Thermal cycling of rock by heating and rapid quenching in water significantly affects its physical, mechanical and elastic properties. In this study we present a novel technique where specially designed equipment simulates the cyclic thermal stimulation processes employed by the conventional geothermal industry. To enhance productivity and injectivity of geothermal wells, geothermal operators commonly inject fluids cooler than reservoirs into wells at pressures less than natural fracture gradients which can result in enhanced fluid handling capacities. In an attempt to better understand this process, the investigation of thermal stimulation at a laboratory scale has been conceived and implemented. We have designed and built an apparatus that allows the heating and quenching of representative samples by thermal stimulation in a pressure vessel capable of attaining 350°C and 24 MPa and sustaining pressure during quenching cycles. Core sourced from production wells in an active commercial geothermal field has been tested in the apparatus. Our studies have characterized specimens prior to and subsequent to thermal stimulation for density, porosity, permeability, micro-structural texture, mineralogical fabrics, acoustic velocities, dynamic and static elastic moduli. Our results indicate that our stimulation apparatus is capable of enhancing both microscopic and macroscopic permeability, increasing porosity, reducing bulk density and attenuating seismic velocities. We have enhanced porosity in our specimens by up to 1.0 (vol% ) over original values, attenuated compressional wave velocities by up to 15% and enhanced permeabilities by nearly an order of magnitude over initially observed values. We utilize scanning electron microscopy to evaluate the microstructural change to samples, supplementing physical property investigations. The results imply that thermal stimulation can be successfully replicated in the laboratory and is coupled with both thermal and chemical components. The implications of this study for future laboratory and field scale stimulation testing are then considered.


The Imam Ali Shrine is located in the heart of Najaf old town, the historic Islamic pilgrimage city. It is one of the great icons of Islamic religion and architecture, especially for the Shi'a, and is regarded by many as the finest masterpiece of Iraqi heritage. This paper, therefore, focuses specifically on the Shrine, whose construction led directly to the establishment of the surrounding historic city. The main aims are to understand what has happened over time, and who the key players now are in terms of conservation management on the ground. Consequently, it is important to explain the historical stages of the emergence of the shrine, and the events which take place within it. Critically, local decision makers have prioritised how to accommodate and receive visitors to the holy Shrine, without paying attention to protecting its cultural heritage and local identity: gradually, this has led to the demolition of many important historical buildings and features surrounding the Shrine. However, the Shrine remains a key Najaf landmark and is religiously significant for Islamic cities in general. This paper is organised around two main sections, the first section addresses the historical and cultural context of the Shrine in terms of its historical development and significance. The second section focuses on the external (national) and internal (local) forces that have acted on the Shrine as a building. It details specific projects in depth to discover their remit and impact on the Shrine's historic fabric.


The southern coasts of Caspian Sea is subject to synoptic/mesoscale weather systems ranging from locally enhanced sea breeze formation and small local front systems to synoptic scale cyclones. The intensity and structure of these weather systems cover a wide spectrum, which include cold-cored weather systems from the Siberian highs as well as warm-cored mid-latitude cyclones, hereinafter referred to as Westerly systems. Heavy coastal rain and combined effects of wind and sea state accompanying these cyclones threaten life and property in the southern coasts of Caspian Sea. This study presents climatology of cyclones over the southern coasts of Caspian Sea covering a ten year period 1996-2005. Altogether 57 cyclones were formed during the ten year period. A noticeable seasonality is observed in evolution of cyclones over the entire Caspian region, a majority of the 57 cyclones (73.7%) were developed during winter and fall seasons while the remaining (26.3%) occurred during spring and summer seasons. Most of the cyclones were of low intensity, out of 57 cyclones observed during the ten year period 16 (28%) were deep depressions and 24 (42.1%) were cyclonic storms. Altogether 5 super cyclonic storms were observed during the period, out of which 4 were observed during winter and fall seasons. Mid-tropospheric, large-scale processes and local features were responsible for the initial development of all weather systems. The Mediterranean Sea plays a significant role in cyclogenesis and propagation of the systems the Caspian region. Further, a Mediterranean cyclonic system formed during October 2001 was studied in detail using backward trajectory Lagrangian model: Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT). The HYSPLIT model outputs confirmed the observed synoptic features for the weather system of the case study.


Aim: To compare duration and onset of motor and sensory block by using dexmedetomidine and dexamethasone as adjuvant to bupivicaine in supraclavicular brachial plexusblock. Place and duration of study: Department of Anaesthesiology, Surgical Intensive Care & Pain Management, Civil Hospital, Dow University of Health Sciences Karachi from 29th June 2022 to 29th December 2022. Design: Randomized controlled trial study Methodology: Sixty patientswere enrolled in the study that had an elective upper-limb surgery performed under supraclavicular anesthesia of hand, wrist, forearmand elbow were allocated through randomization into two groups. Thirty patients in group A treated with bupivacaine 25 ml of 0.5% with dexamethasone 8mg (2 ML) and 30 in group B treated with bupivicaine 25 ml of 0.5% with dexmedetomidine 1µg/kg (2ml). Patients were observed in post-anesthesiacareunitpost-surgery. Duration of onset of pain was noted by patient's first request for analgesia. Results:Themean age of patients was 34.88±9.39 years. Mean onset time of sensory and motor block was significantly low in group A than group B. Mean duration of sensory block and motor block was significantly high in group B than group A [813.87±113.72 vs. 752.63±27.96; p=0.006] and [734.13± 84.44 vs533.07±88.38;p=0.0005]. The time to request for 1st rescue analgesic was significantly increased in group B as compare to group A(p=0.0005). Practical Implication: Regional anesthesia in orthopedic procedures is superior to general anesthesia in terms of better postoperative pain relief, less central nervous system depressant effect of drugs and early discharge from hospital. Conclusion:The duration of block prolonged in cases where dexmedetomidine was added to the bupivacaine was longer but onset was reduced in comparison to the dexamethasone cases. Keywords: Brachial plexus block, Supraclavicular block, Dexmedetomidine, Dexamethasone


Some may view the independent engineering review, or technical due diligence, as simply a box to be checked off, a report to be filed away. After all, based on the experience and sophistication of many developers and the standardization of many project designs, it is reasonable to expect a clean independent engineer's report at financial closing. However, this is not the case. Not all developers are sophisticated when it comes to project financing. Their pro forma assumptions are often overly optimistic; their designs often include evolving technologies; and every design is subject to local conditions and offsite particulars. The "clean report" is a product of the process, but rarely, if ever, representative of initial findings. The independent engineering review is an interactive, intensive process that involves a comprehensive review of a project's technical and environmental aspects, identification of risks, and assistance with the mitigation of such risks'thereby adding value to the project financing process, both to financiers and project sponsors alike.


By the turn of the century, the elderly will comprise about 20 percent of the population in North" America, and 28 percent of those who drive. Place this percentage in high-powered automobiles, and the need for planning and policy development becomes evident. Most standard research on elderly drivers has not gone beyond gathering data on specific situations or characteristics. This book rises beyond simple statistical presentation. It blends sociological insight with statistical detail to produce an absorbing description of the elderly drivers' daily lives, driving styles, experiences with accident and injury, social relationships, and life aspirations. It also describes areas of neglect: imagined and real health problems, driving exposure and traffic violations, accidents, and loss of self-esteem. It presents in-depth accounts of the trauma of loss of license and the importance of the automobile for sustaining mental, physical, and social well-being. The self-imposed or self-defined rules elderly drivers use to navigate traffic or compensate for physical frailities are described in depth. "The Safety of Elderly Drivers "includes penetrating comments from elderly drivers who have been involved in serious accidents, and from random elderly drivers speaking for their generation of drivers. Integrating statistical findings based on Motor Vehicle Department accident data and survey data with comprehensive interviews and discussions with elderly drivers, the book provides an emperically grounded, in-depth view of the elderly driver today. Rothe summarizes theories and models of aging, along with past research on elderly drivers, projecting what the future may hold if present trends in medicine, housing, politics, migration, and mass transit continue. It closes with a series of recommendations for future traffic planning. This book will be of interest to policymakers concerned with traffic safety, as well as social scientists and others interested in gerontological issues. It is the latest in a series on traffic safety sponsored by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia in Canada.


The focus of multiple sclerosis (MS) research has been on attempts to identify the specific pathogenic mechanism responsible for producing the multifocal central nervous system inflammatory demyelinating lesions. However, extensive in vitro and in vivo evidence suggests that multiple different immunological mechanisms may produce the typical demyelinated plaque. A detailed examination of actively demyelinating MS lesions reveals a profound heterogeneity in the structural and immunopatho-logical patterns of demyelination and oligodendrocyte pathology between different MS patients, suggesting multiple pathogenic mechanisms may contribute to oligo-dendrocyte and myelin injury in MS. These observations raise the question whether MS may be a neurological syndrome with different immunopathological mechanisms triggering a common pathway rather than a single disease with a uniform mechanism of myelin destruction. With the advent of new tools for neurobiological and immunological research applied to actively demyelinated MS lesions, an opportunity exists to reevaluate MS neuropathology. This review highlights the spectrum of the inflammatory demyelinating diseases, the multitude of effector mechanisms that may produce myelin destruction, and the pathologic heterogeneity observed in MS lesions. A careful evaluation of MS neuropathology should provide important clues regarding the induction, target, evolution, and pathogenesis of this complex disease.


