to verify results reported in an original study by running the same models with the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. A "transparent" group received the original study and code, and an "opaque" group received the same underlying study but with only a methods section and description of the regression coefficients without size or significance, and no code. The transparent group mostly verified the original study (95.5%), while the opaque group had less success (89.4%). Qualitative investigation of the replicators' workflows reveals many causes of non-verification. Two categories of these causes are hypothesized, routine and non-routine. After correcting non-routine errors in the research process to ensure that the results reflect a level of quality that should be present in 'real-world' research, the rate of verification was 96.1% in the transparent group and 92.4% in the opaque group. Two conclusions follow: (1) Although high, the verification rate suggests that it would take a minimum of three replicators per study to achieve replication reliability of at least 95% confidence assuming ecological validity in this controlled setting, and (2) like any type of scientific research, replication is prone to errors that derive from routine and undeliberate actions in the research process. The latter suggests that idiosyncratic researcher variability might provide a key to understanding part of the "reliability crisis" in social and behavioral science and is a reminder of the importance of transparent and well documented workflows.


Boundary layers, although unnoticeable to the naked eye, are a characteristic found where the velocity of a
fluid relative to a solid surface is zero, hence in the vicinity of this surface a region of velocity increases
rapidly from zero up to main stream velocity. This has the undesirable effect of causing turbulent flow over
long surfaces, which reduce the performance of moving solids (examples being cyclists, automobiles, aircrafts) by introducing frictional drag forces. It has been noted that skin-fnction drag is strongly enhanced by the onset of turbulence, however, in turn this turbulence is also greatly enhanced by the separation of the airflow. In combination this laminar flow separation and skin-fnction drag decrease lift effects and/or increase pressure drag on aerodynamic surfaces, resulting in decreased efficiency, that is, increased fuel consumption. This research aims to examine the development of the boundary layer. Specifically the study will look at the effects of separation within the boundary layer and on its impact on the development of the boundary layer and other aspects of the fluid flow.

Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD is the analysis of systems involving such phenomena as fluid flow,
by means of computer-based simulation. This technique is very powerful and spans a wide range of applications CFD has lagged behind other simulation techniques due to the complexity of fluid flow behaviour. However, the availability of affordable high performance computational hardware and the introduction of user friendly interfaces, have led to a recent upsurge of interest in the development of CFD simulation packages such as FLUENT. Using CFD a computational model is built to represent a system or device that is under investigation. The advantages of using CFD are to substantially reduce lead times and costs of new designs, also it is a means of predicting certain outcomes before manufacture.

To conduct the experimental stages of this research a wind tunnel facility was designed and constructed inhouse.
In conjunction with this, 2D CFD models o f the wind tunnel test section were developed. The wind tunnel facility was then used to validate the readings obtained from the CFD models. A number of blunt plate test pieces were placed in the wind tunnel and the resulting boundary layer development across the test pieces was measured A 2D CFD model was also constructed and the results were consistent with experimental findings. Experimental results revealed a reattachment o f the flow, with the surface o f the test pieces, at a point o f x/d = 4 444 from the leading edge of the test piece.


In 2016, IceCube initiated a system of public real-time alerts that are typically issued within one
minute, following the detection of a neutrino candidate event that is likely to be of astrophysical
origin. The goal of these alerts is to enable multi-messenger observations that may identify the
neutrino source. Through January 31, 2019, a total of 20 public alerts have been issued, with
many of them receiving follow-up observations across multiple wavelength bands. One alert in
particular, IceCube-170922A, was found to be associated with a flaring gamma-ray blazar, TXS
0506+056. This was the first >3 sigma association of a high-energy neutrino with an electromagnetic counterpart. In 2019, the IceCube collaboration is introducing a new set of neutrino
candidate selections that expand the alert program. These new selections provide two alert channels. A "Gold" channel will issue alerts for neutrino candidates at least 50% likely to be of
astrophysical origin and is expected to deliver ∼10 alerts per year. Additionally a more frequent
"Bronze" channel will provide ∼20 alerts per year for neutrino candidates that are between 30%
and 50% likely to be of astrophysical origin. We present the neutrino event selections used to
generate these alerts, the expected alert rates, and a description of the alert message.


Several dynamic call admission control (CAC) schemes for cellular networks have been proposed in the literature to reserve resources adaptively to provide the desired quality of service (QoS) to not only high priority calls but also to low priority ones. Efficient adaptive reservations depend on reliable and up-to-date system status feedback provided to the CAC mechanism. However exact analysis of these schemes using multidimensional Markov chain models are intractable in real time due to the need to solve large sets of flow equations. Hence performance metrics such as call blocking probabilities of various QoS classes are generally evaluated using one dimensional Markov chain models assuming that channel occupancy times for all QoS classes have equal mean values and all arriving calls have equal capacity requirements. In this paper we re-evaluate the analytical methods to compute call blocking probabilities of various QoS classes for several widely known CAC schemes by relaxing these assumptions, and propose a novel approximation method for performance evaluation with low computational complexity. Numerical results show that proposed method provides results that match well with the exact solutions.


Luke is a good-looking young man, but he's not very clever with words. Gemma is clever with words, but what does she want? Lucy and Becky are good friends, but what about Sam? He makes wonderful cakes, but does he make mistakes too? Nina and Dragan are in love, so deeply in love, but they live in the wrong place, at the wrong time ...All love stories have moments of happiness, pain, misunderstanding, laughter, and sometimes great sadness. But love will nearly always find a way ...


Speed-the-Plow's Broadway run is the most recent triumph of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's astonishingly productive career. "By turns hilarious and chilling....the culmination of this playwright's work to date....Riveting theater."-Frank Rich, New York Times; "A brilliant black comedy, a dazzling dissection of Hollywood cupidity and another tone poem by our foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy... On its deepest level it belongs with the darker disclosures of movie-biz pathology like Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon. In a sense Speed-the-Plow distills all of these to a stark quintessence: there's hardly a line in it that isn't somehow insanely funny or scarily insane... [It is a] scathingly comic play."-Jack Kroll, Newsweek


Six novel organic-inorganic hybrid polyoxometalate derivatives, K[(H2O)4(3-Hpic)2Ce][(H2O)5(3-Hpic)2Ce][PW10Ti2O40]·11H2O 1, K[(H2O)4(3-Hpic)2Nd][(H2O)5(3-Hpic)2Nd][PW10Ti2O40]·12H2O 2, K[(H2O)4(3-Hpic)2Sm][(H2O)5(3-Hpic)2Sm][PW10Ti2O40]·8H2O 3, H[(H2O)7(4-Hpic)La][(4-Hpic)2LaPW11O39]·14.5H2O 4, H[(H2O)7(4-Hpic)Ce][(4-Hpic)2CePW11O39]·7.5H2O 5, and K(4-Hpic)0.5[(H2O)6(4-Hpic)Nd][(4-Hpic)2NdPW11O39]·10H2O 6, (3-Hpic = 3-picolinic acid; 4-Hpic = 4-picolinic acid) have been synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, IR, solid state UV-vis spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, powder X-ray diffraction and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Isostructural compounds 1-3 are hybrid dimers that consist of two Ti-substituted Keggin-type polyoxoanions [PW10Ti2O40]7- and four Ln-3-Hpic coordination groups. The strong hydrogen bonds in 1-3 can make these dimers yield a 1D supramolecular chain. Compounds 4-6 are also dimers constructed from two lanthanide-substituted Keggin-type polyoxoanions [PW11LnO39]4- and four 4-Hpic ligands, which are further linked by two Ln-4-Hpic groups to form a bi-supporting structure. Then these subunits are joined together by strong hydrogen-bonding interactions between polyoxoanions and coordinated water molecules to produce a 2D supramolecular framework. All these compounds as heterogeneous Lewis acid-base catalysts show high activity and high selectivity for the cyanosilylation of different carbonyl compounds under solvent-free conditions, and can be recycled without any obvious inactivation.


