Recent work by Baratin et al. (2021) sheds light on an intriguing pattern that occurs during the training of deep neural networks: some layers align much more with data compared to other layers (where the alignment is defined as the euclidean product of the tangent features matrix and the data labels matrix). The curve of the alignment as a function of layer index (generally) exhibits an ascent-descent pattern where the maximum is reached for some hidden layer. In this work, we provide the first explanation for this phenomenon. We introduce the Equilibrium Hypothesis which connects this alignment pattern to signal propagation in deep neural networks. Our experiments demonstrate an excellent match with the theoretical predictions.


Robot swarms exploiting Merkle trees achieve secret and secure cooperation in sequential missions. The importance of swarm robotics systems in both academic research and real-world applications is steadily increasing. However, to reach widespread adoption, new models that ensure the secure cooperation of large groups of robots need to be developed. This work introduces a method to encapsulate cooperative robotic missions in an authenticated data structure known as a Merkle tree. With this method, operators can provide the "blueprint" of the swarm's mission without disclosing its raw data. In other words, data verification can be separated from data itself. We propose a system where robots in a swarm, to cooperate toward mission completion, have to "prove" their integrity to their peers by exchanging cryptographic proofs. We show the implications of this approach for two different swarm robotics missions: foraging and maze formation. In both missions, swarm robots were able to cooperate and carry out sequential tasks without having explicit knowledge about the mission's high-level objectives. The results presented in this work demonstrate the feasibility of using Merkle trees as a cooperation mechanism for swarm robotics systems in both simulation and real-robot experiments, which has implications for future decentralized robotics applications where security plays a crucial role.


A new competitive approach is developed for learning agents to play two-agent games. This approach uses particle swarm optimizers (PSO) to train neural networks to predict the desirability of states in the leaf nodes of a game tree. The new approach is applied to the TicTacToe game, and compared with the performance of an evolutionary approach. A performance criterion is defined to quantify performance against that of players making random moves. The results show that the new PSO-based approach performs well as compared with the evolutionary approach.


This thesis is a summary and presentation of the philosophical teachings of Dr. Rufus Matthew Jones, along with his historical review of the Quaker Church. Jones was an influential person among the Orthodox Quakers. This branch of the Quaker Church is and has been the strongest body in promoting humanitarian service and has given to the world its attitude toward Quakerdom. Since Dr. Jones was the instructor of philosophy at Haverford College and was the first chairman of the American Friends Service Committee, it made his writings of paramount interest. The fifty- seven books which Rufus Jones wrote were read and the important statements of each chapter were compiled to give a summary of each book. From these summaries, the essential teachings were formulated and the major topics became the chapter titles in the thesis. It was found that Jones wanted to develop his inner life and everything which he wrote, in some way, interpreted to him and to his readers a phase of spiritual development. His autobiographical books showed his own personal inner development. He wrote continuously upon mysticism as a method of inner development and also made a study of the men who he considered were mystics in history. Beginning with the early mystics as Plato, John the Disciple, Meister Eckhart and others, he showed how religious liberalism began to find expression in individual lives. Each of these men wanted to follow God according to his own understanding of religion without conforming to an organized body. George Fox, who was the founder of the Quaker way of life, attempted to maintain religion without organization. To Jones, Fox attained the highest example of developing the inner life and was successful in passing it on to others by forming the Quaker Church. Fox realized that a degree of organization was necessary to have a unified group. The organization that was established by the early Quakers was felt, by Jones, to give the greatest liberty for the expression of the inner man. He tried to show this experience in his Quaker histories. It was further found that Dr. Jones wanted to unite the divisions of the Quaker Church that had come over a period of years and he devoted his life to promote education and humanitarian service, hoping to bring about a reconciliation. Although his efforts were never completely accepted by all Quaker groups, it is certain that he greatly influenced and even set a pattern for many of the present teachings of the Orthodox Quakers.


We image the spatial extent of a cool galactic outflow with fine-structure Fe ii* emission and resonant Mg ii emission in a gravitationally lensed star-forming galaxy at z = 1.70347. The Fe ii* and Mg ii (continuum-subtracted) emissions span out to radial distances of ∼14.33 and 26.5 kpc, respectively, with maximum spatial extents of ∼21 kpc for Fe ii* emission and ∼30 kpc for Mg ii emission. Mg ii emission is patchy and covers a total area of ∼184 kpc2, constraining the minimum area covered by the outflowing gas to be ∼13% of the total area. Mg ii emission is asymmetric and shows ∼21% more extended emission along the decl. direction. We constrain the covering fractions of the Fe ii* and Mg ii emission as a function of radial distance and characterize them with a power-law model. The Mg ii 2803 emission line shows two kinematically distinct emission components and may correspond to two distinct shells of outflowing gas with a velocity separation of Δv ∼ 400 km s−1. By using multiple images with different magnifications of the galaxy in the image plane, we trace the Fe ii* and Mg ii emissions around three individual star-forming regions. In all cases, both the Fe ii* and Mg ii emissions are more spatially extended compared to the star-forming regions traced by the [O ii] emission. These findings provide robust constraints on the spatial extent of the outflowing gas and, combined with outflow velocity and column density measurements, will give stringent constraints on mass-outflow rates of the galaxy.


Ordered V2O5 nanobelt arrays (VNBs) vertically grown on Ni foam have been realized by one-step hydrothermal method without any additives. The obtained VNBs are a single crystal with a two-dimensional (2D) layered structure. The morphology evolution and growth mechanism of VNBs are discussed at different hydrothermal times. The morphologies, length–width ratios and sizes of materials can be controlled by simply adjusting vanadium source concentrations, pH values and hydrothermal temperatures. Moreover, these morphology parameters can significantly affect specific capacitance, cycle stability and charge transfer resistance. Due to the ordered arrangement, single-crystal, top–down and layered structure, VNBs have a relatively high ion storage capacity, specific capacitance (498 F g−1), cycling stability (88.8%) after 5000 cycles and low charge transfer resistance (14.2 Ω) as binder-free electrode materials, which reveals a great potential for practical application in energy storage devices.


A growing body of evidence indicates that reproductive history influences survival in breast cancer, especially among women diagnosed during or shortly after a pregnancy. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. We hypothesized that increasing placental weight, as an indirect marker of exposure to elevated hormone levels during pregnancy, would be associated with reduced survival in breast cancer. A cohort of 1873 women with at least one pregnancy after January 1st, 1973, and a subsequent breast cancer diagnosis before the end of 1991 were followed up for death or emigration through 2006. Information on placental weight and potential confounding factors were collected from medical records and from nationwide registers, which resulted in data on placental weight in the most recent pregnancy before diagnosis for 1,057 cases. For each 100-gram increase in placental weight, the adjusted hazard ratio of death was 1.09 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.99-1.19]. The association was stronger among primiparous women (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.09-1.47), and among women diagnosed during pregnancy or within 2 years from last birth (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.06-1.59). Increasing placental weight is associated with reduced breast cancer survival. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the reduced survival in breast cancer among women with a recent childbirth is linked to pregnancy hormone exposure. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(3):777–83)


Old, larger-diameter eucalypt trees are a common structural feature of mature,
unharvested wet forests in temperate Australia. In Tasmanian production forest, such
trees will become rarer since there is insufficient time under the current prescribed
rotation length of 80-100 years for replacements to regrow following clearfelling.
Drawing on insights from overseas studies, one question that arises is what effect this
anticipated change in age structure may have on tree-dependent biodiversity. In
Tasmania, the relationships between tree age and saproxylic organisms (dead wood
dependent) are insufficiently understood to allow explicit consideration of either their
role as 'ecosystem engineers' (e.g. in hollow formation) or their conservation
requirements in production forest landscapes. This thesis seeks to redress this
deficiency. It documents two main studies that together represent the first attempt to
quantify the saproxylic beetle fauna of living Eucalyptus obliqua trees - the dominant
wet eucalypt species in Tasmania.
The first study investigated the saproxylic beetle fauna of young (69 years old),
medium-aged (105 years old) and old (>150 years old) E. obliqua trees. Beetle
associations with different aged trees and different wood fractions (stem, branches
and bark) were explored by emergence trapping of wood fractions from six trees in
each of the three age classes. The habitat within the stems of trees from each of the
three age-classes was investigated by destructive sampling of wood billets. Wood
within the stem was classified into eleven rotten wood types.
Trees in the oldest age-class were found to support a richer and more distinctive
saproxylic beetle fauna compared to those in the two younger age-classes. They had
higher overall species richness per tree and per surface area sampled; higher richness
of obligate saproxylic beetle species; and a different assemblage composition of
obligate saproxylic beetle species compared to trees in the younger age-classes. By
comparison, trees in the two younger age-classes shared similar species richness and
composition.
Stem-dwellers accounted for much of the distinctiveness of the saproxylic beetle
fauna of trees in the oldest age-class. This may have been due to the more complex
array of habitats present in the stems of these old trees compared to stems of trees in
the two younger age-classes. Trees in the oldest age-class harboured more rotten wood types and a larger proportion of decayed stem compared to the two younger
age-classes. A strong correlation was found between the assemblage composition of
obligately saproxylic beetles and the assemblage composition of rotten wood types
present within a tree. Specific associations with particular rotten wood types were
found for several beetle species.
Eucalyptus obliqua wet forests are naturally fire-prone and likely to harbour beetle
species which are adapted to this disturbance, and which may count as 'ecosystem
engineers' if they then facilitate the creation of more complex habitat features (such as
tree hollows) that are utilised by various species including arboreal mammals and
birds. Thus the second study was a manipulative experiment examining the role of
saproxylic beetles in habitat formation in trees, and their association with fire-wounds
and mechanical wounds.
Beetle associations were assessed by capturing (a) beetles attracted to newly created
mechanical wounds and fire-wounds (sticky trapping), and (b) beetles that colonised
these same wounds (emergence trapping a year later), on 45 trees (fifteen trees from
each treatment: wound, burn, and control).
Preferences for burnt over unburnt recently exposed sapwood were identified in seven
saproxylic beetle species. Several further species with the potential to act as
'ecosystem engineers' in ageing E. obliqua trees were identified through comparing
findings from the two studies.
On the basis of the findings from these studies, management recommendations are
made that, if implemented, would demonstrate a more pre-emptive approach to
saproxylic biodiversity conservation in production forests. In general, efforts should
be made to ensure that long-term structural complexity is enhanced beyond levels
which will eventuate under the current silvicultural practices. This could be achieved
by introducing variability in harvesting intensity and mature tree retention levels, in
rotation length and in coupe size. Additionally, where the forest landscape is currently
dominated by younger managed stands, 'ecological thinning' could be considered as a
means of accelerating the development of structurally more complex forest. At the
landscape level, management planning should consider maintaining sufficient spatial
connectivity and temporal continuity of a range of tree age-classes to ensure the
maintenance of the dependent fauna.