Stance has been used increasingly as an important theoretical and analytical term in the study of language and social interaction. Most importantly, it has been deployed as a way to make connections between macro-level social identities and ideologies and what actually happens when people are talking to each other face to face. For all of this analytical success and fervor, stance is still a remarkably contested concept; it is still not clear that all researchers use the term in a similar way, and especially whether they agree on the linguistic resources a speaker can use to make a stance claim. In this paper I propose three main axes of stance and some linguistic resources for indicating these axes. While keeping in mind that stances are always negotiated and interactionally created in context, I propose three main axes: Alignment, affect, and investment. In order to demonstrate how these axes work, I consider how the word 'just' does alignment work in two conversations, considering how aspects of its contexts of use combine with its particular meaning and indexicalities to assert stance. I show how the single word modifies the three axes to differing degrees, and propose a heuristic for stance analysis, and how the phrase "I'm just sayin'" has become a conventionalized marker of investment.


In this Article, I argue that legislators have a duty to read the text of proposed legislation before voting to enact it. A Read the Bill political movement has formed in response to recent high-profile instances of rushed legislation. Putting aside partisan concerns, a rushed legislative process creates real problems because it forces legislators to vote on bills without having the time to properly evaluate the new legal rules that are being imposed on citizens. If a rule or norm of reading the bill can slow the legislative process enough to provide for thorough consideration of proposed legislation, it would bring a substantial benefit in the form of better laws. The rule would also draw the attention of legislators to their primary, fundamental role of making good law.


Anxiety is one of the major psychological variables which interferes with students' learning and performance. One main purpose of this study, therefore, was to measure the levels of anxiety that some Jamaican high school students showed towards science. A second main purpose was to investigate the effects of variables such as grade level, gender, school location, number of science subjects the students were studying and their science subject preference on their levels of anxiety. A total of 313 - 149 boys and 164 girls, comprising 133 grade 9 and 180 grade 11 students - from two rural and four urban high schools formed the study's sample. The Zuckerman Affect Adjective Checklist modified by Docking - 1978 - was the instrument used to measure the students' anxiety levels. The results showed that the students fell into three anxiety levels: low - 10.86 percent, average - 78.60 percent and high - 10.54 percent; rural school students were significantly more anxious than the urban ones; grade 11 students were slightly more anxious than the  students; the females were slightly more anxious than the grade 9 students; the females were slightly more anxious than the males; students studying three science subjects were slightly more anxious than those studying two or one subject; students who preferred biology were slightly less anxious than those who preferred either physics or chemistry. The implications of the findings for science education are emphasized.


This study tests the hypothesis that links between contextual risk and children's outcomes are partially explained by differential parenting. Using multi-informant measurement and including up to four children per family (Mage  = 3.51, SD = 2.38) in a sample of 397 families, indirect effects (through maternal differential parenting: self-reported and observed) of cumulative contextual risk on four child outcomes were investigated. Cumulative risk was associated with higher levels of differential parenting and, in turn, with higher levels of behavioral problems. Indirect effects were strongest for attentional and social problems but also evident for aggression. The link between differential parenting and outcome was moderated by favoritism, but this was only evident for maternal report and strongest for aggression.


Abstract— Technology scaling alongside the increasing process variability impact in modern technology nodes are themain reasons to control deviations over metrics in IC nanome-ter designs. Schmitt Triggers are traditionally used for noise immunity enhancement, and have been recently applied to mitigate radiation effects and process variability impact. The main contribution of this work is to trace the relationship between transistor sizing, supply voltage, and process variability to get a low energy consumption circuit while still keeping low levels of deviations due to the impact of process-induced variability. It is shown that a cost-benefit analysis can highlight sets of sizing and supply voltage where it can provide a 37.51% decrease in energy consumption while only increasing its sensibility by 7.42%. Furthermore, it is presented that the dependence of supply voltage and sensibility to process variability is not directly related, with slight decreases in the supply volt-ages bringing better results. Overall, the traditional CMOS inverter is still the fastest and most energy-efficient circuit, although, when comparing noise immunity characteristics, the 6-Transistor Schmitt Trigger presents higher noise margins, slopes, gains, and hysteresis ratios. The improvements,although, may increase propagation times, energy consumption, and area.


Spatiotemporal predictive learning aims to generate future frames by learning from historical frames. In this paper, we investigate existing methods and present a general framework of spatiotemporal predictive learning, in which the spatial encoder and decoder capture intra-frame features and the middle temporal module catches inter-frame correlations. While the mainstream methods employ recurrent units to capture long-term temporal dependencies, they suffer from low computational efficiency due to their unparallelizable architectures. To parallelize the temporal module, we propose the Temporal Attention Unit (TAU), which decomposes temporal attention into intra-frame statical attention and inter-frame dynamical attention. Moreover, while the mean squared error loss focuses on intra-frame errors, we introduce a novel differential divergence regularization to take inter-frame variations into account. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method enables the derived model to achieve competitive performance on various spatiotemporal prediction benchmarks.


A two-dimensional mathematical model was developed for predicting the performance of an open-type water-cooled flat-plate solar collector, and solved numerically through an implicit finite difference method. The effects of various environmental and geometric conditions on energy absorption for the collector were investigated. The results predict that there is an optimum length and tilt angle for the absorbing plate for which the collector could obtain the highest solar energy absorptance. The latent heat flux of water evaporation can be 3 to 15 times larger than the sensible heat flux under normal operating conditions. The wind speed and the inlet water temperature have a large influence on the energy absorption of the collector. The effects of the solar incident flux, the atmospheric humidity and temperature, the absorbing plate tilt angle and length, and the water film thickness on the temperature rise of the water film and/or the absorptance of the collector are clarified. The open-type flat-plate collector is suitable to operate at lower inlet water temperatures and in regions where the local latitude is in the range of 20°N-40°N, and the weather is humid and hot with low winds.


: 5 male and 1 female dogs weighing 15-20 kg were used in the study. Animals underwent the functional cholecystectomy, bidirectional cannulation of the common bile duct and the implantation of 9 bipolar electrodes located in the stomach and small intestine. In 13 experiments performed on 4 dogs the interdigestive myoelectric activity was recorded and plasma motilin and PP levels were determined by radioimmunoassay during: 1) the control period where the spontaneous bile circulation was preserved, 2) bile depletion with or without intravenous motilin (56 pmol.kg-1.hr-1) infusion, 3) intraduodenal infusion of 50 mM Na-taurocholate with or without intravenous infusion of PP (400 pmol.kg-1.hr-1). During 88 additional experiments performed on all operated animals, which comprised the control studies, bile deprivation experiments and bile or bile acid infusions, the interdigestive myoelectric activity was recorded along with the estimation of sites of phase III origin. Motilin infusion at the lack of bile and bile acids in the intestine elicited the premature phase III in the duodenum, markedly increased the percentage of phases III originating from the stomach, inhibited the arrival of phase I of the myoelectric cycle and lowered plasma PP level. Infusion of PP despite the presence of bile acids in the small intestinal lumen caused the phase III originated from the proximal or mild jejunum and lowered plasma motilin level. Thus, unlike bile or bile acids, both motilin and PP are directly responsible for the appearance of phase III in the stomach and proximal small bowel of the dog. The luminal bile appears only to play a mediatory role influencing the release of the hormonal peptides examined here.


Many commercial cowpea farmers control insect pests on cowpea with synthetic chemicals and may sometimes spray their farms during the growing season as many as 8 to 10 times. This leads to health hazards and environmental pollution. The present study was conducted to reduce the number of times, cypermethrin (conventional chemical) is applied before harvest and still, produce the expected cowpea grains. The experiments were carried out in two agro-ecological zones - Asaba and Abraka of Delta State during the late cropping season. The experiments consisted of 4 treatments - cowpea plots sprayed 4 times (at 7 days' intervals), cowpea plots sprayed 5 times (at 10 days' intervals), cowpea plots whose insect infestation were monitored before chemical application and control plots (without chemical treatment). Each treatment was replicated 3 times. The experiments were organised into a randomised complete block design (RCBD). The results indicated that cypermethrin controlled the major insect pests of cowpea. Second, grain yield was high at both locations; significant differences did not exist (P>0.05) in insect number and grain yield among the treatments. The study provides the evidence that (i) high cowpea grain yield is obtained at reduced number of chemical application of 4 or 5 times during the growing season (ii) Grain yield was significantly (P<0.05) higher at Abraka with1400.60kg ha -1 than Asaba (714.40kg ha -1 ) during the late cropping season.


The present study deals with the response of a forced Mathieu equation with damping, with weak harmonic direct excitation at the same frequency as the parametric excitation. A second-order perturbation analysis using the method of multiple scales unfolds parametric amplification at primary resonance. The parametric effect on the primary resonance behavior occurs with a slow time scale of second order, although the effect on the steady-state response is of order one. As the parametric excitation level increases, the response at primary resonance stretches before becoming unbounded and unstable. Analytical expressions for predicting the response amplitudes are presented and compared with numerical results for a specific set of system parameters. Dependence of the amplification behavior, and indeed possible deamplification, on parameters is examined. The effect of parametric excitation on the response phase behavior is also presented.


This study has been produced for the purpose and with the hope of furthering the dialogue on the importance of cultural identities in development processes. The key premise is that it is crucial encouraging people in building on their personal human experiences and values, defining their requirements and dealing with them to find the apposite satisfactory solutions. But often, the self-determination opportunities depend on the power of identity in the socio-political system. So, for example, the pervasive and persistent Russian-Soviet strength of mind in Crimea plays the main role in its historic context of multi-ethnic coexistence and it implies a strong influence on the cultivation of the individual dispositions as well as the creation of constant tension between the different ethnics. However the recent local UNDP experiences are proving that peace, stability and respect for cultural differences are possible when people work together for solving common problems concerning their life.