Introduction: Autologous fat graft possesses the desired qualities of a filling material. However, the largest barriers to its further development are unpredictable results and high rate of absorption of the grafted fat over time. The objective is to perform a volumetric assessment of the breasts in patients undergoing fat grafting using pre-operative external expansion (BRAVA®). Methods: Nineteen patients were operated between March 2012 and June 2015 in the Service of Plastic Surgery, Santa Casa de São Paulo. The parameters evaluated using nuclear magnetic resonance (pre-operatively and 6 months post-operatively) were the following: augmented volume=postoperative volume pre-operative volume; percentage of augmentation=augmented volume/pre-operative volume x 100; percentage of integration=augmented volume/volume grafted x 100. Results: The average volume of the breasts in the preand post-operative periods were 294.73 ml and 458.42 ml, respectively. The average graft volume was 274.4 ml (150-350 ml). The following parameters were assessed: average volume augmentation, 168.42 ml (90-270 ml); average percentage of augmentation, 58.98% (23-90%); and average percentage of integration, 62.36% (30-80%). Conclusion: The use of external expansion (BRAVA®) in breasts was effective in increasing the rates of integration of the fat grafts and the overall augmentation in breast volumes. ■ ABSTRACT


Introduction: Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is associated with a high frequency of gastroesophageal reflux and arousals. Nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux (nGER) is strongly associated with sleep disturbances and disturbed sleep results in increased nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux. Objectives: It was aimed to study the prevalence of nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In our study, we sought to evaluate the correlation between the frequency and type of arousals and episodes of nGER in OSA cases. Materials and Methods: We conducted an observational study among sixty patients already diagnosed with OSA on the basis of standard sleep criteria. Demographic data, anthropometric measurements, and detailed medical history were recorded. All subjects underwent polysomnography study and filled out the validated Gastroesophagal disease-health related quality of life questionnaire (GERD-HRQL). Statistical analysis was done by the multivariate regression model. Results: There was a strong significant correlation between apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and GERD score. (r = 0.544, p = 0.002). Moreover, respiratory arousal index was also significantly correlated with GERD score (r = 0.370, p = 0.040). It was found that AHI was a strong predictor of GERD with a significant regression model (p < 0.002, r 2 = 0.0272). Respiratory arousal index (RAI) was responsible for 13.7% (r 2 = 0.137) variance which was statistically significant p = 0.040 (p < 0.05). Desaturation index (DI) also predicted significantly about the gastroesophageal reflux (p = 0.005). Conclusion: The present results suggest that the occurrence of arousals was related to episodes of nGER in OSA. Funding: This study was part of Short Term Research Student-ship (STS) program of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). in Obstructive Sleep Apnea. Indian Sleep Med 2018;13(2): 21-24.


This dissertation puts forward a new and broader understanding of the factors that contributed to greater economic opportunity and declining poverty rates during the Great Society years and beyond through a study of the nation's first rural Community Action Agency (CAA) to receive federal funds as a part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Craven Operation Progress, Inc. (COP), located in mostly rural Eastern North Carolina, also was one of the eleven sites funded by the private non-profit North Carolina Fund, whose antipoverty programs both predated and served as models for the national War on Poverty. Aside from just the timing and source of its funding, the experiences of COP reveal a refreshingly different and far more encompassing story than has been told. In addition to focusing primarily on the fight to eradicate poverty in America's largest urban centers (many of which, like Mayor Daley's Chicago, were exceptional cases), scholarship on the War on Poverty has generally assumed that middle-class whites on CAA boards were either uninterested or unable to truly meet the needs of the poor, biracial agreement and cooperation was essentially impossible, and that confrontation and direct protest led by the poor and their liberal advocates was the primary and the most consistently effective means behind social change. "Coastal Progress: Eastern North Carolina's War on Poverty, 1963-1972" challenges these assumptions. With few exceptions, scholars have not looked beyond episodic conflicts and controversies to assess the wide-ranging interactions between whites and non-whites and between the poor and non-poor in their evaluations of CAAs. The research conducted for this study, which relies heavily on several untapped primary sources including 1960s and 1970s-era oral interviews of antipoverty workers and local citizens, records from the U.S. Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), and written communications between COP and the North Carolina Fund as well as the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), confirms that negotiation and moderate white and black leadership in combination with manpower and economic development were key to the creation of economic opportunities for poor people in Eastern North Carolina and also to making those opportunities accessible to the poor, blacks in particular.


Addresses are critical for finding locations. They are used by emergency services, by utilities, for delivery of mail and parcels, and for our daily navigation. The inability to find a location because an address is missing from a database or points to the wrong location incurs an economic cost, and these costs can be significant. There are two key challenges to estimating the potential cost of missing and incorrect address information. The first challenge is to estimate the number of addresses that are missing or incorrect in the various databases used by different agencies. The second challenge is to estimate the cost of missing or incorrect address; these are not reported by the various agencies that incur these costs. Over the course of the week-long MISG-2015 workshop these challenges were explored. We had insufficient data to make accurate estimates of the extent or cost of addressing errors. However, seven confirmed cases where ambulance delay was a factor in the cause of death indicate that the cost of addressing errors is likely to exceed $1 million per year in Queensland. More data is required to estimate the costs of addressing errors to other service providers and to estimate how effective corrections are in reducing the costs of addressing errors. Our findings should help focus efforts on developing processes to detect and correct errors.

 References P. Beynon-Davies. Information systems `failure': the case of the London Ambulance Service's Computer Aided Despatch project. European Journal of Information Systems , 4:171–184, 1995. Michael R. Cayo and Thomas O. Talbot. Positional error in automated geocoding of residential addresses. International Journal of Health Geographics , 2(10), 2003. SM Dearwent, RR Jacobs, and JB Halbert. Locational uncertainty in georeferencing public health datasets. Journal of exposure analysis and environmental epidemiology , 11(4):329–334, 2001. Julia Edwards, Alan McKinnon, Tom Cherrett, Fraser McLeod, and Liying Song. The impact of Failed Home Deliveries on Carbon Emmisions: Are Collection/Delivery Points Environmentally-Friendly Alternatives. In 14th Annual Logistics Research Network Conference , 2009. Julia Edwards, Alan McKinnon, Tom Cherrett, Fraser McLeod, and Liying Song. Carbon Dioxide Benefits of Using Collection-Delivery Points for Failed Home Deliveries in the United Kingdom. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board , 2191:136–143, 2010. Christine Flatley. Widow sues government over faulty ambulance equipment. Brisbane Times , 11 March 2010. Peter Foley. Paramedics plead for house numbers on rural properties. Queensland Times , 20 February 2015. David I Gregorio, Ellen Cromley, Richard Mrozinski, and Stephen J Walsh. Subject loss in spatial analysis of breast cancer. Health and Place , 5(2):173–177, 1999. S.D. Jones, S. Eagleson, F.J. Escobar, and G.J. Hunter. Lost in the Mail: the Inherent Errors of Mapping Australia Post Postcodes to ABS Derived Postal Areas. Australian Geographical Studies , 41(2):171–179, 2003. Nataliya Kravets and Wilbur C. Hadden. The accuracy of address coding and the effects of coding errors. Health and Place , 13(1):293–298, 2007. Part Special Issue: Environmental Justice, Population Health, Critical Theory and GIS. Andrew B. Lawson. Editorial. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology , 1(2–3), 2010. Stephanie Linning. Dirty ambulance satnav and staff taking down the wrong address \protect \global \let \T1\textellipsis .\kern \fontdimen 3\font .\kern \fontdimen 3\font .\kern \fontdimen 3\font \T1\textellipsis two in a catalogue of 999 blunders that led to patient deaths, according to investigation. Daily Mail Australia , December 7 2014. Nev Madsen. Seconds count: Ambos call for visible rural numbering. The Chronicle , 5 March 2014. Chris Marshall. Thousands of ambulances sent to wrong addresses. The Scotsman , January 5 2015. John McMilan. Australia Post: Determing Levels of Compensation for Loss or Damage of Postal Items. Technical report, Postal Industry Ombudsman, 2010. Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council. The Health of Nations: The Value of a Statistical Life. Technical report, Australian Safety and Compensation Council, February 2008. M. Norman Oliver, Kevin A. Matthews, Mir Siadaty, Fern R. Hauck, and Linda W Pickle. Geographic bias related to geocoding in epidemiologic studies. International Journal of Health Geographics , 4(29), 2005. Peter C. Smith and Andrew Street. Measuring the efficiency of public services: the limits of analysis. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) , 168(2):401–417, 2005. Tuck Thompson. Widow accuses Queensland Ambulance Service of covering up botched responses. Courier-Mail , 2 April 2013. David Wastell and Michael Newman. Information system design, stress and organisational change in the ambulance services: A tale of two cities. Accounting, Management and Information Technologies , 6(4):283–300, 1996. Eric A. Whitsel, P. Miguel Quibrera, Richard L. Smith, Diane J. Catellier, Duanping Liao, Amanda C. Henley, and Gerardo Heiss. Accuracy of commercial geocoding: assessment and implications. Epidemiologic Perspectives and Innovations 2006, 3:8 , 3, 2006. Paul A. Zandbergen and Joseph W. Green. Error and Bias in Determining Exposure Potential of Children at School Locations Using Proximity-Based GIS Techniques. Environmental Health Perspectives , 115(9):1363–1370, 2007. Dale L. Zimmerman, Xiangming Fang, and Soumya Mazumdar. Spatial clustering of the failure to geocode and its implications for the detection of disease clustering. Statistics in Medicine , 27(21):4254–4266, 2008. Dale L. Zimmerman, Xiangming Fang, Soumya Mazumdar, and Gerard Rushton. Modeling the probability distribution of positional errors incurred by residential address geocoding. International Journal of Health Geographics , 6(1), 2007.