Climate change has been recognized as a severe threat to biodiversity. In the rapidly growing collection of literature on the consequences of global change, researchers have recently noticed a dramatic decrease in insect populations in a wide range of habitats. Insects are extremely susceptible to climatic change, especially with regard to fluctuations in moisture and temperature. However, insects often exhibit phenotypic plasticity, where organisms will express different phenotypes when presented with a specific environmental stimulus. In developmental plasticity, environmental stimuli at the larval stage can determine adult phenotypes. This review focuses on case studies of developmental plasticity in insects, with temperature and moisture as specific stimuli. This review also discusses the role of developmental plasticity on insect population survival and possible future adaptation in the context of global environmental change.


Design and technology in school, as in the workplace, is a social practice which takes place within a network of social relationships and often requires collaborative teamwork. This paper describes the emergence of children's collaborative problem solving during their first years of school and the implications of this for teaching. In the design and technology classroom the way a group of five year-olds use strategies to collaborate during problem solving is very different from the way a group of seven yearolds use them. This research demonstrates broadly that children use two types of strategies: those that are personally and interpersonally determined, and those that are subject specific. It shows that many of the personal and interpersonal strategies that children devise and use in general group situations are enhanced and extended in design and technology activities. These personal and interpersonal strategies change qualitatively as children grow older, but beyond this each strategy changes in a different way because some decline or seem to disappear while others are used more extensively. The factors involved in that change are reported here within a discussion of how teachers can encourage children's collaborative strategies during their early years in school.


AbstractCurrent ensemble-based Kalman filter (EnKF) algorithms are not robust to gross observation errors caused by technical or human errors during the data collection process. In this paper, the authors consider two types of gross observational errors, additive statistical outliers and innovation outliers, and introduce a method to make EnKF robust to gross observation errors. Using both a one-dimensional linear system of dynamics and a 40-variable Lorenz model, the performance of the proposed robust ensemble Kalman filter (REnKF) was tested and it was found that the new approach greatly improves the performance of the filter in the presence of gross observation errors and leads to only a modest loss of accuracy with clean, outlier-free, observations.


The number of housewives has declined significantly in most Western countries, but there is now a renewed interest in the homemaker role in the media and public discourse. Utilising representative survey data from 2007 we examine the prevalence and characteristics of the housewife role in present Norway, a social-democratic country with high gender-equality ambitions. Irrespective of the definition used, being a housewife is clearly a minority practice in Norway. About one out of ten partnered women of prime working age either look upon themselves as housewives or work for pay less than 20 hours per week. Housewives are overrepresented among the less educated, those with health restrictions, women with many children and young children, non-Western immigrants and those with a partner with fairly high income. The partners' aggregate income is lower in housewife couples than in other couples, though. Housewives are usually in charge of most domestic chores and report high levels of satisfaction with their division of labour and domestic economy. The analysis does not support the popular notion that today's housewife is primarily a highly educated woman who puts her career on halt, or a rich man's wife who spends her time on leisure activities.


This is the FY 1999 Progress Report for the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. It gives an overview of the LDRD Program, summarizes work done on individual research projects, relates the projects to major Laboratory program sponsors, and provides an index to the principal investigators. Project summaries are grouped by their LDRD component: Competency Development, Program Development, and Individual Projects. Within each component, they are further grouped into nine technical categories: (1) materials science, (2) chemistry, (3) mathematics and computational science, (4) atomic, molecular, optical, and plasma physics, fluids, and particle beams, (5) engineering science, (6) instrumentation and diagnostics, (7) geoscience, space science, and astrophysics, (8) nuclear and particle physics, and (9) bioscience.


Community Environmental Action Planning (CEAP) is a stripped-down and simple participatory approach that has been used successfully over several years, and in a variety of forms, to introduce a greater degree of participation into environmental planning. CEAP is a proven and practical way to introduce greater accountability and community-ownership into ongoing institutional processes, such as district development planning, and to build capacity for creating and implementing policies of community participation. The guide has been designed for practitioners who are involved in environmental planning at community level and who want to do things better. It provides a quick and hands-on toolkit that is easy to use and which can help introduce simple but effective tools for participation within institutions that aim to become more accountable. CEAP approach emplowers local communities to undertake conservation and development initiatives that fit with their unique culture and value systems.


Media with 16° slope is an effective solution to reduce low back pain risk caused by prolonged standing. In this study, we examine the effect of shoes on lower back pain caused by prolonged standing for 2 hours on sloping medium. However, prolonged standing has another major risk: lower extremity pain. Many studies has shown that this risk can be affected by shoes type or characteristic. Hence, lower extremity pain risk is the main concern in this research. Two types of shoes observed in this study are Safety Shoes and Slip-On Shoes, as these are the most widely used in the manufacturing industry. Using the Surface Electromyography (S-EMG) method, the difference in Medial Gastrocnemius muscle response was measured against both types of shoes. The study showed that both types of shoes have different muscle activation values and the Safety Shoes showed greater activation. This result proves that, type of shoes may affect the amount of lower extremity pain caused while standing for 2 hours on sloping medium and Safety Shoes poses a greater lower extremity risk. Both Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Foot Pain Questionnaire methods supported the finding. While the results of VAS method found standing for 2 hours on sloping medium has a greater lower extremity pain than low back pain risk. Foot Pain Questionnaire method indicated that the activity of standing for 2 hours over sloping medium causes a high pain on thumb toe and the back of foot. Based on this study, it can be concluded that it is necessary to design a special shoes for prolonged standing occupation on a sloping medium that can reduce the lower extremity pain risk, besides low back pain risk.


In high-speed dives many airplanes exhibit a dangerous tendency to continue diving in spite of the application of large control forces. Wind-tunnel tests have confirmed that these difficulties are not peculiar to any particular configuration, so that the problem is of interest to all designers of high-speed airplanes. The purpose of this report is to acquaint designers with the cause of difficulties and with the means now known for their alleviation.


Variational Auto-Encoders (VAEs) have become very popular techniques to perform inference and learning in latent variable models as they allow us to leverage the rich representational power of neural networks to obtain flexible approximations of the posterior of latent variables as well as tight evidence lower bounds (ELBOs). Combined with stochastic variational inference, this provides a methodology scaling to large datasets. However, for this methodology to be practically efficient, it is necessary to obtain low-variance unbiased estimators of the ELBO and its gradients with respect to the parameters of interest. While the use of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been previously suggested to achieve this [23, 26], the proposed methods require specifying reverse kernels which have a large impact on performance. Additionally, the resulting unbiased estimator of the ELBO for most MCMC kernels is typically not amenable to the reparameterization trick. We show here how to optimally select reverse kernels in this setting and, by building upon Hamiltonian Importance Sampling (HIS) [17], we obtain a scheme that provides low-variance unbiased estimators of the ELBO and its gradients using the reparameterization trick. This allows us to develop a Hamiltonian Variational Auto-Encoder (HVAE). This method can be reinterpreted as a target-informed normalizing flow [20] which, within our context, only requires a few evaluations of the gradient of the sampled likelihood and trivial Jacobian calculations at each iteration.


The small polarization dependence (< 1 dB) of optical components becomes significant in optical multistage interconnection networks. The cumulative effect can ultimately limit physical layer scalability by changing the maximum number of internal nodes that optical packets can traverse error free. It is shown that for nodes based on commercial semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) switches with polarization-dependent gains of less than 0.35 dB, the maximum number of cascaded nodes changes by as much as 20 nodes, depending on both the packet wavelength and its state of polarization. This deviation in the number of nodes could correspond to a 100-fold decrease in the number of interconnected ports of an optical interconnection network such as the data vortex. This dramatic effect is explained in terms of optical signal-to-noise ratio degradation due to accumulated amplified spontaneous emission noise originating from the SOA device in the node


The primary purpose of the seminar on Population and Food and Agricultural Development convened in December 1975 in Rome by the IAAE, in co-operation with F AO and UNFPA, was to examine key issues which arose at the present time in the relationship between food production and population. Profiting from the global assessments and the recommendations made by the World Population Conference in Bucharest in August 1974, and the World Food Conference in Rome in November 1974, the seminar sought to underline the basic issues and the priority areas of study with a view to assisting agricultural economists to make a fuller contribution towards the solution of the world population and food crisis. Beside the proposals of the two world conferences, the seminar had before it six country studies (Brazil, Yugoslavia, the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, India and Kenya) and twenty-seven papers by individual authors. These studies and papers have been since edited by the Chairman of the IAAE Committee on Population and Food, Dr Douglas Ensminger, in a volume entitled Food Enough or Starvation for Millions. An official report on the seminar has been already presented by the FAO Secretariat. In supplementing this report, the present paper draws attention selectively to the critical problems identified and approaches to solutions suggested in the course of discussions in the Rome seminar.