This article analyses the process whereby domestic violence in Chile became a subject of open discussion and a public issue included in the institutional agenda of the Executive and the Legislature, giving rise to preventive programmes against such violence and public services for aiding its victims, together with the adoption of a law against intra-family violence in 1994. The analysis highlights the dynamic and complex nature of the process, whose course and results were not and could not be determined a priori. Public issues do not exist in their own right, as purely objective phenomena, but are constructed by actors who operate in different settings, exchanging and confronting discourses based on various frames of interpretation. Several different phases may be distinguished in the process, depending on the features and opportunities offered by the political and institutional system, the different types of actors involved, their organizational resources, the structure of the links they establish with each other, and the frame of interpretation that guides what the actors do. Seen from this standpoint, the emergence of cases of violence as a public issue is at the same time the story of the establishment of women as valid social subjects, their organizations, their strategies for mobilizing the issue in different public contexts, and the spread of new types of discourse and proposals on gender-related matters.


A new palladacyclic dimer [Pd2((C,N)L)2(μ-Sac)2] (1), in which L: C14H11NBr and sac: the saccharinate ligand, has been synthesized and completely characterized. X-ray crystallography has been used to determine the single crystal structure of this Pd(II) complex. In this dimer, two palladium(II) centers are bridged by a saccharinate anion, which is coordinated to the cyclopalladated units as a bidentate (N- and carbonyl O-atoms) ligand. According to DNA binding studies (UV-Vis spectroscopy, emission titration and viscosity measurements), the Pd(II) complex interacts with calf-thymus DNA (CT-DNA) through a groove binding mode with a binding affinity on the order of 105. Furthermore, UV-Vis and fluorescence emission spectroscopy have been used to monitor the binding of the complex to bovine serum albumin (BSA). The complex is mainly located in site I of the protein, based on the competitive experiments using Warfarin, Ibuprofen and Digoxin as site markers. The results of molecular docking confirmed the experimental data. Finally, the in vitro cytotoxicity of sodium saccharin, ligand LH (C14H12NBr), complex 1 and cisplatin against cervical cancer (HeLa), lung cancer (A549) and breast cancer (MCF-7) cell lines has been studied. The complexation process has significantly improved the anticancer activity, as the IC50 values show. Furthermore, complex 1 has been tested against NIH normal fibroblast cells. Therefore, based on the SI definition, 1 can be assigned as a selective compound against cancer cells.


We describe prenatal exclusion of Harlequin ichthyosis where the main 3D ultrasound findings were absent. Harlequin ichthyosis is lethal autosomal recessive disorder characterized by an extremely thickened keratin layer of skin, flattened ears, and diffuse plate like scales. We report a case of prenatal exclusion of Harlequin ichthyosis. Parents were healthy, consanguineous and there was a history of 2 sons who had neonatal deaths secondary to Harlequin ichthyosis. Couple declined fetal skin biopsy for prenatal diagnosis. So we start Screening Sonography from 24 week of gestation till 35 weeks. searching for Prenatal Sonographic features shown best on three dimensional (3D), described in the literature including with findings of a persistently open mouth, everted eye lids, and fixed flexion of the extremities distal arthrogryposis and skin lesions (cracks). Ichthyosis was not established prenatally in this case. Patient was reassured that there is unlikely a recurrence, she delivered a healthy baby boy at term free of disease. Conclusions: Prenatal Sonographic diagnosis with three-dimensional (3D) of Harlequin ichthyosis can be used as alternative to invasive prenatal diagnostic options.


A set of analytical models based on the Pearson distribution function applied to the modeling of ion implantations in the 3-D structure of FinFETs is presented. The method provides a succinct way to simulate the doping profiles in FinFETs at low computational cost. Compared to previous analytical methods based on Gaussian distributions, this approach handles more realistic asymmetrical doping distributions arising from ion implantation. A simulation module in C++ has been developed to model ion implantations in FinFETs based on this analytical approach. The simulation module is demonstrated in an example simulation of a silicon-on-insulator FinFET with physical gate length of 20 nm.


Physics
The ability of high-end optical microscopes to image the smallest of features is very much dependent on the quality of the lenses. However, the preparation and milling of the best-quality lenses add a hefty premium to the cost. In a somewhat counterintuitive approach to improving resolving capability, van Putten et al. explore the use of lenses that are completely disordered. Laser light hitting such a disordered lens creates a random pattern, or speckle, of intense, highly focused spots. By manipulating the wavefront of the laser beam with a spatial light modulator before it hits the lens, the authors show that the multiple spots can be made coincident, thereby forming a spot smaller than that from a conventional lens. They then go on to demonstrate imaging of gold particles with sub–100-nm resolution. Such an adaptive optics approach might prove a useful and ultimately cheaper method of high-resolution microscopy.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 , 193905 (2011).


Mediated embodiment (ME) is the technologically generated illusion of substituting a person's body with an avatar body. Virtual reality is the most representative technology of ME. However, other forms of embodiment are emerging and need to be examined. The inclusion of all ME technologies under a common paradigm would largely facilitate their study. Here, I develop a unified conceptual framework of ME and integrate robot embodiment as part of the phenomenon. I first describe the central component of ME: avatars. I extend the concept of avatar used in virtual reality to other forms of ME. I then outline the minimum conditions necessary to induce the embodiment illusion as well as the technical principles used to create this illusion. Next, I suggest that ME technologies can be regarded as tools that increase human capabilities in four directions: embodiment of a new self, expansion of traveling capabilities, expansion of body capabilities, and the reach of immortality. I connect the principal research conducted in the field to these categories and suggest potential research directions to promote the positive applied uses of ME. I conclude with the importance to also address ethical issues related to this phenomenon.


: The purpose of this study was to develop a model of bacterial meningitis in young adult rats for assessing the efficacy of antimicrobial agents. Sixty 200- to 300-g male Sprague Dawley CD rats were inoculated intracisternally with 5.78 log10 CFU of a clinical isolate of Streptococcus pneumoniae in 5% hog gastric mucin. Inoculated rats were assigned to six groups containing 10 animals each. Group-1 rats served as controls and did not receive antibiotics. Rats of groups 2 to 4 received (subcutaneously every 12 h) cefotaxime (25, 6.25, and 1.56 mg/kg of body weight respectively). Rats of groups 5 and 6 received ampicillin (50 and 12.5 mg/kg respectively) and gentamicin (2.0 and 0.5 mg/kg respectively). Five additional Sprague Dawley CD rats were inoculated with only gastric hog mucin and were assigned to group 7. At postinoculation day 4 all animals were euthanized. Cerebral spinal fluid was collected for culturing. Brains were harvested for histologic examination and culturing. Untreated, infected control (group-1) animals were culture-positive for S. pneumoniae in the brain and cerebral spinal fluid. Of the antibiotic regimens evaluated, only cefotaxime (25 mg/kg) eradicated bacteria from the cerebral spinal fluid and brain. Cefotaxime at 25 or 6.25 mg/kg significantly (P < or = 0.05) decreased the bacterial burden of S. pneumoniae, whereas cefotaxime at 1.56 mg/kg and ampicillin/gentamicin combinations did not. There was histopathological evidence of subacute meningitis in infected rats. No meningitis was observed in rats receiving 25 mg of cefotaxime/kg. This model demonstrates the ability to induce bacterial meningitis with S. pneumoniae in adult rats and the ability to clear infection in 90 to 100% of the animals by administration of cefotaxime at dosages of 6.25 and 25 mg/kg given subcutaneously every 12 h.


France, England and the Politics of the Salonica Campaign 1915-18
is an attempt to trace and explain the workings of the Anglo-French
Entente in wartime. The study has a built-in bias towards the French
side of the campaign, since it is the author's belief that the expedition
is explicable only in terms of French internal politics and France's
wartime aspirations. The policies and actions of England were essentially
responses to what happened in Paris. If the study appears somewhat
one-sided, therefore, this is because the campaign itself was one-sided.
With such uneven cooperation between the allies, it is not surprising that
the Salonica Expedition emerges as one of the least fruitful exercises in the
allied direction of the war.
The study makes use of extensive collections of hitherto largely
unexamined ministerial archives in England and France, together with a
number of private collections. The latter, and particularly some previously
untapped French sources including the Painleve, Jules Cambon and Leon Bourgeois
papers, have proved profitable and have served to confirm the author's
impression that individuals played an enormous part in shaping the development
of the campaign. The thesis therefore contains detailed analyses of the
motivations and driving forces behind the leading protagonists of the story -
Sarrail, Joffre, Briand and Painleve.
Besides providing a detailed expose of the campaign itself, the thesis
advances our knowledge of several more general aspects of the Great War.
In particular the politics of France in the period between the summer of
1915 and the autumn of 1917 are carefully surveyed and analysed. Then new
light is thrown upon the nature of French war aims and the way in which
these differed from those of England. To this extent the artificiality
of the Entente Cordiale is emphasised.


This study explored new fathers" understanding and experience of fatherhood, their own well-being and whether, or not, there is a role for counselling psychologists to work with new fathers in their transition to fatherhood. A qualitative research methodology was employed: counselling psychologists were asked to complete a partially structured questionnaire to explore their perceptions of men"s experiences of fatherhood; fathers" well-being and mental health needs; and the psychologists" thoughts about what role, if any, counselling psychology might have in assisting the transition to fatherhood. Questionnaires were analysed using a content analysis. Fathers, in the first five years of fatherhood, were interviewed to explore their experiences of fatherhood, and their understanding of their own well-being. The interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Four master themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews, with 11 subthemes identified. The four master themes were preparation; roles, responsibilities, perspectives and priorities; joy and reward versus difficulties and concerns; support. These were consistent across the participant"s accounts, although experiences varied between individuals. Fifteen themes were identified in the analysis of questionnaire responses from counselling psychologists. Research findings support previous research in showing that the transition to fatherhood is a time of intense psychological adjustment and suggest that counselling psychologists do have a role to play in working with new fathers in their transition to fatherhood. The researcher suggests that counselling psychologists have a role to play in both therapeutic work and in the broader provision of psychological knowledge, education and support, either directly to individuals or groups, or indirectly through the provision of information, working with or training other professionals and through research and the dissemination of findings. The counselling psychology needs of new fathers


This article examines some of the factors that lie behind patient non-compliance with care regimens, paying particular attention to patients' constructions of their illness. The nature of control in encounters between patients and professionals is explored using examples drawn from studies of doctor/patient interactions as a basis for understanding the issues.