With nanoparticles (NPs) getting more and more crucial to various key technologies, it is essential to sustainedly develop new NPs with desirable functionalities. In this regard, nanoscale metal–organic particles (NMOPs) offer a competitive choice due to their highly tunable nature, whereas seeking new organic ligands (e.g. polymeric ones) represents a preferable research direction on NMOPs. With these points in mind, a water- and ethanol-soluble vinylimidazole-based polymer, poly[1-vinylimidazole-co-(poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate)] (VI-co-PEGMA), was designed, synthesized, and demonstrated to be exactly such a new ligand. The formation of NPs through coordination-driven self-assembly of VI-co-PEGMA and dysprosium ions (Dy3+) was studied as functions of the molecular structure of VI-co-PEGMA, Dy3+ addition rate, mixing rate and duration, and Dy3+/VI-co-PEGMA feed ratio. The as-synthesized NPs exhibit bimodal dysprosium fluorescence and magnetism with a strong dependence on the coordinated Dy3+ contents. Moreover, these NPs may also possess guest loading capacity, as indicated by their amorphous nature and the high coordination number of Dy3+. By coating the NPs with silica shells, the resultant NP@silica materials further develop an anti-disassembling ability in aqueous media, which is absent from most of the NMOPs based on water-soluble ligands. An application demonstration performed using mouse L-929 cells shows that silica-coated NPs can act as bimodal magneto-fluorescent probes for cellular bioimaging. This work thus represents a meaningful attempt for the development of new functional NPs based on the existing NMOP strategy by using an elaborately designed polymer as the organic linker and Dy3+ as the metal center.


This study investigates the use of low-cost infrared sensors in the differentiation and localization of commonly encountered target primitives in indoor environments, such as planes, corners, edges, and cylinders. The intensity readings from such sensors are highly dependent on target location and properties in a way which cannot be represented in a simple manner, making the differentiation and localization process difficult. In this paper, we propose the use of angular intensity scans and present an algorithm to process them. This approach can determine the target type independent of its position. Once the target type is identified, its position can also be estimated. The method is verified experimentally. An average correct classification rate of 97% over all target types is achieved and targets are localized within absolute range and azimuth errors of 0.8 cm and 1.6/spl deg/, respectively. The proposed method should facilitate the use of infrared sensors in mobile robot applications for differentiation and localization beyond their common usage as simple proximity sensors for object detection and collision avoidance.


The study was conducted to investigate the effects of different irrigation levels and nitrogen doses on yield, yield parameters, silage characteristics, digestibility, gas and methane production of corn silage. Three different irrigation levels (50%, 75% and 100% of depleted water) and 3 different nitrogen doses (100, 200 and 300 kg ha-1 N) were applied to corn silage. Experiments were implemented in split-split plots design with three replications during the growing seasons of 2013-2014. Plants were harvested at milk-dough stage and yield and morphologic characteristics were determined. Then, harvested plants were silaged and chemical characteristics were investigated. Irrigation level x nitrogen dose interaction was not found to be significant. Increasing nitrogen doses increased plant height, plant diameter, green herbage yield, crude protein, metabolic energy, gas production and organic matter digestibility and decreased pH levels, ADF and NDF ratios. Increased irrigation levels positively affected green herbage yield, plant height, plant diameter and increased ADF and NDF ratios. Gas production, metabolic energy and organic matter digestibility decreased with increasing irrigation levels. Increasing irrigation levels improved corn yields, but reduced the quality. On the other hand, increasing nitrogen doses had positive contributions both to yield and quality characteristics.


Danny's going to camp--and he's taking the dinosaur! First introduced in 1958 with Danny and the Dinosaur and the recent stars of Happy Birthday, Danny and the Dinosaur, this popular pair is together again in an adventure sure to please beginning readers and happy campers alike. Children's Choices for 1997 (IRA/CBC)


Audio is an effective but often overlooked component of World Wide Web delivery. Of the nearly twenty billion web pages estimated to exist, statistically few use sound. Those few using sound often use it poorly and with hardly any regard to theoretical and rhetorical issues. This thesis is an examination of the uses of audio on the World Wide Web, specifically focusing on how those uses could be informed by current and historical rhetorical theory. A theoretical methodology is applied to suggest the concepts and disciplines required to make online audio more meaningful and useful. The thesis argues for the connection between the Web and the modern orator, its embodiment, its place in sound reproduction technology, and awareness of the limitations placed on it by design and convention. INDEX WORDS: Online Audio, Sonic Literacy, Aurality, Web audio, Multimedia, Sound reproduction technology THE MORPHIC ORATOR: TRANSMOGRIFIED DELIVERY ON THE AUDIO-ENABLED WEB


We introduce Structured 3D Features, a model based on a novel implicit 3D representation that pools pixel-aligned image features onto dense 3D points sampled from a parametric, statistical human mesh surface. The 3D points have associated semantics and can move freely in 3D space. This allows for optimal coverage of the person of interest, be-yond just the body shape, which in turn, additionally helps modeling accessories, hair, and loose clothing. Owing to this, we present a complete 3D transformer-based attention framework which, given a single image of a person in an un-constrained pose, generates an animatable 3D reconstruction with albedo and illumination decomposition, as a result of a single end-to-end model, trained semi-supervised, and with no additional postprocessing. We show that our S3F model surpasses the previous state-of-the-art on various tasks, including monocular 3D reconstruction, as well as albedo & shading estimation. Moreover, we show that the proposed methodology allows novel view synthesis, relighting, and re-posing the reconstruction, and can naturally be extended to handle multiple input images ( e.g . different views of a person, or the same view, in different poses, in video). Finally, we demonstrate the editing capabilities of our model for 3D virtual try-on applications.