Computers are now widely used in medical practice for accounting and secretarial tasks. However, it has been much more difficult to use computers in more physician-related activities of daily practice. I investigated the Desqview multitasking system on a 386 computer as a solution to this problem. Physician-directed tasks of management of patient charts, retrieval of reference information, word processing, appointment scheduling and office organization were each managed by separate programs. Desqview allowed instantaneous switching back and forth between the various programs. I compared the time and cost savings and the need for physician input between Desqview 386, a 386 computer alone and an older, XT computer. Desqview significantly simplified the use of computer programs for medical information management and minimized the necessity for physician intervention. The time saved was 15 minutes per day; the costs saved were estimated to be $5000 annually.


Luminescence analysis of gastric biopsy specimens reflecting the state of cell respiration of the mucous membrane of the stomach (MMS) was used for endoscopic investigation of 271 patients with gastric ulcer (GU). A degree of decrease of the patients' own luminescence (DDPL) in an ordinary course of GU with a favorable outcome of cicatrization (108 patients) did not exceed 25% at the ulcer edge and 10% in the periulcerative zone. Prognosis of malignant transformation of ulcer and the development of callous gastric ulcer was based on the detection of a sharp decrease in the level of luminescence at the ulcer edge. A conclusion was made of a high prognostic value of luminescence endoscopy in GU.


This paper describes a successful approach to improving the robustness and speed of Sandia National Laboratory's 3-D MEMS geometry modeler through a combination of mask subdivision and code parallelization. Symptoms of the robustness problems experienced with the original modeler that suggested the need for the subdivision strategy pursued here are explained. The basic elements of the subdivision approach and the subsequent parallel implementation are described. Results and timings for a number of different modeling problems are presented and discussed in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the current approach.


The aim of this study was to examine the quality of written instructions and choice of impression trays and materials for removable partial dentures (RPDs) in the Kingdom of Bahrain. All six private dental laboratories in Bahrain were contacted and invited to participate in the study. Five laboratories participated, and submitted written instructions received by them for fabrication of both acrylic (A-RPDs) and cobalt-chromium (CC-RPDs) RPDs. These were examined for evidence of selected design variables. Types of impression trays and materials used were also recorded. One hundred and thirty-one written instructions were examined. Eleven percent (n = 14) were for CC-RPDs, 89% (n = 117) for A-RPDs. All treatments were provided on a private basis. Fifty-seven percent (n =1 8) of CC-RPD instructions requested the technician to design the prosthesis, 43% (n = 6) contained a diagram and 43% (n = 6) mentioned all design variables. Seventy-nine percent (n = 92) of A-RPDs requested the technician to design the denture, and only 1% (n = 1) mentioned all design variables. Alginate impression material was most commonly used for master impressions (83% of impressions (n = 109); 85% (n = 99) of A-RPDs, and 71% (n = 10) of CC-RPDs). Master casts were poured after a minimum of 24 h. Acrylic custom trays were used in 14% (n = 19) of cases (43% (n = 6) of CC-RPDs; 13% (n = 15) of A-RPDs). The quality of written instructions to dental laboratories for the fabrication of RPDs was found to be inadequate in Kingdom of Bahrain. There was widespread use of inappropriate impression trays and materials.


This study is an attempt to investigate by means of a curriculum how nurses are trained theoretically and practically throughout their specialist education to communicate competently and professionally in interaction with colleagues and patients. Research today shows that there are many different approaches to develop professionally skilled communication in nurse-patient interaction. It indicates that this aspect of nurse education is regarded as an important feature by educators. It is therefore of interest to study, by means of analysing a curriculum, how nurses' communicative competence is developed. To this purpose a curriculum was presented related to nursing communication skills training, selected from a University College of Health Care Sciences in Sweden. Both students and teachers need clearly defined curricula to structure their studies and to evaluate communication skills. The investigated curriculum could be further developed to direct students and teachers in effective communication skills. It is of importance to have a curriculum that could be interpreted in the same way by teachers and students.


This paper addresses the analytical evaluation of broadcast protocols in VANET. We focus on the most popular broadcast algorithm, which consists in the current emitter selecting the furthest receiver as the next forwarder. We propose a general framework based on point process to evaluate this protocol. The radio environment is modelled by a generic Frame Error Rate function. It enables us, through the same model, to assess the performances for different radio environments or radio technologies. We derive simple formulae for different quantities relative to the performance of the broadcast protocol: time to propagate the message, emitters' intensity, mean number of receptions for the same message, etc. Results based on the analytical model are compared with simulations using realistic vehicle traffic in order to determine the contexts for which the analytical model is relevant. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Nedocromil sodium (Tilade) is an effective therapeutic agent against asthma and has been shown to exhibit antiinflammatory activity in vitro; however, its mode of action is yet to be described fully. Using an in vitro assay designed to mimic the extravasation of neutrophils from the peripheral circulation through cellular barriers to sites of inflammation, the effect of nedocromil sodium on chemoattractant-stimulated neutrophil migration was examined. We also examined the effects of WEB 2086, a platelet-activating factor (PAF) receptor antagonist, in parallel. Neutrophils and the cellular barrier were pretreated and/or co-incubated with nedocromil or WEB 2086 and the effects on neutrophil chemotaxis measured. In all treatments, nedocromil did not significantly affect chemotaxis through cellular or noncellular barriers to N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (FMLP), leukotriene B4 (LTB4), or PAF. In contrast, WEB 2086 inhibited PAF-induced neutrophil migration through both naked filters and endothelial and epithelial monolayers cultured on these filters. We conclude that while nedocromil has been shown to have inhibitory effects on neutrophils and is an effective therapeutic agent for asthma and inflammatory conditions, its activity is not primarily mediated by inhibition of neutrophil chemotaxis. Platelet-activating factor antagonists may partially be effective in asthma through inhibitory effects on neutrophil chemotaxis.


Considering the rapidly increasing number of academic papers, searching for and citing appropriate references have become a non-trial task during the wiring of papers. Recommending a handful of candidate papers to a manuscript before publication could ease the burden of the authors, and help the reviewers to check the completeness of the cited resources. Conventional approaches on citation recommendation generally consider recommending one ground-truth citation for a query context from an input manuscript, but lack of consideration on co-citation recommendations. However, a piece of context often needs to be supported by two or more co-citation pairs. Here, we propose a novel scientific paper modelling for citation recommendations, namely Multi-Positive BERT Model for Citation Recommendation (MP-BERT4CR), complied with a series of Multi-Positive Triplet objectives to recommend multiple positive citations for a query context. The proposed approach has the following advantages: First, the proposed multi-positive objectives are effective to recommend multiple positive candidates. Second, we adopt noise distributions which are built based on the historical co-citation frequencies, so that MP-BERT4CR is not only effective on recommending high-frequent co-citation pairs; but also the performances on retrieving the low-frequent ones are significantly improved. Third, we propose a dynamic context sampling strategy which captures the the "macro-scoped" citing intents from a manuscript and empowers the citation embeddings to be content-dependent, which allow the algorithm to further improve the performances. Single and multiple positive recommendation experiments testified that MP-BERT4CR delivered significant improvements. In addition, MP-BERT4CR are also effective in retrieving the full list of co-citations, and historically low-frequent co-citation pairs compared with the prior works.


Water is one of the factors which very important and necessary in the life of living creatures. Therefore, water must be available whenever and wherever in the quantity, timing, and sufficient quality. Hydraulic Ram Pump (Hydram) is a pump does not require external energy as the power source. The purposes of this research are understanding the influence of falling angle from the hydrant pump toward generated debit and finding the influence of the falling angle of the hydrant pump to generated efficiency.
This research uses hydrant pump by the specification of tube compressor its' diameter 3 inches and a height 60 cm. the falling angle of pump are 35 °, 40 °, 45 °, 50 ° and 55 °. The falling-height is 1 meter with five variations of weight-lift 3, 3½, 4, 4½, and 5 meters.
The method of analysis is conducted by analyzing data obtained during the experiment, where the results in the form of quantitative data which is presented in type of tables and displayed in graphical form. The results of the research shows that the best output debit on falling 35 ° namely 0.079 L / s with 3 meters' water weight-lift, while the lowest output debit on falling 55 ° namely 0.010 L / s 5 meters' water weight-lift. The best efficiency is 6.103% in the falling angle of 35 ° with 3 meters' of water weight-lift, while the lowest efficiency is 1.239% in the falling angle of 55 ° with 5 meters' of water weight-lift


The present study compared the accuracy of ventilation perfusion scintigraphy (VQS) and CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism. This was a prospective observational study of 112 patients with suspected pulmonary embolism (PE) who could be studied with both investigations within 24 h. Results were compared to final diagnosis at completion of 6-month follow up, using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Pulmonary embolism was diagnosed in 27 referred patients (24%). The sensitivity and specificity of VQS and CTPA were similar to that reported from the literature. A normal VQ scan had the highest negative predictive value (100%), while a high-probability VQ scan had the highest positive predictive value (92%). There was no overall difference (area under the ROC curve (AUC)) between VQS (AUC (95% CI) = 0.82 (0.75,0.89)) and CTPA (AUC = 0.88 (0.81,0.94)) for the diagnosis of PE. Among patients with abnormal chest X-rays, CTPA (AUC 0.90 (0.83,0.97)) appeared somewhat better than VQS (AUC 0.78 (0.68,0.88)) but this difference did not reach statistical significance. In this instance, CTPA is at least as accurate as VQS and may provide an opportunity to make alternative diagnoses.