A fibre optic sensor for methane gas using the "differential absorption" referencing technique has been designed and constructed. Infra red light in the 1.66pm spectral region is absorbed by methane and this is the operating principle of the sensor. The system employs a novel LED, manufactured by GEC Marconi Ltd., as an infra red light source. The LED couples more power into single mode fibre than any other device of its type which is commercially available. The light is transmitted to a gas cell via single mode fibres and a fibre optic coupler, where some of it is absorbed according to the concentration of methane present. Two optical interference filters with transmissions at absorbing and non-absorbing spectral regions, respectively, are used in dual wavelength referencing mode to remove any interferences from non gas dependent parameters (e.g. dust in the cell). A calibration curve for the sensor is determined by plotting the values of the attenuated light signals against the corresponding concentrations of methane in the gas cell.

A full characterisation of each component of the system was undertaken and the systems overall performance determined. The system has a limit of detection of 0.077% CH4. This is a factor of 18 below the specification requirement for the project, which is 1.25% CH4 in air (i.e. 25% of the Lower Explosive Limit). The= system has a resolution of 0.025% CH4 and shows both good repeatability and reproducibility. The main problem associated with the system is the critical temperature dependence of the optical interference filters, whose transmissions vary with temperature changes of 0.1°C and therefore affect the system stability.


Two nuts were used to secure the water-supply pipes to the threaded connections on hot-water and cold-water taps. The nut used on the cold-water tap fractured about one week after installation. Examination of the fracture surfaces of the coldwater nut did not reveal any obvious defects to account for the fracture, but there were indications of excessive porosity in the nut. The fracture had occurred through the root of the first thread that was adjacent to the flange of the tap. It was found that the nut from the cold-water tap failed by SCC. Apparently, sufficient stress was developed in the nut to promote this type of failure by normal installation because there was no evidence of excessive tightening of the nut. Corrosion testing of the nuts indicated that the fractured nut was highly susceptible to intergranular corrosion because of either a deficiency in magnesium content or excessive impurities, such as lead, tin, or cadmium. This composition problem with zinc alloys was recognized many years ago, and particular attention has been directed toward ensuring that high-purity zinc is used. This corrective measure reportedly resulted in virtual elimination of this type of defect.


There has been an increase of focus surrounding aiding children who have lost a loved one by death over the past decade. It is broadly assumed that school-based grief groups for children are a beneficial way to support children, who are experiencing the loss of a loved one, in a safe and familiar environment. This systematic literature review was designed to explore the research question: What are the different models and goals of grief groups in an elementary school setting for children who have lost a loved one due to death? The review was set up using peer-reviewed articles, which focused on grief groups in elementary school setting. The databases SocINDEX, PsychINFO and Child Development and Adolescent Studies were systematically searched using the terms; "Elementary, Grief Groups and Schools" "Goals and Grief Groups and Schools" "Structure and Grief Groups and Schools and Children." Out of these searches, nine articles satisfied criteria for inclusion and were used in the final review. Three themes emerged from the research surrounding grief groups in the elementary school setting, which included; selection criteria for selecting members for the grief groups, the structure of the grief groups and the goals of the grief groups. Selection criterion used to select members of the grief groups was not originally part of the research question but has shown to provide significant information surrounding the structure and goals of the grief groups. The research suggests inconsistencies between different grief group models implemented in elementary schools. Moving forward more research is required with grief groups for loss of a loved one due to death for elementary aged children in the school setting. Exploring the effectiveness of different models used for grief groups in elementary schools will be beneficially to when finding a common model that can be used across all schools as a guideline.


he Institute for Music and Acoustics is a production and research facility of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. In this paper, we present some general thoughts on spatial music and its implementations as a motivation for our efforts. We outline the development of the ZKM Klangdom, a multi-loudspeaker facility for spatial sound diffusion that aims to provide artists and composers with new possibilities. We present the software project for controlling the Klangdom, Zirkonium, together with the key innovations in its new version Zirkonium MK2. A survey of examples of recent productions by guest artists is presented, and the Klangdom's achievements in the context of real-time control and diffusion are portrayed.


chemical compositions, mineral compositions, mosaic relationship, particle distribution characteristics are identified by mineralogy research on oxidization copper ore from Fuxin. Flotation conditions and closed-circuit process is carried out, it is adopted that adding sodium sulfide for sulfiding and ammonium sulfate for activating, then adding sodium silicate and sodium hexametaphosphate as combined inhibitation to intensify inhibitating, a combined collector consisiting of hexyl xanthate and butylamine dithiophosphate was used to strengthen the collecting effect. Finally, a copper concentrate with a grade of 17.39 % and a recovery of 59.36 % can be obtained, meanwhile, the grade of associated silver is 297.8 g/t, the recovery is 55.96 %.


Fluorescence emission is linked to leaf physiological conditions. In particular water stress modifies emission curves strongly. But fluorescence is also influenced by some factors which usually arise in experimental vine breeding programmes. The present research studies some variables that usually characterize the trials on genus Vitis : rootstocks and graftings. The time of measurement is very important and the fluorescence variables (absolute value) are not correlated with leaf water content. It needs a standardisation by time. The gross relation between fluorescence (after standardisation) and RWC is significant but it is modified by the rootstock behaviour. The Variable Fluorescence is strongly linked to leaf water content, even though the Maximum rate of Fluorescence Quenching shows a variable correlation with decreasing RWC. The genotype controls that variable better than Variable Fluorescence.


Motivation is a matter of satisfaction of human needs and unless the need at the lower level is satisfied, the higher order needs would not operate. The Kenya Utalii Hotel is in the hospitality sector which is in service industry. Like any other organization, the Hotel has employees of different ages and experience. These employees are in different levels in job cadres and in terms of career development. Individuals with the same chronological age may differ in terms of health, career stage and family status. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of job level and chronological age on motivation of employees at the Kenya Utalii Hotel. The study adopted a descriptive research design. Target population comprised all the 127 employees at the Hotel as per the human resource department. A representative sample of 69 (50%) employees was selected using stratified sampling technique for data collection. This study collected primary data using a self administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data obtained. To help generalize the findings the collected data was grouped using percentages and measures of central tendency. The study concludes that the physical age of an employee affects their productivity to a great extent. The study concludes that employee motivation affects their productivity to very great extent. The study concludes that the job level of an employee affects their productivity to very great extent. The study recommends that older employees should have an advantage in the organization decisions since they have accumulated selfefficacy during their career; they are more aware of their own skills and abilities and should have a greater possibility to choose between task goals or learning goals.


The present in vitro investigation was undertaken in an attempt to obtain further information on beta-adrenoceptor specificity and action in the rat parotid gland, with regard to amylase secretion. The beta 1-selective agonist prenalterol was roughly 800 times more potent than the beta 2-agonist terbutaline, and about 5 times more effective than noradrenaline in evoking amylase release . Propranolol was the most effective inhibitor of amylase release in all experiments. The beta 1-selective antagonist metoprolol and H104 /08 were also effective blockers of maximal noradrenaline- and prenalterol-induced release. The inhibition curves displayed biphasic shapes when amylase secretion was induced by noradrenaline, but not when prenalterol was the secretagogue. The beta 2-antagonist H35 /25 was without effect on maximal noradrenaline- and prenalterol-stimulated secretion. The amylase release evoked by submaximal concentration of terbutaline was inhibited by the two antagonists H35/25 and IPS 339. In another series of experiments propranolol and metoprolol clearly shifted the noradrenaline concentration-response curve to the right, whereas H35/25 was without effect. The results further demonstrate the major importance of the beta 1-adrenoceptor (noradrenaline-activated) in eliciting amylase release from the rat parotid gland. However, it is also suggested that the beta 2-adrenoceptors (terbutaline-activated) may to some extent serve the same function.


OBJECTIVE
To examine whether PARK16, which was recently identified as a protective locus for Parkinson disease (PD) in Asian, white, and South American populations, is also associated with PD in the genetically homogeneous Ashkenazi Jewish population.

DESIGN
Case-control study.

SETTING
A medical center affiliated with a university. Subjects  Five single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located between RAB7L1 and SLC41A1 were analyzed in 720 patients with PD and 642 controls, all of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Haplotypes were defined and risk estimates were determined for each SNP and haplotype. Bioinformatic analysis defined the putative promoter region of RAB7L1 and the transcription factor binding sites that are potentially affected by 2 of the tested SNPs.

RESULTS
All tested SNPs were significantly associated with PD (odds ratios = 0.64-0.76; P = .0002-.014). Two of them, rs1572931 and rs823144, were localized to the putative promoter region of RAB7L1 and their sequence variations altered the predicted transcription factor binding sites of CdxA, p300, GATA-1, Sp1, and c-Ets-1. Only 0.4% of patients were homozygous for the protective rs1572931 genotype (T/T), compared with 3.0% among controls (P = 5 × 10(-5)). This SNP was included in a haplotype that reduced the risk for PD by 10- to 12-fold (P = .002-.01) in all patients with PD and in a subgroup of patients who do not carry the Ashkenazi founder mutations in the GBA or LRRK2 genes.