Total Variation (TV) is an effective and popular prior model in the field of regularization-based image processing. This paper focuses on TV for image restoration in the presence of impulse noise. This type of noise frequently arises in data acquisition and transmission due to many reasons, e.g. a faulty sensor or analog-to-digital converter errors. Removing this noise is an important task in image restoration. State-of-the-art methods such as Adaptive Outlier Pursuit(AOP) [42], which is based on TV with ℓ02-norm data fidelity, only give sub-optimal performance. In this paper, we propose a new method, called ℓ0TV -PADMM, which solves the TV-based restoration problem with ℓ0-norm data fidelity. To effectively deal with the resulting non-convex non-smooth optimization problem, we first reformulate it as an equivalent MPEC (Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints), and then solve it using a proximal Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (PADMM). Our ℓ0TV -PADMM method finds a desirable solution to the original ℓ0-norm optimization problem and is proven to be convergent under mild conditions. We apply ℓ0TV -PADMM to the problems of image denoising and deblurring in the presence of impulse noise. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that ℓ0TV -PADMM outperforms state-of-the-art image restoration methods.


Vesico vaginal fistula (VVF) are an abnormal connection between the vagina and urinary bladder. Most cases of VVF develop following an obstetric complication like obstructed labour of difficult obstetric surgery. VVF following gynaecological surgery are commoner in developed countries. We present a case of VVF formed as a result of a forgotten shelf pessary. CASE REPORT An 86-year-old woman presented to the gynaecologist with history of hematuria for one day. She had no other symptoms. She had an abdominal hysterectomy at age 36 years for fibroid uterus. She developed a cystocele and rectocele at age 83 for which she had a shelf pessary inserted .The shelf pessary had not been changed until she presented to the clinic three years later with hematuria. On examination, abdomen was normal. The vulva looked healthy. The shelf pessary was removed and replaced in clinic with difficulty. Cystoscopy was performed for hematuria and the pessary was seen eroding into the bladder wall. The pessary was removed. Examination confirmed a vesico-vaginal fistula. The vesico-vaginal fistula was subsequently repaired under spinal anaesthesia. (Fig 1) Figure 1 Figure 1: Repair of fistula DISCUSSION A vesico-vaginal fistula is an abnormal connection between the urinary bladder and the vagina. The development of a VVF has profound effects on both the physical and psychological well being for the woman. Obstructed labour is the commonest cause of VVF in developing countries. Gynaecological surgery is the commoner cause of VVF in developed countries. Incidence of VVF after total abdominal hysterectomy is quoted as between 0.5 – 2 %. Other causes of a VVF include radiotherapy, urological surgery, pelvic infection (e.g. tuberculosis, syphilis ) and vaginal trauma1. Vaginal erosion with foreign objects like a pessary is very uncommon2. Very few such cases have been reported. However, a forgotten pessary must be remembered as a possible cause for the development of VVF. VesicoVaginal Fistula Following Insertion Of A Shelf Pessary: A Case Report 2 of 3 We present this case report to reiterate the importance of regular follow-ups and change of pessary when they are inserted in the management of utero-vaginal prolapse. References 1. Symmonds RE: Incontinence: vesical and urethral fistulas. Clin Obstet Gynecol 1984 Jun;27(2):499-514 2. Goldstein I, Wise GJ, Tancer ML. A vesicovaginal fistula and intravesical foreign body: a rare case of the neglected pessary. Am J Obstet Gynecol 1990;163:589-91 VesicoVaginal Fistula Following Insertion Of A Shelf Pessary: A Case Report 3 of 3 Author Information M.A. Khaled, FRCOG,PhD Department of Obstetrics, Colchester General Hospital Janaki Putran, MRCOG Department of Obstetrics, Colchester General Hospital Khaled Abaoub, MRCOG Department of Obstetrics, Colchester General Hospital


In this paper a novel four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) hybrid parallel platform manipulator is presented. The movable platform of the parallel manipulator can translate along two directions and rotate around two axes respectively. The kinematics model is formulated, which describes the inverse kinematic, transformation and forward kinematic transformation. A 5-axis parallel machine tool based on the 4-DOF parallel manipulator is presented in this paper.


The emergence of multidrug resistant bacteria is a global health threat and the discovery of new antimicrobial agents is an absolute priority. In this context endogenous peptides are emerging as novel potential candidates. In this work, we assessed the antimicrobial effects of orexins and ghrelin neuropeptides against gram-negative (Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Klebsiella pneumoniae) and gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria. Orexin-B and ghrelin showed a potent bactericidal effect at concentration equal to or greater than 25 μg/ml. No antimicrobial activity has been observed for orexin-A. Furthermore, we investigated the antiviral proprieties of the three peptides against herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). We found that orexin-B, but not orexin-A is effective for HSV-1 infectivity inhibition.


: The studies showed that infectious complications in patients operated for breast cancer (BC) most frequently developed after removal of the drainage tube resulting in poorer discharge favourable for development of infections. The causative agents in such cases are usually exogenous bacteria differing from endogenous ones (Staphylococcus epidermidis) inhabiting the human skin and sometimes contaminating the operative field. The endogenous bacteria are detectable bacteriologically in 60 per cent of the cases. Still, since the operation wound contains humoral and tissue immunity factors (specifically active against the host microflora) such bacteria rarely grow on artificial media (18 per cent) and even more rarely cause infections. Therefore, to prevent postoperative infections in patients with BC it should be recognized rational to use broad-spectrum antibacterial drugs such as ampiox, ampicillin, doxycycline, cephalosporins of the 2nd and 3rd generations, etc. for 5 to 6 days after the drainage removal. If an infection develops the preventive therapy should be replaced by an adequate therapy in accordance with the pathogen sensitivity.


Ca2+ signalling plays an important role in excitation-contraction coupling and the resultant force output of skeletal muscle. It is also known to play a crucial role in modulating both short- and long-term muscle cellular phenotypic adaptations associated with these events. Ca2+ signalling via the Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM)-dependent phosphatase calcineurin (CnA) and via Ca2+/CaM-dependent kinases, such as CaMKI and CaMKII, is known to regulate hypertrophic growth in response to overload, to direct slow versus fast fibre gene expression, and to contribute to mitochondrial biogenesis. The CnA- and CaMK-dependent regulation of the downstream transcription factors nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT) and myocyte-specific enhancer factor 2 are known to activate muscle-specific genes associated with a slower, more oxidative fibre phenotype. We have also recently shown the expression of utrophin A, a cytoskeletal protein that accumulates at the neuromuscular junction and plays a role in maturation of the postsynaptic apparatus, to be regulated by CnA-NFAT and Ca2+/CaM signalling. This regulation is fibre-type specific and potentiated by interactions with the transcriptional regulators and coactivators GA binding protein (also known as nuclear respiratory factor 2) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator 1 alpha. Another downstream target of CnA signalling may be myostatin, a transforming growth factor-beta family member that is a negative regulator of muscle growth. While the list of the downstream targets of CnA/NFAT- and Ca2+/CaM-dependent signalling is emerging, the precise interaction of these pathways with the Ca2+-independent pathways p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2, phosphoinositide-3 kinase, and protein kinase B (Akt/PKB) must also be considered when deciphering fibre responses and plasticity to altered contractile load.