We have designed and built a dynamic heart-in-thorax as a primary tool during the verification of the performance of the quantitative dynamic functional imaging method we are developing for standard rotating single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) cameras. The phantom consists of two independent parts (i) a dynamic heart model with the possibility of mounting "defects" inside it and (ii) a non-uniform thorax model with lungs and spinal cord, and uses the fact that the washout of a tracer by dilution is governed by a linear first order equation, the same type of equation as is used to model time-activity distribution in myocardial viability studies. Tests of the dynamic performance of the phantom in planar scanning mode have confirmed the validity of these assumptions. Also the preliminary results obtained in SPECT mode show that the values of characteristic times could be experimentally determined and that these values agreed well with the values preset on the phantom. We consider that the phantom is ready for extensive use in studies into development of the dynamic SPECT method.


In this research we present analysis and measurement results of a new ultra wide band (UWB) antenna. The rugby-ball shaped antenna is fed by the 50 /spl Omega/ coaxial cable through an image ground plane and backed by a reflector for the radiation and detection of ultra-short electric pulses. Maximum pulse amplitude occurs at an elevation angle of 60/spl deg/ for broadside radiation. The antenna has an ultra wideband VSWR performance and 'percent bandwidth' of 198%. The antenna is simple to fabricate and low cost as well.


This paper proposes an efficient techniques to reconfigure a two-dimensional degradable very large scale integration/wafer scale integration (VLSI/WSI) array under the row and column routing constraints, which has been shown to be NP-complete. The proposed VLSI/WSI array consists of identical processing elements such as processors or memory cells embedded in a 6-port switch lattice in the form of a rectangular grid. It has been shown that the proposed VLSI structure with 6-port switches eliminates the need to incorporate internal bypass within processing elements and leads to notable increase in the harvest when compared with the one using 4-port switches. A new greedy rerouting algorithm and compensation approaches are also proposed to maximize harvest through reconfiguration. Experimental results show that the proposed VLSI array with 6-port switches consistently outperforms the most efficient alternative proposed in literature, toward maximizing the harvest in the presence of fault processing elements.


Coordinate transformation is always concerned with data processing of bistatic/multistatic systems. The influence of coordinate transformation upon measurement errors of the bistatic system is discussed in the paper. Detail derivations of the relation equation between the original coordinate system and the transformed new one, quantitative analysis of the influence and a number of curves are also given in the paper.


Human guanylate binding proteins (GBPs), a family of IFNγ-inducible GTPases, promote cell-intrinsic defence against pathogens and host cell death. We previously identified GBP1 as a mediator of cell death of human macrophages infected with Toxoplasma gondii (Tg) or Salmonella Typhimurium (STm). How GBP1 targets microbes for AIM2 activation during Tg infection and caspase-4 during STm infection remains unclear. Here, using correlative light and electron microscopy and EdU labelling of Tg-DNA, we reveal that GBP1-decorated parasitophorous vacuoles (PVs) lose membrane integrity and release Tg-DNA for detection by AIM2-ASC-CASP8. In contrast, differential staining of cytosolic and vacuolar STm revealed that GBP1 does not contribute to STm escape into the cytosol but decorates almost all cytosolic STm leading to the recruitment of caspase-4. Caspase-5, which can bind LPS and whose expression is upregulated by IFNγ, does not target STm pointing to a key role for caspase-4 in pyroptosis. We also uncover a regulatory mechanism involving the inactivation of GBP1 by its cleavage at Asp192 by caspase-1. Cells expressing non-cleavable GBP1D192E therefore undergo higher caspase-4-driven pyroptosis during STm infection. Taken together, our comparative studies elucidate microbe-specific spatiotemporal roles of GBP1 in inducing cell death by leading to assembly and regulation of divergent caspase signalling platforms.


A high magnetic field of H = 10 T was applied to 30BaO-15TiO2-55GeO2 glass through its crystallization process. It was found that the c-axis of Ba2TiGe2O8 optical nonlinear/ferroelectric crystals oriented along the magnetic field. The second harmonic intensity of crystallized glass which the high magnetic field was applied perpendicular to the surface of glass was enhanced compared with a conventional crystallization in no magnetic field. Transparencies, photorefractive indices and thicknesses were also measured. As a result, crystal orientation of Ba2TiGe2O8 in glass matrix induced by a high magnetic field causes improvement of transparency and low value of photorefractive index.


An algorithm of using modern methods of the laboratory and X-ray examination and of operative treatment of patients by laparoscopic techniques was developed on the basis of an analysis of the results of diagnosis, endovideosurgical treatment of 132 patients with adrenal tumors without clear clinical signs, hypercortisolism and hyperadrenalinectomy (incidentalomas). Laparoscopic techniques were shown to be less traumatic and dangerous under conditions of regular using them in specialized clinics.


Wise and illuminating, "Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!"is a masterpiece from one of the world's finest writers, Kenzaburo Oe -- winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, one of whom is mentally disabled. K's wife confronts him with the information that this child, Eeyore, has been doing disturbing things -- behaving aggressively, asserting that he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother -- and K, given to retreating from reality into abstraction, looks for answers in his lifelong love of William Blake's poetry. As K struggles to understand his family and assess his responsibilities within it, he must also reevaluate himself -- his relationship with his own father, the political stances he has taken, the duty of artists and writers in society. A remarkable portrait of the inexpressible bond between this father and his damaged son, "Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!" is the work of an unparalleled writer at his sparkling best."


This article discusses the reasons why Filipino university students are learning Japanese as a foreign language. Two motivational orientations were used to study their motivation to learn the language. Two learning strategies were also used to identify their learning strategies. Respondents of this study include students from seven universities in Metro Manila enrolled during the school year 1996-97. A survey questionnaire was utilized to gather the data. Results show that Filipino learners of the Japanese language are instrumentally motivated and they use direct strategies in learning the language. Some implications to foreign language learning are suggested.


Introduction: Whole genome sequencing has demonstrated tremendous heterogeneity in the mutations and chromosomal translocations associated with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and there are several correlates with prognosis, yet we remain quite limited in our ability to predict specific chemotherapy drug sensitivity based on genomics with the exception of a few selected mutations or translocations, such as FLT3 -ITD or PML-RARA. One third of new diagnosis patients and over half of relapsed patients will not respond to initial chemotherapy regimens that incur appreciable toxicity and result in prolonged hospitalization. We therefore seek to define molecular information that might better predict response to conventional or novel therapies. Methods: MyAML™ uses next generation sequencing (NGS) to analyze the 39 and 59 UTR and exonic regions of 194 genes and potential genomic breakpoints within known somatic gene fusion breakpoints known to be associated with AML. Fragmented genomic DNA (~3.4Mb) is captured with a customized probe design, and sequenced with 300bp paired end reads on an Illumina MiSeq instrument to an average depth of coverage >1000x. Using a custom bioinformatics pipeline, MyInformatics™, single nucleotide variants (SNVs), insertion/deletions (indels), inversions and translocations are identified, annotated, characterized, and allelic frequencies calculated. Commonly associated variants in dbSNP and 1000 genomes may be eliminated, as well as variants with allele frequencies less than 5%. High throughput drug sensitivity testing was performed against a panel of 160 drugs, of which 56 are FDA approved and 104 are investigational. De-identified samples from 12 patients with de novo AML and 12 patients with relapsed AML were analyzed. For 2 patient samples, Duplex Sequencing was also performed to detect sub-clonal mutations below the detection limit of conventional NGS. Pearson and Spearman correlations were performed between all possible pairs of genes containing missense or indel mutations and the in vitro cytotoxicity response across the same set of 24 patients. Results: From the 24 patient samples analyzed to date, an average of 129 missense mutations were identified in each sample with an allelic frequency >5%. Of these, an average of over 21 missense variants were observed in COSMIC and less than 3 were novel (not in dbSNP). These samples also contained an average of over 12 coding indels (~5 frameshift and 7 inframe indels per sample). In addition, MyAML™ identified 3 samples with inv(16) and 6 samples with translocations, including the cryptic NUP98-NSD1 t(5;11) that was not detected by karyotyping. For 2 of the samples, Duplex Sequencing was performed at a depth of at least 6000X, and an accuracy of 10-7, and showed concordance of some of the mutations, with each method identifying additional mutations not observed by the other, an expected finding, as each method targeted distinct regions, and Duplex Sequencing had a greater depth of coverage. Fourteen genes were observed to exhibit at least one indel with a frameshift at frequency greater than 5% in more than one patient. In order to identify significantly associated drugs and genes containing indel mutations, we computed Pearson and Spearman correlations between drugs and these 14 genes across 24 patients. The correlation analyses revealed significant associations (p= 0.006 to 0.04) between indel mutations in three genes and chemosensitivity to drugs commonly used in AML such as cladribine, clofarabine, cytarabine, daunorubicin, etoposide, fludarabine and mitoxantrone. Similarly, significant associations (p Conclusion: Personalized data derived from a targeted genomic assay and in vitro chemotherapy sensitivity testing of individual patient AML samples will likely lead to innovation in treatment, identification of novel targeted agents, and improved outcomes in AML. Disclosures Xie:Invivoscribe: Employment. Carson:Genection: Employment. Patay:Genection: Employment.