CONCLUSIONS
Our data demonstrate that specific SNP variations and haplotypes in the PARK16 locus are associated with reduced risk for PD in Ashkenazim. Although it is possible that alterations in the putative promoter of RAB7L1 are associated with this effect, the role of other genes in this locus cannot be ruled out.


BACKGROUND
Use of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) may result in intracellular acidosis due to the generation of CO2. Carbicarb, has been reported to be superior to sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) because of lesser generation of CO2. The present study was designed to investigate whether Carbicarb or NaHCO3 is superior to normal saline in the treatment of hypoxic lactic acidosis.

METHODS
Hypoxia was induced by ventilation with 8% O(2) in 30 piglets with fixed ventilation. When the pH fell to < 7.2, hypoxia was reversed by placing the animals in 21% O2 (experiment 1) or 100% O(2) (experiment 2) and either saline, Carbicarb or NaHCO3 were given. Data were collected for 120 minutes after therapy.

RESULTS
In both experiment 1 (severe acidosis, pH < or = 7.1) and 2 (moderate acidosis, pH < or = 7.2) use of Carbicarb and NaHCO3 increased the arterial carbon dioxide tension (pCO2) significantly (p < 0.05). With moderate acidosis: 1) use of alkalinizing agents compared to saline resulted in an initial improvement in arterial pH at 1 minute, but thereafter, the differences were not statistically significant; and 2) there were no differences in hemodynamic variables and plasma lactic acid concentration between the three groups.

CONCLUSIONS
The data demonstrate that 1) both Carbicarb and NaHCO3 significantly increase arterial pCO2; and 2) use of either alkalinizing agent in moderate acidosis does not alter the course of acidosis.


OBJECTIVE
Fowl adenoviruses (FAdVs) cause inclusion body hepatitis (IBH) in chickens. In this study, clinical cases of IBH from Australian broiler flocks were screened for the presence and genotype of FAdVs.

METHODS
Twenty-six IBH cases from commercial poultry farms were screened. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) coupled with high-resolution melt (HRM) curve analysis (PCR/HRM genotyping) was used to determine the presence and genotype of FAdVs. For comparison, field isolates were also assessed by virus microneutralisation and nucleotide sequence analysis of the hexon loop 1 (Hex L1) gene. PCR detection of chicken anaemia virus (CAV) and infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) was also employed.

RESULTS
FAdV-8b and FAdV-11 were identified in 13 cases each. In one case, FAdV-1 was also identified. Cross-neutralisation was observed between the FAdV-11 field strain and the reference FAdV-2 and 11 antisera, a result also seen with the type 2 and 11 reference FAdVs. Field strains 1 and 8b were neutralised only by their respective type antisera. The FAdV-8b field strain was identical to the Australian FAdV vaccine strain (type 8b) in the Hex L1 region. The Hex L1 sequence of the FAdV-11 field strain had the highest identity to FAdV-11 (93.2%) and FAdV-2 (92.7%) reference strains. In the five cases tested for CAV and IBDV, neither virus was detected. The evidence suggested the presence of sufficient antibodies against CAV and IBD in the parent flocks and there was no indication of immunosuppression caused by these viruses.

CONCLUSION
These results indicate that PCR/HRM genotyping is a reliable diagnostic method for FAdV identification and is more rapid than virus neutralisation and direct sequence analysis. Furthermore, they suggest that IBH in Australian broiler flocks is a primary disease resulting from two alternative FAdV strains from different species.


It was previously reported that paleoparasitological clues for parasites infecting humans could be found in the feces of mummies of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) in the Republic of Korea. Here, we report the presence of trematode eggs, including Clonorchis sinensis, Metagonimus yokogawai, and Gymnophalloides seoi (a human parasite known in Korea since 1993) in the feces of a recently excavated female mummy in Hadong, Republic of Korea. This is the first report of the discovery of a G. seoi infection in a human mummy. Since Hadong is currently not an endemic area for G. seoi, we speculate that the parasite might have occurred frequently along coastal areas of the Korean peninsula several hundred years ago and that the endemic areas contracted to, more or less, restricted regions since that time.


Laboratory profile of young ovines was studied in order to evaluate and compare their antiserum production from natural and Cobalt-60 irradiated Crotalus durissus terrificus (C.d.t.) venoms. The parameters analyzed included complete blood count, and urea, creatinine, aspartate aminotransferase, total proteins, albumin and globulin serum measurements. Three groups of six animals each were used. Group 1 (G1) received natural C.d.t. venom; Group 2 (G2) received irradiated C.d.t. venom; and Group 3 (G3) was used as control and did not receive venom, only adjuvants, using seven venom inoculations. During the experimental period, animals were fortnightly weighed. According to clinical and weight evaluation, sheep in post-weaning phase showed no changes in their physiological profiles but had excellent weight gain. The parameters analyzed were not statistically different (p<5%) among the groups tested. The hyperimmunization process was successfully accomplished with the production of specific antibodies against Crotalus durissus terrificus venom. Results bring a new possibility of utilizing ovines in the commercial production of anticrotalic serum, which may be used to treat human and animal envenomation. Its production cost may be reduced by subsequent use of hyperimmunized sheep for human consumption.


The manuscript entitled "Global to regional overview of floods fatality: the 1951–2020 period" written by Hamidifar & Nones is a quite interesting approach to the analysis of flood threat on a global scale. The research presented is rather simple – it's based on the analysis of available data taken from a single source, Emergency Database. However, the information provided and the conclusions drawn may be very useful for many researchers working in different fields of engineering, economy, or social sciences.


Projected changes in temperature and precipitation are expected to influence spring and autumn vegetation phenology and hence the length of the growing season in many ecosystems. However, the sensitivity of green‐up and senescence to climate remains uncertain. We analyzed 488 site years of canopy greenness measurements from deciduous forest broadleaf forests across North America. We found that the sensitivity of green‐up to temperature anomalies increases with increasing mean annual temperature, suggesting lower temperature sensitivity as we move to higher latitudes. Furthermore, autumn senescence is most sensitive to moisture deficits at dry sites, with decreasing sensitivity as mean annual precipitation increases. Future projections suggest North American deciduous forests will experience higher sensitivity to temperature in the next 50 years, with larger changes expected in northern regions than in southern regions. Our study highlights how interactions between long‐term and short‐term changes in the climate system influence green‐up and senescence.


This paper describes the fluid mechanics within a box containing a vertical plane distributed source of buoyancy. A theoretical analysis is presented that models the development of plumes from such sources in an unconfined ambient of uniform density. Two extensions are considered. The first concerns a sealed box and the second involves the more general situation where the box is ventilated by openings at top and bottom. In the sealed box the stratification develops in much the same way as for a 'filling box' containing a single-point source of buoyancy on the floor. An initial front descends from the ceiling of the box and an asymptotic stratification eventually develops which is continuous in the vertical direction. In the case of the ventilated box it is found that a complex stratification develops where one or more horizontal intrusions are formed by detachment of the plume/boundary layer from the vertically distributed source where the buoyancy of the plume is less than, or equal to, that of the stratified ambient at a given height. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the theory. The findings are relevant to both forced and naturally ventilated buildings containing non-adiabatic vertical surfaces.


Objective:
 Recovery can occur after stroke in both human and animals, and this is attributed in part by rewiring of neural connections in areas adjacent to or remotely connected to the infarct. As stroke can cause brain-wide network changes, it is important to interrogate regenerative processes in the whole brain after stroke. In this study we use a high resolution 3D whole brain imaging technique called CLARITY to visualize the cellular and structural changes in stroke mice during recovery.

 Hypothesis:
 We hypothesize that the CLARITY procedure will provide a more detailed and complete visualization of post-stroke regenerative processes in the whole brain.

 Material/Methods:
 We used C57Bl6 WT mice with 10-12 weeks of age. Ischemic stroke was induced by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion using an intraluminal suture. Mice were sacrificed at different time points (Post-stroke day 1, 7, 14 and 28) and brains were processed with the CLARITY protocol. Brains were immunostained repeatedly with antibodies for neurons, glia, oligodendrocytes, microglia/macrophages and blood vessels.

 Results:
 Stroke brains collected at different post-stroke timepoints became optically transparent after the CLARITY process. Interestingly, the ischemic area turned transparent for all timepoints except post-stroke day 7 and 28. At this time point the ischemic area remains opaque after CLARITY process, suggesting that the cellular composition at this timepoint is resistant to the CLARITY treatment. Immunostaining with MAP2 demonstrates labeling of neuronal processes in the whole brain. Current studies investigate other cell types and cellular processes, such as glial scarring (GFAP), microglia/macrophage accumulation (CD68) and angiogenesis (Collagen IV) to map the reorganization at the cellular level with high resolution in 3D whole brain.

 Conclusion:
 Stroke brains can be made optically transparent after the CLARITY process. This allows high resolution whole brain 3D imaging to probe for the cellular and molecular mechanisms during stroke recovery.


We report on free-standing NiTi alloy nanowires (120 nm × 75 nm) fabricated using a technique referred to as "nanoskiving", which complements conventional thin film sputter deposition with ultramicrotomy for thin sectioning. To date, the technique has been limited to pure metals without exploring metallic alloys. Leveraging the technique for the fabrication of shape memory alloy (SMA) nanostructures meets two critical requirements: compositional control (via film deposition) and controlled dimensions (via film deposition and programmable sectioning). Microstructure and composition analysis confirm continuity of the produced nanowires and Ni and Ti elemental uniformity. Free-standing NiTi nanowires are robust and remain intact throughout physical manipulation. The fabrication of NiTi alloy nanowires by nanoskiving will advance fundamental characterization of small scale SMA behavior.