3',5'-cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) is a ubiquitous second messenger that regulates multiple physiological functions by acting in distinct subcellular microdomains. Over the last few years, several targeted biosensors have been developed and used in cell lines or neonatal cardiomyocytes to investigate the molecular mechanisms behind cAMP compartmentation. However, it is unclear whether such biosensors can be successfully used for expression in vivo, especially in the context of disease such as cardiac hypertrophy.
Importantly, cAMP regulates cardiac function by acting in distinct subcellular microdomains which are independently regulated and confined from the bulk cytosol. Today, this phenomenon is a well accepted paradigm known as cAMP compartmentation. In the heart, one of these microdomains is believed to be located around the sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum calcium ATPase 2a (SERCA2a). SERCA2a is crucial for diastolic calcium (Ca2+) reuptake and is negatively regulated by phospholamban (PLN). cAMP binding to PKA leads to increased PLN phosphorylation thereby relieving the inhibitory effect of PLN on SERCA2a. Interestingly, SERCA2a expression and activity are known to be downregulated during cardiac disease but cAMP dynamics in such microdomains and their alterations in cardiac disease such as hypertrophy are not well understood. Therefore, the first transgenic mouse model expressing a cardiac specific SERCA2a targeted fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based cAMP sensor, namely Epac1-PLN, has been developed in this PhD study. Freshly isolated adult cardiomyocytes of the transgenic mouse line have been used to directly monitor cAMP with high temporal and spatial resolution within the SERCA2a microdomain. To understand the molecular mechanisms that confine the SERCA2a microdomain from the bulk cytosol, FRET results gained in Epac1-PLN cardiomyocytes were compared to those obtained in cardiomyocytes expressing the cytosolic cAMP FRET sensor Epac1-camps. In healthy cells, local cAMP levels in the SERCA2a microdomain after β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) stimulation were ~4-fold higher compared to the bulk cytosol, which was due to direct phosphodiesterase (PDE)-dependent receptor-microdomain communication. Under basal conditions (in the absence of β-AR stimulation) PDE3 and PDE4 were crucial for confining the SERCA2a microdomain from the cytosol. However, in cardiac hypertrophy induced by transverse aortic constriction, the local basal PDE4-mediated cAMP degradation was significantly diminished, while the cytosolic cAMP dynamics were altered only after β-AR stimulation. Strikingly, local cAMP degradation but not whole-cell changes in PDE activity in hypertrophy led to a dramatic loss of receptor-microdomain communication. In this study, the biocompatibility of the targeted Epac1-PLN biosensor and its potential for real-time monitoring of compartmentalized cAMP signalling in adult cardiomyocytes isolated from healthy mice and from in vivo cardiac disease model was confirmed. In particular, data show that real-time dynamics of cAMP in the SERCA2a microdomain are vastly different from bulk cytosolic cAMP due to local PDE effects and direct receptor-microdomain communication. In cardiac hypertrophy, these processes are dramatically altered which might explain impaired regulation of SERCA2a activity in disease.
Ca2+ and cAMP play a critical role for cardiac excitation-contraction-coupling and are known to interact with each other, for example via Ca2+-dependent modulation of PDE1 and adenylyl cyclases 5 and 6 activities. Currently, many FRET studies analyse cAMP signalling and its regulation in resting cardiomyocytes devoid of electrical stimulation to avoid contraction artefacts during the FRET measurements. However, it is not known how such data are comparable with the behaviour of cells under more physiologically relevant conditions during contraction. In this thesis, cAMP-FRET responses to β-AR stimulation and PDE1 inhibition were directly compared in resting vs. electrically stimulated adult mouse ventricular cardiomyocytes expressing Epac1-camps. Interestingly, no significant differences in cAMP dynamics could be detected, suggesting low impact of rapidly changing Ca2+ concentrations on cytosolic cAMP levels associated with β-AR signalling measured with this FRET sensor. On the other hand, after direct adenylyl cyclase activation, PDE1 contribution to total PDE-mediated cAMP hydrolysis increased significantly in field stimulated cardiomyocytes. This could be mimicked by pretreatment of the cells with Ca2+ elevating agents under resting conditions. However, since β-AR stimulation reflects the more physiological situation that is used in the FRET experiments to analyse PDE contributions to cAMP hydrolysis, the use of resting cells for FRET-based cAMP measurements can be justified.


: True quality requires that providers continually update the state of nursing facility practice. State and national nursing facility associations must be at the forefront of this effort as stewards of quality.


Abstract On the beach of the island of Norderney sedimentological, morphological and hydrodynamic measurements have been carried out in order to investigate sediment transport processes in the course of a tidal cycle which was characterized by moderate hydrodynamic conditions. Wave heights varied between 0.3 and 0.5 m. An area of 90 m2 within a groyne field was surveyed. Sediments samples were taken on a 5 m grid at low tide. Sediment flux was determined at each sampling site by means of depth-of-activity rods. The grain size distributions of the sediment samples were determined by dry sieving. Under the prevailing hydrodynamic conditions a landward sediment transport was observed. The mainly negative sediment budget in the seaward section and the landward directed distribution of fluorescent sediment tracers suggest a dominant onshore transport during the investigated tidal cycle. This is also reflected in the changes observed in sediment textures.


A novel β chain variant found in combination with β0-thalassemia (thal) was identified in a male infant by electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). Analysis of the infant's denatured blood and a 30 min. tryptic digest of his blood identified the mutation as β56(D7)Gly→Cys, which was confirmed by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). We have named this new variant Hb Leeds. The infant's parents, resident in Yorkshire, UK, but originally from Pakistan, were found to have β0-thalassemia (thal) trait (mother) and Hb Leeds trait (father). Hematological data on the infant's parents and siblings are given. Hb Leeds trait was also found in three unrelated Pakistani adults living in the same area of Yorkshire. Hb Leeds trait in adults appears to have few clinical manifestations, but when combined with β0-thal it led to a more severe anemia in the infant than in the corresponding thalassemic trait in his mother.


This paper describes a new approach for training generative adversarial networks (GAN) to understand the detailed 3D shape of objects. While GANs have been used in this domain previously, they are notoriously hard to train, especially for the complex joint data distribution over 3D objects of many categories and orientations. Our method extends previous work by employing the Wasserstein distance normalized with gradient penalization as a training objective. This enables improved generation from the joint object shape distribution. Our system can also reconstruct 3D shape from 2D images and perform shape completion from occluded 2.5D range scans. We achieve notable quantitative improvements in comparison to existing baselines


In this article, the authors propose that the canonical customer-toolkit dyad in mass customization (MC) should be complemented with user communities. Many companies in various industries have begun to offer their customers the opportunity to design their own products online. The companies provide web-based MC toolkits which allow customers who prefer individualized products to tailor items such as sneakers, PCs, cars, kitchens, cereals, or skis to their specific preferences. Most existing MC toolkits are based on the underlying concept of an isolated, dyadic interaction process between the individual customer and the MC toolkit. Information from external sources is not provided. As a result, most academic research on MC toolkits has focused on this dyadic perspective. The main premise of this article is that novice MC toolkit users in particular might largely benefit from information given by other customers.
The pioneering research conducted by Jeppesen (2005), Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006), and Jeppesen and Molin (2003) has shown that customers in the computer gaming and digital music instruments industries are willing to support each other for the sake of efficient toolkit use (e.g., how certain toolkit functions work). Expanding on their work, this article provides evidence that peer assistance appears also extremely useful in the two other major phases of the customer's individual self-design process, namely the development of an initial idea and the evaluation of a preliminary design solution.
Two controlled experiments were conducted in which 191 subjects used an MC toolkit in order to design their own individual skis. The authors find that during the phase of developing an initial idea, having access to other users' designs as potential starting points stimulates the integration of existing solution chunks into the problem-solving process, which indicates more systematic problem-solving behavior. Peer customer input also turned out to have positive effects on the evaluation of preliminary design solutions. Providing other customers' opinions on interim design solutions stimulated favorable problem-solving behavior, namely the integration of external feedback. The use of these two problem-solving heuristics in turn leads to an improved process outcome, that is, self-designed products which meet the preferences of the customers more effectively (measured in terms of perceived preference fit, purchase intention, and willingness to pay). These findings have important theoretical and managerial implications. (author's abstract)


Rapid growth of technical developments has created huge challenges for microphone forensics - a subcategory of audio forensic science, because of the availability of numerous digital recording devices and massive amount of recording data. Demand for fast and efficient methods to assure integrity and authenticity of information is becoming more and more important in criminal investigation nowadays. Machine learning has emerged as an important technique to support audio analysis processes of microphone forensic practitioners. However, its application to real life situations using supervised learning is still facing great challenges due to expensiveness in collecting data and updating system. In this paper, we introduce a new machine learning approach which is called One-class Classification (OCC) to be applied to microphone forensics; we demonstrate its capability on a corpus of audio samples collected from several microphones. Research results and analysis indicate that OCC has the potential to benefit microphone forensic practitioners in developing new tools and techniques for effective and efficient analysis.