* Comparative Essay: The Editors Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery. Ford Risley. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. 248 pp. $24.95 pbk. Horace Greeley's New- York Tribune: Civil War-Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor. Adam Tuchinsky. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. 336 pp. $59.95 hbk. The Civil War era continues to be one of the most prolific fields of study in journalism history. These two books significantly advance scholarship and teaching - one with a compact survey of the abolitionist press, a crucial early success in the history of American advocacy journalism, and the other with a detailed research monograph about Horace Greeley's socialism, an often glossed-over facet of one of the most influential U.S. editors. Risley's survey, like many other volumes in the excellent Visions of the American Press series by the Medili School of Journalism, could be used as a textbook in an undergraduate or graduate class about the history of American journalism and of the advocacy press. Tuchinsky' s specialized subject is more appropriate for a graduate seminar, but it is a must-read for nineteenth-century media historians. Despite their very different subject matter and approaches, both books at their core illuminate an essential aspect of nineteenth-century journalism: the role of editors in promoting social change and radical reforms, often against paralyzing odds. The journalists profiled in these volumes, working from either the fringes or the epicenter of the booming media landscape, firmly believed in shaping American public opinion, and in some essential cases, they unquestionably did. Reading these books in the twenty-first century, at a time of growing criticism of the relevance and independence of journalism as a social institution, readers can be inspired by finding evidence of the press' transformative power. Risley has created an eminently readable survey of the abolitionist press from the 1820s to the 1860s, providing both page-turning detailed narratives and a broader feel for the complexity and diversity of this often-neglected journalistic activism. As aptly summarized in Risley's conclusion, abolitionist editors, along with most of their counterparts in the commercial mainstream and the nascent African American presses, "believed passionately in the power of the printed word." Journalists as different as firebrand William Lloyd Garrison, colonization proponent Benjamin Lundy, and black rights activist Frederick Douglass all bet their life work, and often their very lives, on this belief and the related assumption that a rational informed citizenry is the best bulwark of democracy. If only Americans could be made to see - in print - how evil slavery was, they reasoned, they would revolt against it and the government would be forced to eradicate it. While Southern and Northern supporters of the slave system attacked the abolitionists as agitators aiming to overthrow the government, the editors kept beating their drums, firmly believing that, on the contrary, the right to criticize policies was fundamentally American. Quoting heavily from the most influential of the approximately three dozen abolitionist newspapers founded in the Civil War era, Risley paints a compelling portrait of the editors' fight. He reminds the modern reader of just how radical their stance against slavery was in a country that then had "the most formidable slave economy in the Western world," and where the immediate emancipation of slaves was broadly considered "sheer fanaticism." From the humble beginnings of the Genius of Universal Emancipation in 1821 to the 1865 closing of the movement's iconic Liberator, Risley traces how the abolitionist press helped change American public opinion on slavery and, therefore, significantly shaped the country's future. Risley, the head of the journaUsm department at Perm State University and a scholar of the Civil War press, manages to delve into minute portraits of compelling figures Uke Garrison - who "with his own hands proudly set the type" for the Emancipation Proclamation news - without losing track of that larger story. …


In recent years, social enterprises have been studied from different points of view, i.e the financial aspects, the governance, the theoretical perspective, and the existing different types at national level. This last aspect in particular needs greater clarity and deeper understanding as it has not yet been explored thoroughly enough. With this in mind, this article aims to present the results of the ICSEM research project and to compare them with the different social enterprise models existing in Italy. The ICSEM project is a research project which started in 2013 and is still in progress involving 230 researchers from 55 different countries on 5 continents. The objective of the ICSEM project is to highlight the different models of social enterprises existing in different countries. The main results of the article show the similarities and divergences of the different Italian social enterprises models compared to those highlighted by the ICSEM research.


BackgroundPatient retention and positive immuno-virologic outcomes are key goals of any HIV treatment program. Information on predictors of immunovirologic failure and discordance and their associations with clinical, demographic, socio-economic and behavioral risk factors are not well described in Nigeria since HIV viral load testing is not routinely offered in public HIV treatment programs. MethodsThe HIV AIDS Care and Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HACART) study was a large multi-center observational clinic-based cohort study of 2585 initially ART-naïve adults who started HAART between April 2008 and February 2009. A total of 628 out of 1780 patients alive and active at 12 months were randomly selected for in-depth analyses. ResultsVirologic suppression rate (<400 copies/mL) was 76.7%, immunologic recovery rate (CD4 change from baseline ≥50 cells/mm3) was 77.4% and Immuno-virologic discordance rate was 33%. In multivariable logistic regression controlling for adherence, risk of virologic failure was significantly associated with age <30 years (OR 1.76; 95% CI: 1.09 to 2.84), anemia (Hemoglobin <10 g/dL) (OR 1.60; 95% CI: 1.04 to 2.48), residential distance 51–100 kilometers (OR 0.41; 0.20–0.87) and post-secondary education (OR 0.53; 95% CI: 0.32 to 0.90). Risk of immunologic failure was associated with male gender (OR 1.65; 95% CI: 0.01 to 2.67), and age <30 years (OR 1.71; 95% CI: 1.19 to 2.63). Risk of immunovirologic discordance was associated with age <30 years (OR 1.64; 95% CI: 1.06 to 2.53) and post-secondary education (OR 0.61; 95% CI: 0.38 to 0.98). ConclusionAlthough favorable immuno-virologic outcomes can be achieved in this large ART program in Nigeria, immuno-virologic discordance was observed in a third of the patients. Baseline anemia assessment and management (anti-malarials, anti-helminthics, hematinics, etc) may help improve virologic outcomes. Intensifying treatment preparation and nutritional activities, and focusing on young patients, males and persons with less than post-secondary education may help improve favorable immuno-virologic outcomes.


Variability in soil properties is a critical element across wide areas of researches especially in several aspects of agriculture and environment including sewage disposal and global climate change. Particle size fraction (sand, silt, and clay), effective cation exchange capacity, base saturation, pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen, carbon nitrogen ratio, available phosphorus, exchangeable bases (calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium) and acidity are frequently used in agriculture for soil management. The objective of this study therefore was to identify soil management factors from these set of 15 soil properties and spatial distribution of representative soil management properties. The study was carried out in the University of Uyo Teaching and Research Farm measuring 8.19 hectares in University of Uyo Annex, Uyo in Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria. Nine and ten traverses were made horizontally and vertically respectively at 40 meters intervals. A total of 58 soil samples were collected at 0 - 15 cm depth on the grid nodes of the traverses. Particle size distributions, exchangeable bases and acidity, effective cation exchange capacity (ECEC), available phosphorus (avail. P), base saturation (BS), organic carbon, total nitrogen, carbon nitrogen ratio (CNR) and pH of the samples were determined in the laboratory. Coefficient of variation indicated that 26.6% of the soil properties (sand content, pH, CNR and sodium) were least variable, 40.1% comprising silt, clay contents, ECEC, base saturation, phosphorus and magnesium were moderately. Whereas 33.3% of the soil properties comprising clay content, organic carbon, total nitrogen, exchangeable Ca, K and acidity (i.e.) were highly variable. There were significant correlation (p < 0.05) in 26.6% of the soil properties, the strongest negative significant (p < 0.01) correlations were between sand and clay (r = –0.85), exchangeable acidity and base saturation (r = –0.85), whereas the strongest positive significant correlations were between ECEC and Ca (r = 0.80), Ca and BS (r = 0.74), organic carbon and total nitrogen (r = 0.80). Principal component analysis indicated the existence of six factors including mineralogical or weathering, soil organic matter, cation exchange activity, soil texture, and dispersion and soil phosphorus based on either management or pedological considerations. Semivariance statistics showed that sand and clay contents, ECEC, BS and total N were moderately (≥25.7% ≤47.3%), while silt content, pH, organic carbon, CNR, avail. P, exchangeable Ca, Mg, Na and acidity (≥0.18% ≤22.8%) were strongly spatially dependent. The variability observed was primarily incident upon factors of soil formation. Therefore, the utilization of spatial structure of organic matter and texture factors in the management of nutrient and soil water will facilitate planning of crop production scheme on coastal plain sands soils.


Abstract (Ca, Mg)-rich clinopyroxenes are abundant in Earth's upper mantle and subduction zones. Experimental studies on the thermoelastic properties of these minerals at simultaneous high pressure and high temperature are important for constraining of the composition and structure of the Earth. Here, we present a synchrotron-based single-crystal X-ray diffraction study of natural diopside-dominated augite [(Ca0.89Na0.05Mg0.06)(Mg0.74Fe0.11Al0.14Ti0.01)(Si1.88Al0.12) O6.00] at P and T to ~27 GPa and 700 K. The experiment simulates conditions in cold subducting slabs, and results indicate that augite is stable over this pressure and temperature range. A third-order high-temperature Birch-Murnaghan equation was fit with the pressure-volume-temperature data, yielding the following thermoelastic parameters: KT0 = 111(1) GPa, KT0′ $K_{\text T0}'$ = 4.1(1), (∂K0/∂T)P = −0.008(5) GPa/K and αT = 4(1)×10−5 K−1 +2(3)×10−8 K−2 T. A strain analysis shows that the compression along the three principal stress directions is highly anisotropic with ε1:ε2:ε3 = 1.98:2.43:1.00. Additionally, high-pressure structural refinements of room-temperature polyhedral geometry, bond lengths and O3-O3-O3 angle were investigated to ~27 GPa at ambient temperature. Pressure dependences of polyhedral volumes and distortion indicate that the substitution of Al3+ for Si4+ significantly changes the compressional behavior of the TO4-tetrahedron in augite. Density calculations of this augite along a subducting slab geotherm suggest that augite as well as other common clinopyroxenes would promote slab stagnations at transition zone depths if they are metastably preserved in significant quantities.