Master of Science Thesis in Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, SUNY College of Technology at Utica/Rome. Approved and recommended for acceptance as a project in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science. Submitted by author to digital archive, Sept. 2018.


The review deals with the role of main etiological factors of the development of vegetovascular dysfunction with hypotensive type in children. The factors were divided into predisposing, directly causal and provocative. A carried out analysis allowed to establish a wide variety of their harmful influence on humans and in particular, on different levels of regulation of homeostatic parameters in children. These factors promote the start of pathogenetic mechanisms, which bring about disruption of the normal function of adaptation mechanisms.


Densification of biomass is often necessary to combat the negative storage and
handling characteristics of these low bulk density materials. A consistent, high
quality densified product is strongly desired, but not always delivered. Within the
context of pelleting and briquetting, binding agents are commonly added to
comminuted biomass feedstocks to improve the quality of the resulting pellets or
briquettes. However in this study, author chooses to make the densification process
binderless by only manipulating the parameters during the densification process. The
load applied and the particle size of the rice husk is the manipulating variables in this
experiment. The rice husk first is being milled by the miller and the distribution of
the size ranging up to 500 11m. The rice husk is then being divided into three sizes
100 11m, 355 11m and 500 11m by using the sieving machine. For each sizes, authors
set the weight of the sample to be constant which is 0.5 g. Auto pallet machine is
used for densification process with the load applied starting from 500 kg to 1000 kg
with the intervals of IOOkg. A proper medium is necessary to hold the pallet prior to
the hardness test. The pallet had undergone a hot mounting process where a resin is
added to the hot mounting machine to provide a medium for pallets. After hot
mounting process, the pallets with a resin as a medium are being tested by the
Rockwell Hardness Machine. From the value of hardness obtained, as the
load/applied pressure increased, the hardness of the rice husk also increased. The fine
size of rice husk give better hardness compared to the medium and large one, but the
combination of both fine and medium particle size give better hardness among all the
stzes.


Hepatitis B is an epidemiologic problem worldwide, with high mortality associated with acute and chronic liver damage and cancer. Chile has a low prevalence rate (under 2% of the population) but there has been an increase from 1.03% in the year 2000 to 1.52% in 2001. The groups with higher prevalence rates being men that have sex with men, persons living with HIV, health care workers and in previous surveys, children with multiple transfusions. In Latin America the impact of HB infection is significant, there is an uneven distribution, with endemic areas of high, intermediate and low prevalence, even in the same country (eq. Brazil). The development of HB vaccines is one of the most cost effective and safe strategies of immunization, inducing long lasting immunity (> 10 years). Its impact has been great in countries where neonatal vaccination has been implemented and the goals of WHO/PAHO and more recently GAVI are directed to the universal vaccination of this aye group. To achieve these goals, problems of access and cost must be solved. In Latin America the use of the vaccine is in accordance with the epidemiology of the HB infection. Some countries like Brazil, have vaccination programs while others like Peru recommend and support it, but application is voluntary. In others it is restricted to population groups at risk. In our country HB vaccination was initially recommended to health care workers and other groups of risk. Later these recommendations were broadened to include students of the health care area and we are now evaluating its application in other groups


Grapevine virus A (GVA) has a quasispecies nature and is closely associated with the rugose-wood disease complex of Vitis vinifera L. In the different growing regions of table grape in Sichuan, southwest China, the incidence of GVA infection was found to be 16.9% by ELISA detection among 178 grape plants (Vitis vinifera L. × Vitis labrusca L.). The results of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) studies on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products of a total of 139 plasmids, cloned from 15 GVA isolates, suggested that the GVA isolates contained highly divergent variants. The plasmids from each GVA isolate that yielded different PCR-RFLP profiles were preferentially chosen for sequencing and were designated as variants. Furthermore, a phylogenetic study based on the analysis of the GVA coat protein genes and RNA silencing suppressor genes showed that the 40 variants obtained from the 15 GVA isolates represented 4 clades, designated as molecular groups I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The variant-specific PCR detection results indicated that the parts of the tested grape plants were specifically infected by mild variants.


Since the approval of proteasome inhibitor, Bortezomib, for use in multiple myeloma in 2003, pharmacological proteasome inhibitors has been shown to be an important strategy for treating many types of cancer. While proteasome inhibitors induce apoptosis in certain rapidly proliferating cancer cells, some cells enters quiescence and survives. The mechanism by which quiescent cells become resistant to proteasome inhibitors is largely unknown. The tumor suppressor protein p53 plays an essential role in establishing and maintain quiescence in human cells. It also regulates several cell survival mechanisms, including cell cycle arrest, autophagy, and activation of reactive oxygen detoxifying enzymes. Here, we investigated the role of p53 in establishing resistance against proteasome inhibitors in quiescent cells. We found that MG132 (a know proteasome inhibitor) treatment induces the accumulation of p53 and its downstream target p21 more in quiescent cells than in proliferating primary human fibroblasts. shRNA mediated down-regulation of p53 sensitizes both proliferating and quiescent fibroblasts to MG132-mediated apoptosis and cell death, suggesting that p53 plays a protective role in all cell states. Additional experiments demonstrated that proliferating fibroblasts are susceptible to inhibition of cytoplasmic p53 activity, whereas quiescent fibroblasts are sensitive to inhibition of nuclear p53 activity. These findings suggest that p53 induces different protective mechanisms against MG132-mediated cell death, depending of the proliferative state of the cells. Autophagy, an alternative degradation pathway regulated by p53, is also induced in both cell states upon MG132 treatment. Identification of p53-mediated regulatory mechanisms that are activated in quiescent cells in response to proteasome inhibition may help to suggest strategies for improving the effectiveness of proteasome inhibitors in treating cancer. Citation Format: Aster Legesse-Miller, Jacky Ho Wa Cheng. p53 protects against MG132-induced apoptosis in a cell state-dependent manner. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Seventh AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 9-12, 2014; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2015;24(10 Suppl):Abstract nr A80.


This paper proposes a preconditioner for the conjugate gradient method (CG) that is designed for solving systems of equations Ax=bi with different right-hand-side vectors or for solving a sequence of slowly varying systems Ak x = bk. The preconditioner has the form of a limited memory quasi-Newton matrix and is generated using information from the CG iteration. The automatic preconditioner does not require explicit knowledge of the coefficient matrix A and is therefore suitable for problems where only products of A times a vector can be computed. Numerical experiments indicate that the preconditioner has most to offer when these matrix-vector products are expensive to compute and when low accuracy in the solution is required. The effectiveness of the preconditioner is tested within a Hessian-free Newton method for optimization and by solving certain linear systems arising in finite element models.


Successful analysis of video data requires an integration of techniques from KR, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. Being able to detect and to track objects as well as extracting their changing spatial relations with other objects is one approach to describing and detecting events. Different kinds of spatial relations are important, including topology, direction, size, and distance between objects as well as changes of those relations over time. Typically these kinds of relations are treated separately, which makes it difficult to integrate all the extracted spatial information. We present a uniform and comprehensive spatial representation of moving objects that includes all the above spatial/temporal aspects, analyse different properties of this representation and demonstrate that it is suitable for video analysis.


Adsorption separation is considered one of the most commonly used gas purification methods. At present, the most widely used adsorption methods are mainly pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and temperature swing adsorption (TSA). In both adsorption methods, a comprehensive understanding of the equilibrium data and the adsorption capacity of the adsorbent is essential for process design and optimization, and the adsorption isotherm can provide a powerful aid in this regard. In this study, through mathematical analysis of the Langmuir isotherm model, the optimal cyclic adsorption conditions and the optimal thermodynamic parameters (entropy change and enthalpy change) under PSA and TSA were obtained. In addition, the isotherm model can be used to predict the isobaric adsorption capacity, and the objective function was established according to the cyclic adsorption capacity and the regeneration sensible heat consumption per unit adsorption capacity to calculate the optimal adsorption/desorption temperatures and optimal cyclic adsorption capacity of various adsorbents.


Background: This study aimed to determine the short-term effects of dry needling (DN) combined with a standard exercise program on pain and quality of life in patients with chronic mechanical neck pain (CMNP). Methods: Thirty-one patients with CMNP were randomly allocated to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received DN and underwent a standard exercise program (one DN session and six exercise sessions) for two weeks, whereas the control group underwent the same exercise program alone for two weeks. The participants' scores in the Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS), Neck Disability Index (NDI), Short Form-36 Quality of Life Scale (SF-36 QOLS), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) before and after the intervention were assessed. Results: The control and experimental groups' post-test NDI, NPRS, SF-36 QOLS, and BDI scores significantly differed from their baseline scores (p ≤ 0.05). The between-group comparison of the post-test scores using Wilcoxon rank-sum test revealed no significant differences between the NDI, NPRS, BDI, and SF-36 QOLS scores of both groups (p ≥ 0.05). Conclusions: One session of trigger point DN (TrP-DN) with exercise and exercise alone showed the same pain and quality-of-life outcomes after a two-week intervention. We did not recognise TrP-DN as an efficient intervention, not because we obtained evidence that it is ineffective, but because there were inadequate high-quality studies on the subject and unavailable data on the minimum quantity of injections required for better DN outcomes in CMNP patients.


Schistosoma mansoni lung-stage larvae appear to not bind antibodies from radiation vaccine or infection sera in the membrane immunofluorescence test. However, treatment of ex vivo lung-stage schistosomula with methyl-,B-cyclodextrin, a hydrophobic oligosaccharide that specifically extracts cholesterol from plasma membranes, induced readily detectable binding of specific antibodies in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Surface membrane antigen binding of specific antibodies was also conclusively demonstrated by quantitative absorption of anti-schistosome sera with intact ex vivo larvae. These data together suggest that confinement of lung-stage schistosomula surface membrane antigens in cholesterol-rich sites allows only monovalent antibody binding, which can be detected by absorption and not by direct serology.