This work presents a reconnaissance study to delineate potential mineral zones in the schist belt areas of Kano State. These parts of the state have received little or no attention for a long time and activities of artisanal miners suggest that the area is of economic mineral value. Airborne magnetic data acquired from Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) were first reduced to the equator before subjecting them to first and second vertical derivatives. The short wavelength anomalies recorded in the study area, ranging from -99.182 to 88.338 nT indicate that the area is characterized by crystalline basement complex rocks. The results of the vertical derivatives show that lineaments (depicting faults, fractures and contacts) which represent veins of possible mineralization exist in the study area. The trend of these lineaments is in the NE-SW and E-W directions with the NE-SW trend dominating. Location with high mineral favorability is bounded within longitudes 7°51' E to 8° 12' E and latitudes 11° 46' N to 12° 30' N in the NE – SW directions. The trend cuts through Gwarzo, Shanono, Bagwai, Tsanyawa, Bichi and Kunchi.

 Key words: Airborne magnetic data, Lineament, Mineralization, Schist Belt and Vertical derivatives.


The role of well-dispersed gold nanoparticles as cross-linking agents in nanocomposite hydrogel formation was studied. Maleimide-coated gold nanoparticles were synthesized and used for Diels–Alder cycloaddition with furan modified gelatin. Hydrogel formation was aided by additional amide coupling of the modified gelatin with chondroitin sulfate. The cross-linking ability of the functionalized nanoparticles was evaluated and the final hydrogel properties were compared to those of a hybrid hydrogel containing inert-linker coated gold nanoparticles. The storage modulus of the nanoparticle cross-linked nanocomposites was 2.5–3 times compared to the controls. The presence of nanoparticles also affected the swelling properties, resulting in lower swelling ratios due to the formation of the more cross-linked structures. Conducted drug delivery experiments and the study of the light irradiation on the drug release behavior revealed promising features for the applications of nanocomposite polymer for drug delivery.


The dynamic response of large historical block structures, as manifested by the response of the free-standing variable size drums colonnade of Baalbek due to strong ground shaking during earthquake events, is investigated experimentally for the purpose of predicting damage or collapse due to future earthquake events. Reduced single column multi drum models of scales 1/20 and 1/40 were subjected to harmonic excitations of varying amplitudes and periods on a 1D shaking table for up to 25 cycles noting collapse or survival. The results are compared to two dimensional simulations on UDEC as well as to the predictions of the Housner formula for single rigid block overturning by a half-cycle sinusoidal acceleration pulse. It is shown that the experimental results agree qualitatively with computer simulations for the reduced scale but cannot be directly extrapolated to full scale.


.:|:. The Topics Covered In This Book Are: Visualizing the Complete Oracle Environment, SQL: Structured Query Language, Oracle Database Concepts, Oracle Instance Concepts, Oracle in Action, Complete Oracle System Design: Steps of Implementation, Oracle Database Design, Oracle Network Administration, Oracle Database Management, Oracle Backup & Recovery Techniques, Oracle Performance Tuning .:|:. Everything in this book is covered in a step by step manner by first building reader s concept using analogies, real world examples and then taking him/her to the steps of design implementation. The book covers Oracle 10g Database Administration for both Unix as well as Windows OS. The concepts and most of the stuff discussed in this book are equally good for other Oracle versions including 11g.


HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) builds a conical shell protecting viral genomic RNA inside the virus particles. Upon entry into host cells, this shell disassembles in a process of uncoating, which is coordinated with reverse transcription of viral RNA into DNA. After uncoating, a portion of CA remains associated with the viral DNA and mediates its nuclear import and, potentially, integration into host DNA. In this study, we tagged CA with eGFP to follow its trafficking in host cells and address potential CA roles in the nucleus. We found that while functional viruses import the tagged CA into the nucleus, this capsid protein is not part of integration-competent complexes. The roles of nuclear CA thus remain to be established. ABSTRACT The HIV-1 capsid protein performs multiple roles in virus replication both during assembly and particle release and during virus trafficking into the nucleus. In order to decipher the roles of capsid protein during early replication, a reliable method to follow its intracellular distribution is required. To complement existing approaches to track HIV-1 capsid during early infection, we developed an HIV-1 imaging strategy, relying on viruses incorporating enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP)-tagged capsid (CA-eGFP) protein and mCherry-tagged integrase (IN-mCherry). Wild-type infectivity and sensitivity to inhibition by PF74 point to the functionality of CA-eGFP-containing complexes. Low numbers of CA-eGFP molecules were located inside the viral core and imported into the nucleus without significant loss in intensity. Less than 5% of particles carrying both CA-eGFP and IN-mCherry retained both labelled proteins after nuclear entry, implying a major uncoating event at the nuclear envelope dissociating IN and CA. Still, 20% of all CA-eGFP-containing complexes were detected in the nucleus. Unlike for IN-mCherry complexes, addition of the integrase inhibitor raltegravir had no effect on CA-eGFP-containing complexes, suggesting that these may be not (yet) competent for integration. Our imaging strategy offers alternative visualization of viral capsid trafficking and helps clarify its potential role during integration. IMPORTANCE HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) builds a conical shell protecting viral genomic RNA inside the virus particles. Upon entry into host cells, this shell disassembles in a process of uncoating, which is coordinated with reverse transcription of viral RNA into DNA. After uncoating, a portion of CA remains associated with the viral DNA and mediates its nuclear import and, potentially, integration into host DNA. In this study, we tagged CA with eGFP to follow its trafficking in host cells and address potential CA roles in the nucleus. We found that while functional viruses import the tagged CA into the nucleus, this capsid protein is not part of integration-competent complexes. The roles of nuclear CA thus remain to be established.


One aspect of the study of executive remuneration that has received comparatively little attention is its ability to shed light on the governance of the corporation. The level of a Chief Executive Officer's remuneration will embody information on both the market within which a business operates and the effectiveness of its independent directors as instruments of corporate governance. Differences in the salaries of top directors that cannot be accounted for by differences in business performance may provide useful evidence on the health of a company's governance mechanisms. This paper contains the results of an empirical investigation into the role of external competition and internal controls in generating the executive salaries that we observe in the United Kingdom's leading firms. It also considers whether compliance with the corporate structures prescribed by external committees is likely to curtail some of the excesses seen in the past.


Analysis of the genetic structure of the Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus), a marine crustacean with high commercial value, was undertaken to gain information regarding the differentiation of Atlantic from Mediterranean populations of marine invertebrates. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of two mitochondrial DNA segments, 3.6 kilobases in total, was performed. Twelve populations from the North Sea, Irish Sea, Portuguese coast and Aegean Sea were analysed. Low levels of differentiation were found among them (FST = 0.018, P < 0.001) and there were no signs of an Atlantic–Mediterranean divide or of an isolation‐by‐distance scheme of differentiation. Possible reasons for these low levels of differentiation can be found in the recent expansion of N. norvegicus populations. This is supported by the mismatch distribution of pairwise haplotype differences, as well as by the high mean haplotype diversity (h = 0.93) combined with medium nucleotide diversity (π = 0.0057) (in comparison to values for marine crustaceans or teleosts) found in this study. This combination of high levels of haplotype diversity with moderate to low levels of nucleotide diversity has also been frequently attributed to a recent time of divergence for various marine species. No evidence was found for a Mediterranean refugium during glaciation periods, separate from the Atlantic, as has been reported for some marine species. The Irish Sea population was the most differentiated as a result of reduced levels of diversity. Results are also discussed in the light of future management of N. norvegicus stocks.