Gupta and Shabbir (2008) have suggested an alternative form of ratio-type estimator for estimating the population mean. In this paper, we introduced new estimators by mixing two, stratified and cluster sampling method. Then we improved these estimators by using auxiliary variables and introducing new estimators. For sampling in infinite populations with a high geographic dispersion, the population will be divided into some smaller sub-population which leads to dispersion reduction to some extent. This will affect the variance of the estimator. Additionally dividing the population will result in saving cost, time and eases calculations.


Productivity is a major source of competitive advantage but improving productivity requires analysis and productivity is getting more difficult to measure as economies become more knowledge, service, and innovation intensive. In this paper, we provide an introduction to a powerful productivity analysis tool, data envelopment analysis (DEA). DEA is a flexible tool originally created in the 1970s for examining the relative efficiency of nonprofit institutions. Researchers have found many more applications and created numerous extensions to DEA. This paper provides an introduction to DEA, a summary of some of the most important modeling variations, and examples of applications relevant to technology management.


The current review focuses on a well-known, oldest, natural, polyherbal, ayurvedic drug Triphala Churna, its phytochemical constituents and pharmacological & clinical benefits. Triphala is used in Indian traditional ayurvedic system of medicine. According to Ayurvedic Formulary of India, it is prepared by combining three ground myrobalans called as Emblica officinalis Gaertn, Terminalia bellirica Gaertn, and Terminalia chebula Retz mixed in the ratio of 1:1:1. It is found to be used worldwide on various vernacular names and is considered as a purging medicine based on its pharmacological effects for various kinds of interventions. Primarily, it is used in the interventions of diabetes including diabetic nephropathy and diabetic retinopathy, constipation, gum diseases, hypercholesterolemia, ulcer, geriatric diseases etc. The main phytochemical constituents present in Triphala are tannic acid, gallic acid, ellagic acid, chebulinic acid, flavonoids, polyphenols etc. This recap of Triphala shows indigence for more exploration in the domain of clinical evolution.


Fracture characterizationmeans finding out the fracture type, fracture strike, fractures dip, fracture aperture, fractureoccurrence, fracture density and any other information related to fractures. In oil and gas industry, havingthis informationabout the fractures are essential, because of the importance that they have in oil and gas reservoirs. Fractures provide the place for oil and gas to stay and to provide the pathway for them to moveinto the well. In other word, doing any operation in oil and gas reservoirsdepends onfracture characterization, especially in naturallyfractured reservoirs. Image log technology is the new technology that can provide us this information, but this technology is still unknownto many geologists, so we will explain it completely using a case study and a number of valuable selected log interpretation examples.


Causal mediation analysis is routinely conducted by applied researchers in a variety of disciplines. The goal of such an analysis is to investigate alternative causal mechanisms by examining the roles of intermediate variables that lie in the causal paths between the treat- ment and outcome variables. In this paper we first prove that under a particular version of sequential ignorability assumption, the aver- age causal mediation effect (ACME) is nonparametrically identified. We compare our identification assumption with those proposed in the literature. Some practical implications of our identification result are also discussed. In particular, the popular estimator based on the linear structural equation model (LSEM) can be interpreted as an ACME estimator once additional parametric assumptions are made. We show that these assumptions can easily be relaxed within and outside of the LSEM framework and propose simple nonparametric estimation strate- gies. Second, and perhaps most importantly, we propose a new sensi- tivity analysis that can be easily implemented by applied researchers within the LSEM framework. Like the existing identifying assumptions, the proposed sequential ignorability assumption may be too strong in many applied settings. Thus, sensitivity analysis is essential in order to examine the robustness of empirical findings to the possible existence of an unmeasured confounder. Finally, we apply the proposed methods to a randomized experiment from political psychology. We also make easy-to-use software available to implement the proposed methods.


This paper studies technological change in renewable energies, providing empirical evidence on the determinants of innovative activity with a special emphasis on the role of knowledge spillovers. We investigate two major renewable energy technologies - wind and solar - across a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1978 to 2004. Spillovers may occur at the national level, either within the same technology field or economic sector (intra-sectoral spillovers) or in related technologies or sectors (inter-sectoral spillovers), or at the international level. We find that innovation is strongly driven by knowledge spillovers, especially those occurring at the national level. Wind and solar technologies exhibit distinct innovation characteristics: both are stimulated by intra-sectoral spillovers, but respond differently to inter-sectoral spillovers, which are only influential in the case of wind technology. We also find evidence that public R&D stimulates innovation, particularly in solar technologies.


The aim of this article is to show the relationship between, the features (in cultural, sociological and political science terms) exhibited by contemporary Russian society and the political regime (in holistic terms by J. Linz), that existed in the Russian Federation (in the years 2007–2015). We assume that an evolution from stable contemporary Russian society to amalgams system combining elements of authoritarianism with dictatorship has taken place during this period. We point out the essential features that constitute the nature of Russian society and social behavior of political importance. Referring to the theory of "the state in society" by D. Migdal, We put the thesis that it is just the Russian way of thinking resulting in certain behavior, that causes the permanence of contemporary Russian society with a tendency to move on the line continuum toward totalitarianism. Proving that Russian society is not a civil society, but a state society, we determine the structure, the role and the modes of operation of Russian intra-system opposition.


The authors argue that cultural fragmentation models predict that cultural change is driven primarily by period effects, whereas acquired dispositions models predict that cultural change is driven by cohort effects. To ascertain which model is on the right track, the authors develop a novel method to measure "cultural durability," namely, the share of over-time variance that is due to either period or cohort effects for 164 variables from the 1972–2014 General Social Surveys. The authors find fairly strong levels of cultural durability across most items, especially those connected to values and morality, but less so for attitudes toward legal and political institutions.


Introduction: The efferent auditory system is a descending system that connects the central and peripheral auditory system. One way to activate the system is by stimulating the contralateral ear while measuring the response from the ipsilateral ear. The objective of this paper is to conduct a scoping review that 1) catalogues the different types of contralateral acoustic stimuli used to activate the efferent auditory system, and 2) identifies the methods used to measure the activation of the efferent auditory system.
 Methods: Systematic search using keywords 'efferent auditory system', 'contralateral suppression', 'contralateral stimulation', 'efferent feedback', 'contralateral inhibition', 'contralateral acoustic stimuli', 'efferent pathway', 'medial olivocochlear', and 'corticofugal system' via five databases (Scopus, PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL, and ProQuest) resulted in 781 hits. Final of 267 studies that met the inclusion criteria were reviewed.

Results: Out of 267 studies investigating the efferent auditory system, the different types of contralateral acoustic stimuli used were broadband noise (55.7 %), white noise (25.0%), narrowband noise (4.10%), pure tones (3.69%), and various other types of noises (11.51%). For testing methods to record the efferent auditory system activity, transient-evoked otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) was used for 114 times, distortion product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) for 63 times, click-evoked otoacoustic emission (CEOAE) for 23 times, and various other methods for 74 times.
 Conclusion: Broadband noise is the preferred contralateral acoustic stimuli used to activate the efferent auditory system. TEOAE appears to be the most preferred method of measuring the efferent system activation.


In the evaluation of sedimentary basins with extensive gravity and magnetic coverage, but with limited seismic data, the integrated Interpretation of the three types of geophysical information is strictly necessary to establish not only the possible potential of the basin, but also the define the follow up exploration program. Gravity data is the key to establishing basin potential. CONTROL POINTS coming from the limiting existing seismic data and direct information from wells and geological surface maps, can be employed to constrain the gravity data and obtain REGIONAL and RESIDUAL constrained maps that permit a more adequate quantitative gravity modeling method for outlining the main existing anomaly targets in the basin. The final composite structural map showing the top of the main density Interface, also permit the optimum design for the location of the eventual follow seismic program. Examples of constrained gravity-magnetic Interpretation for specific areas within the Eastern Venezuelan, Guarumen and Maracaibo basins are presented to illustrate this approach In the interpretation of potential field data.


The Arctic polar vortex exhibited widespread regions of low temperatures during the winter of 2005, resulting in significant ozone depletion by chlorine and bromine species. We show that chemical loss of column ozone (ΔO3) and the volume of Arctic vortex air cold enough to support the existence of polar stratospheric clouds (VPSC) both exceed levels found for any other Arctic winter during the past 40 years. Cold conditions and ozone loss in the lowermost Arctic stratosphere (e.g., between potential temperatures of 360 to 400 K) were particularly unusual compared to previous years. Measurements indicate ΔO3 = 121 ± 20 DU and that ΔO3 versus VPSC lies along an extension of the compact, near linear relation observed for previous Arctic winters. The maximum value of VPSC during five to ten year intervals exhibits a steady, monotonic increase over the past four decades, indicating that the coldest Arctic winters have become significantly colder, and hence are more conducive to ozone depletion by anthropogenic halogens.


The results of the articles on the carcinogenicity of 2-acetylaminofluorene (J. H. Farmer et al., 1980, J. Environ. Pathol. Toxicol. 3, 55-68; N. A. Littlefield et al., 1980, J. Environ. Pathol. Toxicol. 3, 17-34) in approximately 25,000 female mice were reanalyzed by the procedure proposed earlier (W. J. Waddell, 2002, TOXICOL: Sci. 68, 275-279) using the Rozman scale (K. K. Rozman et al., 1996, Drug Metab. Rev. 28, 29-52). In contrast to some conclusions of the lack of a threshold for carcinogenesis that have been made in the past from this study, this reanalysis showed a clear and consistent threshold for bladder neoplasms at about 10 19.5 molecules/kg/day and for liver neoplasms at about 10 19.1 molecules/kg/day. The slopes of the dose-response curves for bladder neoplasms from 17 months through 33 months were consistently very steep, while those for liver neoplasms increased from a shallow slope at 18 months to a steep slope at 33 months. This is interpreted to indicate that the mechanism of carcinogenesis may be different in the two organs. A linear response for percentage tumors plotted against dose on a logarithmic scale is confirmed by this analysis, which is based on the fundamental principle that chemical potential effects a linear response. Furthermore, this application continues to show a sharp threshold for carcinogenesis. The implications of these observations should be important in the extrapolation of results from animal experiments to human risk assessment.