Introduction: Perinatal stroke, including neonatal and presumed perinatal presentation, is the most common type of pediatric stroke. No guidelines exist for evaluation after perinatal stroke and the roles of thrombophilia, arteriopathy and cardiac anomalies are unclear. We took a systematic approach to perinatal stroke evaluation to better understand these risk factors. Hypothesis: Thrombophilia, arteriopathy and cardiac anomalies are more common in perinatal stroke and may predict recurrence. Methods: After IRB-approval, we reviewed records of perinatal stroke patients from August 2008 to July 2015. Demographics, echocardiography, MRA and thrombophilia testing were collected. Statistical analysis is descriptive. Results: Among 213 children with perinatal stroke, 92 (43.2%) were female and mean age at diagnosis was 1.56 years. Caucasians comprised 69.5%, African-Americans, 7.5%, Asians, 1.9%, other, 8% and undeclared, 13.1%. Presentation was neonatal (113, 53.1%) or presumed perinatal (100, 46.9%). Strokes were classified as arterial (140, 65.7%), venous (51, 23.9%), both (4, 1.9%) or uncertain (19, 8.5%) by imaging. Mean length of follow-up was 3.2 years. Of 213 patients, 10 (4.7%) experienced recurrent events (4 transient ischemic attack, 3 sinovenous thrombosis and 3 arterial ischemic stroke). Thrombophilia data are presented in Table 1. After excluding venous events, 162 patients were evaluated for arteriopathy, cardiac risk factors and recurrence. Of eight recurrences in this group, none had arteriopathy, 3 (37.5%) had patent foramen ovale and none had other cardiac risk factors, compared to 5/108 (4.6%), 52/102 (51%) and 7/102 (6.8%) in the non-recurrent cases. Conclusions: Arteriopathy and cardiac anomalies were not associated with recurrence. Some thrombophilia tests appear enriched in perinatal stroke. With few cases of recurrence after perinatal stroke, it is unclear whether thrombophilia predicts recurrence.


The increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in young people is a public health concern. Among those in university and out of school, different contextual factors contribute to their risky sexual behavior and increased susceptibility to STIs and HIV. There are limited comparative studies examining risky sexual behavior and partner notification (PN) between these two groups, particularly in South Africa. We investigated sexual behaviors, self-reported STI diagnosis, health seeking behavior, and preferred PN methods of university students and out of school youth. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was used using convenient sampling to select 917 students across five health sciences universities and through periodic sampling 699 out of school youth were selected from two main local shopping centers in South Africa. Descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariable logistic analysis were performed using Stata IC version 14. More university students (71.7%) than out of school youth were in casual relationships (28.3%), with half of out of school youth being in steady relations (50.2%). Moreover, university students (65.7%) used a condom in the past 6 months compared to their counterparts (34.3%). Of the 124 youth who were diagnosed with STI in the past 12 months, majority (n = 106, 85%) were out of school youth. The probability of notifying a partner about a STI infection was 82% among university students compared to their counterparts (p = >0.05). The odds of notifying a partner was 1.79 times more for those having multiple sexual partners than those who had only one partner. Both groups preferred a face-to-face STI disclosure with partner; however, more university students (67%) preferred SMS notification than PN referral slips as compared to out of school youth (42%). Both the university students and the out of school youth engaged in risky sexual behaviors. Both groups preferred face-to-face and clinic SMS partner notifications, even though university students were in the majority. There is a need for developing health promotion scripts on disclosing STIs to sexual partners to empower the majority of the youth who prefer face-to-face PN over the prescribed methods.


This essay concerns dance as an exhibition object by examining the permanent exhibition at The Museum of Dance in Stockholm, Dansmuseet. Due to its dependence on the temporality and movement of the lived body, dance does not easily lend itself to being exhibited in a traditional exhibition display; and since the live dance performance itself is ostensibly absent at the exhibition display, other means of representation must be relied upon in order to evoke the exhibition visitors' experiences of time and movement as well as the feeling of dance. Starting from a phenomenological first-person perspective, as an exhibition visitor, I present three ways in which such experiences may come about. The cross-section of the experience evoked and the means that trigger them are intermedial, spatial, and performative taking their departure in the visitor's pre-understanding of dance.


The Landsat Signature Development Program, LSDP, is designed to produce an unsupervised classification of a scene from a Landsat tape. This classification is based on the clustering tendencies of the multispectral scanner data processed from the scene. The program will generate a character map that, by identifying each of the general classes of surface features extracted from the scene data with a specific line printer symbol, indicates the approximate locations and distributions of these general classes within the scene. Also provided with the character map are a number of tables each of which describes either some aspect of the spectral properties of the resultant classes, some inter-class relationship, the incidence of picture elements assigned to the various classes in the character map classification of the scene, or some significant intermediate stage in the development of the final classes.


STUDY OBJECTIVE: To analyse the role played by socioeconomic factors and self rated general health in the prediction of the reporting of severe longterm illness, and the extent to which these factors explain social class differences in the reporting of such illness. DESIGN: Analysis of panel data from the survey of living conditions, conducted by Statistics Sweden over the years 1979-81 and 1986-89. SETTING: A random sample of the Swedish population, interviewed in 1979-81 and then re-interviewed in 1986-89. PARTICIPANTS: A representative sample of 3889 employed Swedish people, aged 16-65 years. MAIN RESULTS: Socioeconomic and individual factors predict severe longterm illness regardless of the kind of reported disorder from which the subject suffers. The main predictive factor involved is health self rated as fair/poor, but exposure to high physical job demands proved to be the main explanation of the role played by socioeconomic class. There was a significant interaction effect between self rated general health and physical job demands with regard to the experience of severe illness. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study strengthen the hypothesis that manual workers are not only more exposed to causes of illness that have important individual and social consequences, but also to the personal factors that determine different experiences of illness. Interaction between these two kinds of factors (job demands and self rated health) suggests that socioeconomic and individual factors play different but complementary roles in the causal process leading to the experience of severe longterm illness.


Biotypes of wild oat (Avena fatua L.) resistant to Group 1 herbicides in the prairie provinces, and biotypes of chickweed [Stellaria media (L.) Vill.] and kochia [Kochia scoparia (L.) Schrad.] in western Canada and pigweed (Amaranthus) species in Ontario resistant to Group 2 herbicides are most abundant and widespread. Evolution of resistance in these biotypes is attributable to frequent use of herbicides from these two respective groups. Increasing incidence of wild oat populations with multiple-group resistance will threaten the future effectiveness of herbicides of different modes of action. Proactive or reactive management for herbicide resistance in weeds must consider the risks of herbicides of different modes of action to select for resistance and the differing propensity of herbicides to be metabolized in herbicide-resistant biotypes when rotating among herbicides, must meet criteria for effective herbicide mixtures, and should incorporate agronomic practices in cropping systems that help reduce weed seed production and spread.


The detrital zircons in tills overlying the Guichon Creek batholith, British Columbia, Canada, have trace element concentrations and ages similar to those of zircons from the bedrock samples from which they are interpreted to have been sourced. Rocks from the core of the batholith that host porphyry copper mineralization have distinct zircon compositions relative to the distal, barren margin. We analyzed 296 zircons separated from 12 subglacial till samples to obtain U-Pb ages and trace element compositions. Laser ablation U-Pb ages of the detrital zircons overlap within error with chemical abrasion-thermal ionization mass spectrometry U-Pb ages of the Late Triassic Guichon Creek batholith and confirm that the detrital zircons are likely derived from the batholith. The youngest intrusions of the batholith produced the Highland Valley Copper porphyry deposits and contain distinctive zircons with elevated Eu/EuN* >0.4 attributed to high magmatic water contents and oxidation states, indicating higher porphyry copper potential. Zircon from till samples adjacent to and 9 km down-ice from the mineralized centers have mean Eu/EuN* >0.4, which are indicative of potential porphyry copper mineralization. Detrital zircon grains from more distal upand down-ice locations (10–15 km) have zircon Eu/EuN* mean values of 0.26 to 0.37, reflecting background values. We conclude that detrital zircon compositions in glacial sediments transported several kilometers can be used to establish the regional potential for porphyry copper mineralization.


Pregnancy and childbirth is a special period in a woman's life and involves significant physical, hormonal, psychological, social and cultural changes. Maintaining health and wellbeing during this time is imperative for both mother and child. Holistic care for new mothers includes all aspects of health, and sexual health is an important part of this. The antenatal contact is an ideal opportunity for health visitors to discuss contraception options, particularly if the client is seen on her own. This article will discuss the role of the health visitor in providing evidence-based information on contraception and sexual health to women in the postnatal period.


The essence of evolution is change in the linear sequence of nucleotides of the DNA, giving rise to altered or new genes and their corresponding products. It is these changes that determine the complex three-dimensional structure of proteins and their conglomerates. Thus, to seek an understanding of protein evolution we must first seek to understand evolution at the DNA level and the constraints that this may place on the evolution of protein structure. In this paper I shall review briefly some of the implications of recent advances in our knowledge of gene structure at the DNA level for the understanding of gene organization and its evolution (see also Bodmer 1981).