1. Blood pressure recordings were made above and below each of the three tiers of valves in the conus of Heterodontus portusjacksoni . Flow in the ventral aorta was recorded with an electromagnetic flow-meter. 2. It was shown that the lower conal valves close first and that this closure occurred before the end of ventricular systole. 3. The middle conal valves closed before the lower ones opened. The closure of both of these sets of valves was caused in part by the circumferential decrease due to conus systole, and in part by the back flow this engendered. 4. The upper conal valves closed as the middle ones opened at the end of conal systole. 5. Paralysing the conus with topical tricain rendered the lower and middle conal valves incompetent and caused the upper conal valves to be closed following ventricular relaxation with an increase in back flow. 6. The hypothesis is advanced that the conus serves to postpone the closure of the upper tier of valves until the negative intrapericardial pressure generated by ventricular ejection has decayed to a lower value.


Throughout Latin America, processes of democratization have coincided with increasing levels of violent crime, the privatization of justice and security, and widespread support for heavy-handed policing. The Colombian paramilitaries are perhaps the most notorious case of brutal violence committed against civilians with general support from both state and society. The article explores the surprising amalgam of actors of which the paramilitaries are comprised. It illustrates the way in which their development was shrouded in and facilitated by legal ambiguity, and distinguish their war tactic of targeting the civilians from the guerrilla's strategy. Finally, it discusses the political success of the paramilitaries in terms of their land and wealth consolidation, their insertion into the political science, and their legal demobilization. It is suggested to conceive paramilitary violence not merely as havoc wrecked in the margins of the state, but as a central component of contemporary governance.


It is shown that two homogeneous elastic media of different rigidities adhering at a plane interface will become unstable at the surface of discontinuity when a certain critical magnitude of initial stress is attained. The general characteristic equation for the interfacial instability is derived for a general case of elastic anisotropy. The critical stress is evaluated as a function of the rigidity ratio of the two media in the particular case of isotropy.


We show that the nonlinear I-V characteristics of mesoscopic samples with metallic conductivity should contain parts which are linear in the magnetic-field and quadratic in the electric field. These contributions to the current are entirely due to the electron-electron interaction and consequently they are proportional to the electron-electron interaction constant. We also note that both the amplitude and the sign of the nonlinear part of the current exhibit random oscillations as a function of temperature.


The use of Voice over IP (VoIP) applications has dramatically increased in recent years. Large, medium, and small organizations, as well as individuals, are reducing the cost of their phone calls using their data infrastructure or a broadband Internet service to transmit phone calls over IP networks. Like data networks, VoIP networks are also vulnerable to security threats such as Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, interception of private communications, registration hijacking, spam, and message tampering. Security mechanisms, such as encryption and authentication, may be used to reduce the potential impact of some of these security threats. However, in reality, VoIP providers may not supply adequate security, or otherwise they are adopting and implementing these countermeasures at very slow rates without informing users whether their phone calls are protected. Given the fact that the interception of private communications is one of the most commonly seen attacks in VoIP, we present a solution to detect unprotected SIP-based VoIP packets. Upon positive detection, alerts may be sent to users informing them about the unprotected VoIP calls, thus potentially preventing identity theft and improving security awareness. Our testing results show that our solution provides accurate detection with zero false detection rate of unprotected SIP-based VoIP traffic.


Falls from trees and other tree related injuries are one of the most common causes of trauma in parts of rural Kashmir, particularly, during the harvest season. A one year review of all admissions for trauma, due to falling from trees, to the Accident and Emergency Department of Government Medical College Srinagar was carried out. The study revealed that walnut trees are the most commonly involved trees in such cases. It was the 4th most common cause of trauma related admissions during harvest season. There was only one female admitted with such trauma out of 106 patients. Forearm fractures were the most common injuries overall. Head and chest trauma were the commonest causes of death. There are many strategies for preventing such injuries; the most important being to stop small boys from climbing tall trees and also the more frequent use of grafted walnut trees. Such falls are a serious occupational hazard for many subsistence farmers.


A growing body of research has documented the local impact of employee non-compete agreements, but their effect on interstate migration patterns remains unexplored. Exploiting an inadvertent policy reversal in Michigan as a natural experiment, we show that non-compete agreements are responsible for a "brain drain" of knowledge workers out of states that enforce such contracts to states where they are not enforceable. Importantly, this effect is felt most strongly on the margin of workers who are more collaborative and whose work is more impactful. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The decennial census was the federal governmenta (TM)s largest and most complex peacetime operation. This report of a panel of the National Research Councila (TM)s Committee on National Statistics comprehensively reviews the conduct of the 2000 census and the quality of the resulting data. The panela (TM)s findings cover the planning process for 2000, which was marked by an atmosphere of intense controversy about the proposed role of statistical techniques in the census enumeration and possible adjustment for errors in counting the population. The report addresses the success and problems of major innovations in census operations, the completeness of population coverage in 2000, and the quality of both the basic demographic data collected from all census respondents and the detailed socioeconomic data collected from the census long-form sample (about one-sixth of the population). The panel draws comparisons with the 1990 experience and recommends improvements in the planning process and design for 2010. The 2000 Census: Counting Under Adversity will be an invaluable resource for users of the 2000 data and for policymakers and census planners. It provides a trove of information about the issues that have fueled debate about the census process and about the operations and quality of the nationa (TM)s twenty-second decennial enumeration.


Stroke is responsible for high morbidity and mortality. Antiplatelet agents are the cornerstone for secondary prevention of stroke and prescription of aspirin, clopidogrel or aspirin and dipyridamole are recommended based on strong evidence. Whether combining two antiplatelet agents would be more effective is still debated. Studies conducted in the early phase of stroke (from 24 hours to 3 months) show the superiority of dual antiplatelet the- rapy compared to aspirin alone. In contrast, long-term dual antiplatelet therapy is associated with an increased risk of intracranial hemorrhage and therefore deleterious. This article reviews current evidence and outlines future perspectives.


The Drosophila anterior-posterior (AP) axis is determined by the polarisation of the stage 9 oocyte and the subsequent localisation of bicoid and oskar mRNAs to opposite poles of the cell. Oocyte polarity has been proposed to depend on the same PAR proteins that generate AP polarity in C. elegans, with a complex of Bazooka (Baz; Par-3), Par-6 and aPKC marking the anterior and lateral cortex, and Par-1 defining the posterior. The function of the Baz complex in oocyte polarity has remained unclear, however, because although baz-null mutants block oocyte determination, egg chambers that escape this early arrest usually develop normal polarity at stage 9. Here, we characterise a baz allele that produces a penetrant polarity phenotype at stage 9 without affecting oocyte determination, demonstrating that Baz is essential for axis formation. The dynamics of Baz, Par-6 and Par-1 localisation in the oocyte indicate that the axis is not polarised by a cortical contraction as in C. elegans, and instead suggest that repolarisation of the oocyte is triggered by posterior inactivation of aPKC or activation of Par-1. This initial asymmetry is then reinforced by mutual inhibition between the anterior Baz complex and posterior Par-1 and Lgl. Finally, we show that mutation of the aPKC phosphorylation site in Par-1 results in the uniform cortical localisation of Par-1 and the loss of cortical microtubules. Since non-phosphorylatable Par-1 is epistatic to uninhibitable Baz, Par-1 seems to function downstream of the other PAR proteins to polarise the oocyte microtubule cytoskeleton.


The sensitivity of various polymers to radiation damage by soft X-rays has been measured previously with scanning transmission X-ray microscopes. However, the critical dose values reported by different groups for the same material differ by more than 100%. Possible sources of this variability are investigated here for poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) using controlled exposure to monochromatic soft X-rays at 300 eV. Radiation sensitivity, judged by several different criteria, was evaluated as a function of dose rate, pre-exposure thermal treatments and X-ray polarization. Both the measured critical dose and the dose required to initiate negative mode (cross-linking) were observed to depend only on dose, not the other factors explored. A method of determining detector efficiency from the dose required to initiate negative mode in PMMA is outlined. This method was applied to many of the soft X-ray STXMs presently operating to derive the efficiencies of their transmitted X-ray detectors in the C 1s absorption-edge region.