Recently, time series Moran scatterplot quadrant signatures (MSQS) have been introduced as a means of spatio‐temporal analysis. Moran scatter plots summarise a set of local Moran statistics that identify how a quantity of interest relates to its neighbours. By reducing these scatter plots to just one of four quadrant locations at fixed time intervals, a time series MSQS is obtained. Clustering on the time series MSQS allows regions that show similar behaviour relative to their neighbours to be identified. It has recently been shown that the Levenshtein metric, a distance metric originally used for string comparison, can be used to construct a kernel that allows standard Ward hierarchical clustering to be applied. The result is that regions with similar spatio‐temporal behaviour can be identified. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the use of Dirichlet Process mixture models as a fully probabilistic alternative to applying Ward hierarchical clustering with the Levenshtein metric. This approach offers an advance to the existing literature as it proposes a fully generative model that articulates the underlying assumptions and allows prediction of new test points. Additionally, it provides a principled method that avoids using heuristics to select the number of clusters. An efficient Gibbs sampling Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is presented, and it is demonstrated how the output of this can be mapped and analysed. Difficulties inherent in mapping and plotting high‐dimensional mathematical objects are discussed, and practical solutions are proposed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


"This paper provides a conceptual framework of elderly migration according to the decision making process. The migration is presented as a complete spatial and social system related to migratory behaviours and residential strategies. A typology of movements in Spain is proposed; it emphasizes several topics (decision maker, personal characteristics, reasons for moving, destination, housing, etc.)." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND FRE)


Today, buildings consume a significant amount of primary energy, and consequently they are a major source for greenhouse gas emissions resulting in global warming. During the last decades, the concept of sustainable architecture with the major aim of diminishing negative environmental impact of the building has brought significant demands and changes to the profession of architecture. In this way, decreasing the dependency of buildings on fossil fuels and their high rate of energy consumption in underdeveloped countries like Iran is receiving more attention by architects and governments. Iran is a country with a powerful history in using vernacular solutions to maintain an acceptable indoor environment, such as harnessing natural ventilation, using local and high thermal mass materials, optimizing building orientation. Despite this successful history, temporary Iranian architecture suffers from high consumption and inefficient building construction. The research presented in this thesis is initially concerned with investigating the traditional and vernacular features of Iranian architecture found in a hot–dry region. These features were considered in two shapes; energy efficiency features and socialcultural features. Moreover, the concept of Net Zero Energy Building with the significant aim of constructing sustainable has been assessed. As the result, by presenting a comprehensive study for features of Iranian vernacular architecture and Net ZEB concept, they have been combined to locate a high energy-efficient building in the city of Yazd with a hot and arid climate at the central area of Iran. Lessons derived from vernacular architecture caused considerable improvement in energy consumption of the proposed building, especially in heating, cooling, and lighting demands.


Neonatal heart rate (HR) and arterial blood pressure (BP) were recorded continuously for the 1st hour of life in term newborn infants of normotensive (control group) and pre-eclamptic (study group) primiparous mothers. Infants were matched for gestational age, birth weight, method of delivery, and Apgar scores. In infants of pre-eclamptic mothers, the HR was significantly lower for the 1st 50 min of life, and their mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) was significantly higher during the 1st 20 min of life.


According to a widely held view, neurons in lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) operate on visual stimuli in a linear fashion. There is ample evidence, however, that LGN responses are not entirely linear. To account for nonlinearities we propose a model that synthesizes more than 30 years of research in the field. Model neurons have a linear receptive field, and a nonlinear, divisive suppressive field. The suppressive field computes local root-mean-square contrast. To test this model we recorded responses from LGN of anesthetized paralyzed cats. We estimate model parameters from a basic set of measurements and show that the model can accurately predict responses to novel stimuli. The model might serve as the new standard model of LGN responses. It specifies how visual processing in LGN involves both linear filtering and divisive gain control.


This article explores the distinction between anti-colonial longing and postcolonial becoming through a commentary on Antjie Krog's Begging to Be Black. The epistemology and ontology of postcolonial becoming is the central concern. Begging to Be Black is a mytho-poetic narrative in which a world is imagined where King Moshoeshoe, missionaries from the 19th century, Antjie Krog and her friends and colleagues, ANC cadres, the Deleuzian philosopher Paul Patton, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the ANC Youth League are placed in the same narrative space where they can intermingle. And this is done to respond to a crisis of the present — the difficulties South Africans face in grappling with the legacies of colonialism and Apartheid, and the fact that there is a process of un-homing and re-homing that Krog feels white South Africans in particular need to think about more deeply. The article compares Krog's approach to decolonization with that of the leading South African philosopher of ubuntu, Mogobe Ramose. Both Krog and Ramose offer the epistemological and ontological resources for grappling with the relationship between past, present and future in a decolonizing setting. The article examines how postcolonial critique may take place through liminal figures. Liminality is characterized as central to postcolonial becoming.


In most cognitive and motor tasks, speed-accuracy tradeoffs are observed: Individuals can respond slowly and accurately, or quickly yet be prone to errors. Control mechanisms governing the initiation of behavioral responses are sensitive not only to task instructions and the stimulus being processed, but also to the recent stimulus history. When stimuli can be characterized on an easy-hard dimension (e.g., word frequency in a naming task), items preceded by easy trials are responded to more quickly, and with more errors, than items preceded by hard trials. We propose a rationally motivated mathematical model of this sequential adaptation of control, based on a diffusion model of the decision process in which difficulty corresponds to the drift rate for the correct response. The model assumes that responding is based on the posterior distribution over which response is correct, conditioned on the accumulated evidence. We derive this posterior as a function of the drift rate, and show that higher estimates of the drift rate lead to (normatively) faster responding. Trial-by-trial tracking of difficulty thus leads to sequential effects in speed and accuracy. Simulations show the model explains a variety of phenomena in human speeded decision making. We argue this passive statistical mechanism provides a more elegant and parsimonious account than extant theories based on elaborate control structures.


In this essay we intend to examine the decline of socialism and communism in Southeast Asia and, for the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on the modem countries of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, and their previous incarnations as colonies, with Thailand (previously, Siam) being the non-colonial exception. In brief, our argument is that socialism and communism (as closely related political movements) have, in recent times, lost much of their political and economic attractiveness. However, we will show that the Left has been significant, giving much momentum to the development of non-state political space (what we will term civil society) in these countries. We suggest that this was particularly the case in three periods: 1920s-1930s, 1940s-1950s, and the 1970s, when the Left played a pivotal role in expanding the arena of political activity. The defeat of non-state movements saw civil society greatly reduced or even expunged by authoritarian governments, which especially targeted socialists, communists and labour and peasant organisations. We will go on to suggest that in the contemporary period, the political space associated with civil society is again being created in the societies of Southeast Asia.


The object of the present work is the characterization of the corrosion behavior of Al-5%SiC nanocomposites prepared by mechanical alloying and the hot pressing method. Al/SiC metal matrix composite (MMCp) powder with volume fraction of 5% SiC was synthesized by high-energy milling of the blended micro component powder. The mechanically mixed nanocomposite powder was consolidated into bulk compacts using hot pressing at 1 GPa pressure for thirty seconds at three different temperatures of 440, 480 and 520°C. The microstructure was investigated by Secondary electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses. The corrosion behavior of the coating was evaluated using electrochemical techniques such as potansiodynamic polarization and EIS. It was found that the corrosion resistance of Al-5%SiC nanocomposite when hot pressed at 480°C, in 3.5% NaCl solution was higher than pure Al and Al-SiC nanocomposite that had been hot pressed at other temperatures.


Abstract Background: Cancer is the dreadful disease in the world. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer, which affects women. Cervical cancer (CC) can be prevented if one goes to regular screening and if it is diagnosed early. In western countries the women undergo for regular screening test for cervical cancer. In Saudi Arabia the campaign for breast cancer is more than the cervical cancer. Human papilloma virus is the main cause for cervical cancer. HPV 16 and HPV 18 is the major virus which causes Cervical cancer. PAP smear screening is the one of the important screening test which is used to prevent cervical cancer. Human papillomavirus vaccines (bivalent (BV) and quadrivalent (QV)) are the one of the very highly effective vaccine which is used in preventing cervical cancer. The objective of this research was to explore the knowledge, attitudes, and preventive practices among the female students of Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Materials and methods: This was a descriptive cross sectional study conducted among the female students of various colleges of Jazan University. All together 397 female students of Applied Medical College, Nursing College, Science College, Pharmacy college and Public Health college participated in this study. The objective of this research will be explained to the female students and through a questionnaire, knowledge and attitude about cervical cancer, screening, symptoms, risk factors, and vaccination will be assessed. Data was analyzed through SPSS and presented using graphs and tables. Results: The research will identify the respondent's percentage of awareness about the cervical screening, symptoms, risk factors and knowledge of HPV vaccination. Students from Science College are comparatively having poor knowledge about cervical cancer. The students of science and public health are not having much awareness about HPV vaccination. About the Screening, 3% from Public Health College, 7% from Science College, 17% from nursing college, 10% from Pharmacy College, 13% from applying medical college have known. This research shows that Knowledge and attitude of females in Jazan University about Cervical Cancer and diits preventive measures were nearly adequate in medical oriented colleges than other college, but their practice was deficient in the entire group.