The number of individuals suffering from severe chronic pain and its social and financial impact is staggering. Without significant advances in our understanding of how acute pain becomes chronic, effective treatments will remain out of reach. This mini review will briefly summarize how critical signaling pathways initiated during the early phases of peripheral nervous system inflammation/ neuroinflammation establish long-term modifications of sensory neuronal function. Together with the recruitment of non-neuronal cellular elements, nociceptive transduction is transformed into a pathophysiologic state sustaining chronic peripheral sensitization and pain. Inflammatory mediators, such as nerve growth factor (NGF), can lower activation thresholds of sensory neurons through posttranslational modification of the pain-transducing ion channels transient-receptor potential TRPV1 and TRPA1. Performing a dual role, NGF also drives increased expression of TRPV1 in sensory neurons through the recruitment of transcription factor Sp4. More broadly, Sp4 appears to modulate a nociceptive transcriptome including TRPA1 and other genes encoding components of pain transduction. Together, these findings suggest a model where acute pain evoked by peripheral injury-induced inflammation becomes persistent through repeated cycles of TRP channel modification, Sp4-dependent overexpression of TRP channels and ongoing production of inflammatory mediators.


Context effects are psychological effects that can influence customers' decisions to buy a certain product. Several researchers have discussed the presence of compromise, attraction and similarity effects in earlier papers. Previous researchers indicated that the middle option in the choice set will be more likely to be chosen (compromise effect). Furthermore, previous researchers indicated that alternatives that dominate one or more of their competitors should have a higher choice probability (attraction effect) and that alternatives are less likely to be chosen if there is a very similar alternative present in the choice set (similarity effect). Until now, the presence of context effects has only been shown in experimental or other manipulated choice environments. My research attempted to investigate whether these context effects were present in real-life, non-manipulated decision making. A dataset of an online mortgage recommendations website was used to investigate whether these effects were presents in real-life. To do this, I created a multinomial choice model that included a context-free utility component and a context-dependent utility component. I found that compromise, attraction and similarity effects were present. Surprisingly, the direction of these effects was not always the same as previous researchers suggested. Possible explanations for these unexpected findings are discussed in this thesis.


Analysis of cell distribution through phases of the cell cycle by the method of DNA flow cytofluorimetry has been utilized to investigate effects of UV light on the first cycle after irradiation in asynchronous Chinese hamster cells with different UV-sensitivity: V79 cell line (UV resistant cells) and UV-sensitive clones CHS2 and XII. Immediately after irradiation colcemid was added to the cultures to prevent mitosis and re-entering the cell cycle. UV irradiation did not affect the rate of cell passing from G1 into S phase in UV resistant cells. In UV irradiated cultures of UV-sensitive cells, a large portion of cells was arrested in G1, the effect increasing with UV dose. Besides, a portion of cells in S phase increased and the number of cells entering the G2+M compartment was essentially reduced in UV irradiated cultures of UV-sensitive cells much more than in V79 cells. The results may point to an inhibition of replicon initiation, and a larger DNA chain elongation in UV-sensitive clones after UV irradiation.


S100 proteins are a family of Ca2+ binding EF-hand proteins. S100A8 is a cytosolic protein expressed in myeloid cells and epithelia where it forms a stable heterodimer with another SI00 protein family member, S100A9. The S100A9 null mouse is viable and has no gross defect whereas the S100A8 null mouse is embryonic lethal. It was originally proposed that the S100A8 null mouse is lethal at E 9.0 in development due to lack of expression at E 6.5 in ectoplacental cone cells. This thesis shows that the S100A8 null phenotype is more complex than originally thought. S100A8 has a role in preimplantation development, which is previously unstudied. A small number of S100A8 null embryos survive to blastocyst but none survive implantation showing fatal compromise of S100A8 null embryos early in development. This thesis presents evidence that this lethality presents between fertilisation and E 2.5 of development. S100A8 also has a role in the murine decidua after implantation possibly key to normal murine development. S100A8 mRNA is highly expressed in maternal decidua yet S100A8 protein is not highly expressed. Foetal yolk sac cells do not express S100A8 mRNA yet they do stain positively for S100A8 protein. This thesis proposes that S100A8 protein is generated in the murine decidua and exported to the foetus where haematopoietic cells present the protein. The S100A8 protein has been shown to be expressed and stable independently of its myeloid partner, S100A9. These observations explain the discrepancy between the two SI00 null mouse phenotypes and add new insight to the S100A8 null phenotype.


Click has significant advantages for middlebox development, including modularity, extensibility, and reprogrammability. Despite these features, Click still has no native TCP support and only uses nonblocking I/O, preventing its applicability to middleboxes that require access to L7 data and blocking I/O. We bridge this gap by introducing Click middleboxes (CliMB). CliMB provides a full-fledged modular TCP layer supporting congestion control, TCP options, both blocking and nonblocking I/O, as well as socket and zero-copy APIs to applications. As a result, any TCP network function may now be realized in Click. As proof of concept, we develop a zero-copy SOCKS proxy server using CliMB that shows up to 4x gains compared to an equivalent implementation using the Linux in-kernel network stack.


Detection All pregnant women should be screened for glucose intolerance because selective screening based on clinical attributes or past obstetric history has been shown to be inadequate. Pregnant women who have not been identified as having glucose intolerance before the 24th wk should have a screening glucose load between the 24th and 28th wk consisting of 50 g of oral glucose given without regard to time of the last meal or time of day. Venous plasma glucose is measured 1 h later. A value of >7.8 mM (> 140 mg/dl) is recommended as a threshold to indicate the need for a full diagnostic glucose tolerance test.


Hydraulic engine mounts are generally applied to the aerospace and automotive applications for the purpose of cabin noise and vibration reduction. By careful selection of mount design parameters, at a certain frequency called the notch frequency, the dynamic stiffness will be smaller than the static stiffness. Following the notch frequency there will be a frequency, called the peak frequency, where the dynamic stiffness is much higher than the static stiffness. Increase in the dynamic stiffness above the static stiffness is not desirable because of the increase in transmitted force to the airframe or the chassis. Here in this paper, a new hydraulic engine mount design is proposed that uses two working fluids. This new design has two notch frequencies and two peak frequencies. Under special conditions, the peak frequency can be eliminated. As a result, one can obtain a hydraulic engine mount design with only one notch frequency but no peak frequency, by using a controllable fluid or a high viscosity fluid as one of the working fluids. The new hydraulic engine mount design, its mathematical model, and some discussions on the simulation results are presented.


Author(s): Wang, Siyang | Advisor(s): Tu, Zhuowen | Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to present a novel method of learning to generate an image sequence from input a single image without sequentially aligned data. Given examples of a visual phenomena that can be divided into discrete time steps, the problem is to learn a model that takes an input from any such time and realizes this input at all other time steps in the sequence. For example, given a scenery picture in spring and output the corresponding pictures in sequence of summer, fall, and winter without changing overall layout and semantic information presented in the input picture. Furthermore, it is assumed that ground-truth aligned sequences is not provided. This broadens the real-world application of this method as it is often difficult to collect aligned sequential data for many problems. This task generalizes the unpaired image-to-image problem from generating pairs to generating sequences and associates a direction of time with the phenomena observed.We show that this problem can be solved by incorporating Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), a popular deep unsupervised learning technique, and a periodic assumption about the sequential visual phenomena modeled. The periodic assumption is enforced in model training by a novel Loop Consistency loss, inspired by the popular Cycle Consistency loss that has achieved huge success in unpaired image-to-image transformation. The two parts of the model, GAN and Loop Consistency, can be seen as two levels of constraints that together facilitate model training. The transformation unit itself is a neural network. We show the effects of different network architecture changes on generation quality and present the results of the model in comparison with several competitive baseline models.


Secondhand tobacco smoke exposure in pregnancy increases the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders. We evaluated in rats whether there is a critical period during which tobacco smoke extract (TSE) affects the development of acetylcholine and serotonin systems, prominent targets for adverse effects of nicotine and tobacco smoke. We simulated secondhand smoke exposure by administering TSE so as to produce nicotine concentrations one-tenth those in active smoking, with 3 distinct, 10-day windows: premating, early gestation or late gestation. We conducted longitudinal evaluations in multiple brain regions, starting in early adolescence (postnatal day 30) and continued to full adulthood (day 150). TSE exposure in any of the 3 windows impaired presynaptic cholinergic activity, exacerbated by a decrement in nicotinic cholinergic receptor concentrations. Although the adverse effects were seen for all 3 treatment windows, there was a distinct progression, with lowest sensitivity for premating exposure and higher sensitivity for gestational exposures. Serotonin receptors were also reduced by TSE exposure with the same profile: little effect with premating exposure, intermediate effect with early gestational exposure and large effect with late gestational exposure. As serotonergic circuits can offset the neurobehavioral impact of cholinergic deficits, these receptor changes were maladaptive. Thus, there is no single 'critical period' for effects of low-level tobacco smoke but there is differential sensitivity dependent upon the developmental stage at the time of exposure. Our findings reinforce the need to avoid secondhand smoke exposure not only during pregnancy, but also in the period prior to conception, or generally for women of childbearing age.


Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are protected in a metabolically dormant state within the bone marrow stem cell niche. Inflammation has been shown to disrupt HSC dormancy and cause multiple functional changes. Here, we investigated whether HSC functions were altered in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)-prone mice and whether this contributed to clinical manifestations of SLE. We found that HSCs were significantly expanded in lupus mice. The increase in HSC cellularity was caused by both genetic lupus risk factors and inflammatory cytokines in lupus mice. In addition, the inflammatory conditions of lupus led to HSC mobilization and lineage-biased hematopoiesis. Strikingly, these functionally altered HSCs possessed robust self-renewal capacity and exhibited repopulating advantages over wild-type HSCs. A single-nucleotide polymorphism in the cdkn2c gene encoding p18(INK4c) within a SLE susceptibility locus was found to account for reduced p18(INK4c) expression and the increase in HSC self-renewal capacity in lupus mice. Lupus HSCs with enhanced self-renewal capacity and resistance to stress may compete out transplanted healthy HSCs, thereby leading to relapses after HSC transplantation.