I retired in April 2020 after 17 years as a Headteacher, serving four different schools across two local authorities. One thing that remained constant throughout this period was the privilege I felt being a school leader. I deliberately chose to work in challenging schools serving more deprived communities. I was driven by the belief that a high-quality education has the power to transform the life chances of young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.In this paper I reflect on my personal experience of government policy during this period and the impact it had on school leaders. In doing so, we will revisit two underpinning themes that featured throughout my headship career. The first was that education became part of the election battleground with each party developing their own ideas and thinking about the direction of education that, in turn, became policy for the successfully elected party. Successive Secretaries of State had their own view of what state education should look like. I have not always been convinced that all policy was based on educational theory and sometimes wonder if it derived from the minister's own personal experience of education! Sir Kevan Collins describes this as the 'Complacency of Certainty' (2021) where ministers speak with authority on education without any substance or research to back it up. The impact this had on school leaders was to experience a see-saw effect as policies swung one way and then the other as governments and ministers changed. The second underpinning theme was the breakdown in trust between the government and the education profession. It is evident that this lack of trust in the system led to the growth of a command-and-control model whereby schools were compelled to follow government policy.To explore these themes, I will focus on three key areas of government policy that were intended to improve standards and reduce education inequality. First the rise of academisation under Tony Blair's New Labour that accelerated with the Coalition government under David Cameron. Second the government policies designed to give parents far greater choice whilst also creating competition between schools. To this end, we will explore the two system changes that successive governments utilised to drive this culture of choice and competition starting with the high stakes accountability associated with examination results and then finally, reviewing my experience of the Ofsted process.


ABSTRACT The variability of spatial distribution and the determinism of cyanobacterial blooms, as well as their impact at the lake scale, are still not understood, partly due to the lack of long-term climatic and environmental monitoring data. The paucity of these data can be alleviated by the use of proxy data from high-resolution sampling of sediments. Coupling paleolimnological and molecular tools and using biomarkers such as preserved DNA are promising approaches, although they have not been performed often enough so far. In our study, a quantitative PCR (qPCR) technique was applied to enumerate total cyanobacterial and total and toxic Planktothrix communities in preserved DNA derived from sediments of three lakes located in the French Alps (Lake Geneva, Lake Bourget, and Lake Annecy), containing a wide range of cyanobacterial species. Preserved DNA from lake sediments was analyzed to assess its quality, quantity, and integrity, with further application for qPCR. We applied the qPCR assay to enumerate the total cyanobacterial community, and multiplex qPCR assays were applied to quantify total and microcystin-producing Planktothrix populations in a single reaction tube. These methods were optimized, calibrated, and applied to sediment samples, and the specificity and reproducibility of qPCR enumeration were tested. Accurate estimation of potential inhibition within sediment samples was performed to assess the sensitivity of such enumeration by qPCR. Some precautions needed for interpreting qPCR results in the context of paleolimnological approaches are discussed. We concluded that the qPCR assay can be used successfully for the analysis of lake sediments when DNA is well preserved in order to assess the presence and dominance of cyanobacterial and Planktothrix communities.


Objective: To estimate time from HIV infection to linkage-to-care and its determinants. Linkage-to-care is usually assessed using the date of HIV diagnosis as the starting point for exposure time. However, timing of diagnosis is likely endogenous to linkage, leading to bias in linkage estimation. Design: We used longitudinal HIV serosurvey data from a large population-based HIV incidence cohort in KwaZulu-Natal (2004–2013) to estimate time of HIV infection. We linked these data to patient records from a public-sector HIV treatment and care program to determine time from infection to linkage (defined using the date of the first CD4+ cell count). Methods: We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate time from infection to linkage and the effects of the following covariates on this time: sex, age, education, food security, socioeconomic status, area of residence, distance to clinics, knowledge of HIV status, and whether other household members have initiated antiretroviral therapy. Results: We estimated that it would take an average of 4.9 years for 50% of HIV seroconverters to be linked to care (95% confidence intervals: 4.2–5.7). Among all cohort members who were linked to care, the median CD4+ cell count at linkage was 350 cells/&mgr;l (95% confidence interval: 330–380). Men and participants aged less than 30 years were found to have the slowest rates of linkage-to-care. Time to linkage became shorter over calendar time. Conclusion: Average time from HIV infection to linkage-to-care is long and needs to be reduced to ensure that HIV treatment-as-prevention policies are effective. Targeted interventions for men and young individuals have the largest potential to improve linkage rates.


quiescence-related markers including FBXW7 in vivo. Results: In vitro, GRPs showed high expression of stem cell marker CD133 and quiescence-related markers including FBXW7 and low expression of c-Myc at protein level. Cell cycle analysis revealed that majority of GRPs existed in G0/G1 phase. Silencing of FBXW7 gene reduced CD133-positive cell population in GRPs. Knockdown of FBXW7 also increased susceptibility of cells to gefitinib, reversed population of G0/G1-arrest cells to G2/S/M cells, and decreased cell number of GRPs. In vivo, GRTs after gefitinib treatment revealed high expression of FBXW7 and low expression of c-Myc. Conclusion: These findings suggest that FBXW7 plays a crucial role in the maintenance of quiescent CSCs resistant to gefitinib in EGFR mutation-positive NSCLC.


Background: Studies on both personality dimensions and cognition in schizophrenia are scarce. The objective of the present study was to examine personality traits and the relation to cognitive function and psychotic symptoms in a sample of patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. Method: In total 23 patients with schizophrenia and 14 controls were assessed with the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP). A broad cognitive test programme was used, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales, the Finger-Tapping Test, the Trail Making Test, the Verbal Fluency Test, the Benton Visual Retention Test, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test . Results: Compared with controls, the patients exhibited prominent elevations on KSP scales measuring anxiety proneness and neuroticism (P = 0.000005–0.0001), on the Detachment scale (P < 0.00009) and lower value on the Socialization scale (P < 0.0002). The patients also scored higher on the Inhibition of Aggression, Suspicion, Guilt and Irritability scales (P = 0.002–0.03) while the remaining five scales did not differ between patients and controls. KSP anxiety-related scales correlated with the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) general psychopathology subscale. Cognitive test results were uniformly lower in the patient group and correlated with PANSS negative symptoms subscale. There was no association between KSP scale scores and PANSS positive or negative symptoms. Conclusion: The patients revealed a highly discriminative KSP test profile with elevated scores in neuroticism- and psychoticism-related scales as compared to controls. Results support previous findings utilizing other personality inventories in patients with schizophrenia. Cognitive test performance correlated inversely with negative symptoms.


National belonging for Xavier Herbert was intimately tied to interracial sexuality. 'Euraustralians' ('half-castes') were for Herbert a redemptive motif that could assuage the 'awful loneliness of the colonial born' by which he hinted at the land claim of settler-colonials as spurious. Herbert's exposure of the spectrum of interracial sex—from companionate marriage to casual prostitution to endemic sexual assault—in his novels Capricornia (1938) and Poor Fellow My Country (1975) was unprecedented and potentially game-changing in the administration of Aboriginal women's sexuality under the assimilation era. But his deeply fraught masculinity was expressed through a picaresque frontier manhood that expressed itself through this spectrum of relations with Aboriginal women. For all his radical assertions of a 'Euraustralian' or hybrid nation, Herbert was myopic and dismissive of the women attached to the 'lean loins' he hoped it would spring from. He was also vitriolic about the white women, including wives, who interfered with white men's access to Aboriginal women's bodies. In this article I examine how Herbert's utopian racial destinies depended on the unexamined sexual contract of monogamy and the asymmetrical pact to which it consigned white men and white women, and the class of sexually available Indigenous women, or 'black velvet', it rested on in colonial scenarios of sex.