Background French Polynesia has one of the highest incidence rates of thyroid cancer worldwide. Relationships with the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests and other environmental, biological, or behavioral factors have already been reported, but genetic susceptibility has yet to be investigated. We assessed the contribution of polymorphisms at the 9q22.33 and 14q13.3 loci identified by GWAS, and within the DNA repair gene ATM, to the risk of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) in 177 cases and 275 matched controls from the native population. Principal Findings For the GWAS SNP rs965513 near FOXE1, an association was found between genotypes G/A and A/A, and risk of DTC. A multiplicative effect of allele A was even noted. An excess risk was also observed in individuals carrying two long alleles of the poly-alanine tract expansion in FOXE1, while no association was observed with rs1867277 falling in the promoter region of the gene. In contrast, the GWAS SNP rs944289 (NKX2-1) did not show any significant association. Although the missense substitution D1853N (rs1801516) in ATM was rare in the population, carriers of the minor allele (A) also showed an excess risk. The relationships between these five polymorphisms and the risk of DTC were not contingent on the body surface area, body mass index, ethnicity or dietary iodine intake. However, an interaction was evidenced between the thyroid radiation dose and rs944289. Significance A clear link could not be established between the high incidence in French Polynesia and the studied polymorphisms, involved in susceptibility to DTC in other populations. Important variation in allele frequencies was observed in the Polynesian population as compared to the European populations. For FOXE1 rs965513, the direction of association and the effect size was similar to that observed in other populations, whereas for ATM rs1801516, the minor allele was associated to an increased risk in the Polynesian population and with a decreased risk in the European population.


Recently there has been a growing concern for the environment. A number of International Conventions and bodies like the International Organizations, the Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) have emphasized significantly that environment needs to be protected. Similarly the States have reflected this in the domestic legislations. This concern over the environment can also be seen in case of Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Projects (Hungary v Slovakia), which was the international dispute brought before the International Court of Justice (the court). The case involved the issues surrounding the international environmental law and international watercourse law were considered. The court was presented with the opportunity to consider the legal status of principles of sustainable development, the precautionary principles and the environmental impact assessment. Unfortunately, the majority of the court declined to do so. However, there was a separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry, who gave a considerable weight to these issues. There will be three parts for discussion; the sustainable development, the precautionary principle and the environmental impact assessment. This is because the sustainable development is considered as a major principle in the international environmental law. Other two principles, which are the precautionary principle and the environmental impact assessment, are considered as the means of contribution on the sustainable development. In each of these, the legal status of each principle under the international law will be examined. The analysis will also be made from the opinion of the court and the separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry about the impacts on the development of each principle, which these opinions may have on.


Trust is a cornerstone of economic development. Further, trust is promoted within religious groups and might even be the very reason religions emerged. The U.S. stands out as particularly religious, compared to other Western countries. Yet, little is known about trust within and across its religious affiliations. We use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine how trust and trustworthiness vary across religions (Christianity, Islam, and non-believers; atheists and agnostics) and religiosity. Three novel findings emerge. First, Christians are trusted more than other religious groups in the U.S., which is due entirely to a Christian ingroup bias – Christians trust other Christians more than they trust Muslims and atheists/agnostics, while Muslims and non-believers trust all religious groups the same. Second, religiosity matters to trust. However, the way in which it matters depends on religious beliefs and ingroups. Religious people trust those of higher religiosity more only when they are of the same religion. In contrast, non-believers trust people of higher religiosity less. Third, religious people may be more trustworthy than non-believers. Our results may help explain the cause of observed discrimination against Muslims and atheists, given discrimination often originates in distrust, and underscore the importance of policies that promote trust.


Topographic maps, which maintain the spatial order of neurons in the order of their axonal connections, are found in many parts of the nervous system. Here, we focus on the communication between retinal axons and their postsynaptic partners, lamina neurons, in the first ganglion of the Drosophila visual system, as a model for the formation of topographic maps. Post-mitotic lamina precursor cells differentiate upon receiving Hedgehog signals delivered through newly arriving retinal axons and, before maturing to extend neurites, extend short processes toward retinal axons to create the lamina column. The lamina column provides the cellular basis for establishing stereotypic synapses between retinal axons and lamina neurons. In this study, we identified two cell-adhesion molecules: Hibris, which is expressed in post-mitotic lamina precursor cells; and Roughest, which is expressed on retinal axons. Both proteins belong to the nephrin/NEPH1 family. We provide evidence that recognition between post-mitotic lamina precursor cells and retinal axons is mediated by interactions between Hibris and Roughest. These findings revealed mechanisms by which axons of presynaptic neurons deliver signals to induce the development of postsynaptic partners at the target area. Postsynaptic partners then recognize the presynaptic axons to make ensembles, thus establishing a topographic map along the anterior/posterior axis.


Export supply and import demand factors are used to examine the apple exports from China to Thailand. Error Correction Model (ECM) and Cochrane-Orcutt regression are applied to examine the apple trade from 1976 to 2007. China apples export supply to Thailand is only influenced by domestic production cost. An increase in China apples production cost leads to a decrease of export quantity to Thailand. The result is consistent with the Thailand import demand function, where import quantity is negatively related to the China apple export price. The real exchange rate also plays an important role in the apples trade between China and Thailand. Thai baht appreciation would cause Thai import less apples from China.


This dissertation presents work carried out in collaboration with the IMDEA nanoscience institute. We study the recently proposed quantum confinement physically unclonable function by Roberts, et al. that utilises resonant tunnelling diodes (physical representation of a quantum well) and atomic scale imperfections for applications in cryptography and identification. Presently such entities rely on their resonance peak position as the basis for a new approach to electronic identification systems.By solely relying on the resonance peak of these devices deconvolution outputs an average of 8 bits per device, concatenation of up to 16 devices outputs a satisfactory number of bits for applications in uniqueness. However we explore the possibility of increasing the bit density of such physically unclonable functions that range from tangibly modifying the heterostructure with the use of a focused ion beam to induce quantum effects of 1 dimension (quantum wire) and 0 dimension (quantum dot) that would manifest its self as multiple resonance peaks observed on the current/voltage characteristic.Our findings show multiple devices with consistent new features as a result of modification with the focused ion beam ultimately increasing the bit density. We carry out cryogenic measurements and comment on the fact that such features are not supported by previous work studying resonant tunnelling in the 1 & 0 states of double barrier heterostructures.


Purpose
Political polarization and incivility manifested itself online throughout the 2016 US presidential election. The purpose of this paper is to understand how features of social media platforms (e.g. reacting, sharing) impacted the online public sphere during the 2016 election.

Design/methodology/approach
After conducting in-depth interviews with politically interested young people and applying deductive coding procedures to transcripts of the interviews, Dahlberg's (2004) six normative conditions for the public sphere were used to empirically examine this interview data.

Findings
While some participants described strategies for productive political discussion on Social Networking Sites (SNS) and a willingness to use them to discuss politics, many users' experiences largely fall short of Dahlberg's (2004) normative criteria for the public sphere.

Research limitations/implications
The period in which these interviews were conducted in could have contributed to a more pessimistic view of political discussion in general.

Practical implications
Scholars and the public should recognize that the affordances of SNS for political discussion are not distributed evenly between different platforms, both for the sake of empirical studies of SNS moving forward and the state of democratic deliberation.

Originality/value
Although previous research has examined online and SNS-based political discussion as it relates to the public sphere, few attempts have been made understand how specific communicative practices or platform-specific features of SNS have contributed to or detracted from a healthy public sphere.


Aim: This study aimed to assess the safety and feasibility of laparoscopic curative resection for colorectal cancer through the clinical practice and basic research. Material and Methods: From September 2001 to September 2002, 47 patients with colorectal cancer were treated using laparoscopic approach, compared with 113 patients underwent traditional operation. The length of intestinal segment excised, size of tumour, clearance of lymph nodes, local recurrence and distant metastasis rate during the period of follow-up in both groups were compared. The other part of the study involved the detection of exfoliated tumour cells in the peritoneal washing before and after surgery; flushing of the instruments was performed in both groups and the results compared. For the laparoscopic cases, the filtrated liquid of CO2 pneumoperitoneum was also checked for tumour cells. Results: No significant differences existed in tumour size, operative site and manner between the two groups. The exfoliated tumour cell was not detected in the CO2 filtrated liquid. Between both groups there was no difference in the incidence of exfoliated tumour cells in peritoneal washing before and after surgery as well as in the fluid used for flushing the instruments. The total number of lymph nodes harvested was 13.71±9.57 for the laparoscopic group and 12.10±9.74 for the traditional procedure. Similar length of colon was excised in both groups; this was (19.38±7.47) cm in the laparoscopic and (18.60±8.40) cm in the traditional groups. The distal margins of resection for rectal cancer were (4.19±2.52) cm and (4.16±2.00) cm respectively. The local recurrence rate was 2.13% (1/47) and 1.77% (2/113) with the distant metastasis rate 6.38% (3/47) and 6.19% (7/113) respectively. Both the statistics were comparable between the laparoscopic and traditional surgery for the colorectal cancer. Conclusion: Laparoscopic curative resection for colorectal cancer can be performed safely and effectively. In the treatment of colorectal malignancy, laparoscopic resection can achieve similar radicalilty as compared to the traditional laparotomy.